Business
KHALED Abdel Ghaffar, minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Egypt, on December 9, awarded Omar Sakr, founder and CEO of Nawah-Scientific, the winning prize for the “elevator pitch” competition, which was held at Africa 2017 at Sharm-el-Sheikh, in Egypt.
The prize is an entry to a training programme at Stanford Business School in California, the spiritual home of modern day entrepreneurs. The competition, as part of Young Entrepreneurs Day, offered a chance for African start-ups to gain exposure and raise their profile by pitching their business ideas to an international delegation of executives representing capital prospects, business mentors, and advisors.
From over 100 start-ups and entrepreneurs, 18 were selected to make ‘elevator pitches’ – each 3 minute in length maximum – where these young business leaders had the stage to present their idea and opportunity, highlight their needs and generate new leads.
Gaffer mentioned that Egypt understands the important role that entrepreneurship and young entrepreneurs play in job creation and inclusive growth. The government is creating favourable environment to facilitate this, he added.
“I am thrilled to have won this competition,” Sakr said, “There were some amazing start-ups here and I am pleased to have won the opportunity to go to Stanford for the business management exposure.” Nawah-Scientific is the first, private, multidisciplinary research centre in Egypt catering for natural and medical sciences. Nawah’s online platform receives task requests from individual scientists or industrial clients, samples to be analyzed are picked up via a partnership with courier services, experiments are carried by high calibre scientists and finally results are sent back online to the client.
Young Entrepreneurship Day partners, were impressed with the calibre of competitors. The judges were Ben White, founder and CEO, VC4Africa: Obi Ejimofo, COO, Asoko Insights, UK; Heba Ali, managing director, Egypt Ventures, Egypt and Abdelhameed Sharara, founder and CEO, RiseUp, Egypt.
– Dec 11, 2017 @ 15:52 GMT |
Tags: Egypt Egyptian young businessman wins ‘elevator pitch’ at the Africa 2017 Forum KHALED Abdel Ghaffar Obi Ejimofo Omar Sakr Sharm-el-Sheikh
