TIEC Mentors 22 Startups at The World Youth Forum

For the last two years, The Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC) has been participating in the World Youth Forum (WYF).  This year’s forum featured talks and mentorship sessions by TIEC’s team.

TIEC representatives were part of the mentorship program at the WYF Labs. The trio was able to mentor 22 startups on an average of 20 minutes per meeting. They included Egyptian startups such as Curotrip and Lemon Spaces and startups from Kenya, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

The stages of the startups ranged from idea, early and growth stage. They were able to ask about anything according to their stage and the needs of their business. The questions were mostly about starting a successful business, developing a scalable business model, creating the team structure, raising investments and scaling.

El Rashidy, Incubation Department Manager, highlighted the impact of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) and TIEC on the startup ecosystem in Egypt in her talk “The Role of Government in Supporting an Innovation Ecosystem”.  She discussed the different programs and initiatives the whole team runs. 

This talk promoted the work of the center and was the first one at the WYF Labs, aimed to inspire and empower young entrepreneurs. Additionally, TIEC’s success stories were emphasized such as Ameer Sherif, founder of Wuzzuf, one of the graduated startups of TIEC’s incubator.

In addition, a workshop was held by Omar Hamada, a consultant to one of TIEC’s graduated startups titled “The Art of Pitching” and was one of the most beneficial workshops and most engaging according to the attendees of the WYF Labs.

Additionally, three startups that graduated from TIEC’s incubator exhibited at the forum out of 36 worldwide startups. The first was Widebot which helps businesses build smart chatbots that speak the region’s language and engages with them. So far, Widebot has 6 Arabic dialects.

The second was ORDOchao, a startup that aims to bridge the gap between Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) and ICT industries. The startup works in the fields of Building Information Modeling (BIM), VR, Enterprise Solutions, AEC Design coordination and Enterprise applications. 

The third startup was Freeziana, a platform specialized in selling handmade products and guiding the artists and handcrafters who are mostly women to produce the best quality of their work. One of the highlights of the exhibition was when first Lady Entesar El Sisi talked with Co-founder of Freeziana, Hadeer Shalaby, about the startup. Shalaby offered the first lady a handmade doll as a gift.