Eng. Walid Sheta, Regional President of "Schneider Electric" in Egypt, North Africa and the Levant, stated that Cairo is ranked among the top 10 environments in the world that provide an ideal climate for the establishment and growth of startups according to the recently issued Global Emerging Enterprise Environment (GSER 2020) report, indicating that entrepreneurship is the future that paves the way for young people to implement their ideas on the ground in a way that provides added value to society and themselves at the professional level.
The Minister of Communications and Information Technology (CIT) Amr Talat and the French Ambassador to Egypt Stéphane Romatet have witnessed the awards ceremony of the first round of the French-Egyptian Startup Competition, where the eight Egyptian winning startups were announced and honored.
The competition is a fruit of the Egyptian-French cooperation that aims to support the Egyptian community of entrepreneurs and innovators in digital technology. It aims to enhance bilateral cooperation in innovation and entrepreneurship, and help Egyptian startups grow to become leading companies in digital transformation.
The initiative was launched after a Letter of Intent (LoI) was signed during the visit of French President to Egypt, in January 2019, with the aim to promote entrepreneurship and boost the growth of the startups specializing in digital services.
Eight Egyptian enterprises out of 150 companies won in the French Egyptian Startup- Competition. Egyptian startups, through the competition, were able to use modern technologies to develop systems and applications that contribute to addressing societal and economic challenges in health, fintech and sustainable cities.
In the Health category, 3elagi Tech (Therapy) wins first place, and Bypa-ss wins the second. In Fintech, ElGameya receives the first prize, and Ocra the second. In Sustainable Cities, Transport and Hood take home the first and second prices, respectively.
Two other startups get a special award for promoting innovative work capitalizing on technology. The Coup de Coeur Award, presented by the French Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, goes to NanoEbers, while the Community Award, presented by Orange Egypt, goes to Tink. These two startups receive the most votes on EgyptInnovate platform.
The French-Egyptian Competition for Startups started under the auspices of Schneider Electric and 14 French institutions operating in Egypt, where they provided support, technical expertise and financial prizes to the winners. Participants of the competition received intensive online training in areas including finance, pitching skills for investments, innovation, building relationships with investors, industry and establishing active communication with the innovators community. This is in addition to topics on startup growth, delivered by the competition partners and specialists in innovation and entrepreneurship development in Egypt, namely TIEC, Falak Startups, Flat6Labs and EFG EV Fintech.
