Four teams from Qatar University have reached the semi-finals of the Al-Fikra 2013 Business Plan Competition. While two of the QU teams are comprised of students, the other two are student-faculty/professional collaborations.
A total of 10 teams of young entrepreneurs in the student category and 11 in the professional category will compete to get selected for the finals on Thursday.
The QU student teams are E-Pharmacy and Nawat whereas the professional teams are Generation
Centre and Safety Town.
E-Pharmacy is headed by College of Business & Economics (CBE) student Noora Nasser al-Kubaisi, whose business idea is establishing an online medicine ordering service, which will deliver within 24-hour.
Nawat, comprising CBE students Amal al-Marri, Basma Mismar, Heba al-Batarni and Afrah al-Marri, plans to use date seeds as a device for absorbing indoor odours.
For Generation Centre, CBE student Jeelan Jarche is collaborating with her father Mahmoud to establish a training facility for maids in areas such as first aid, fire extinguishing, taking care of children, of people with special needs, and other emergencies.
Safety Town features College of Law faculty members Melissa Deehring Montouche and Rawdha Khalifa al-Dosari, with law student Aisha Abdulla al-Emadi and College of Arts & Sciences student Nada Jamal Abuhashem.
The team has designed a non-profit organisation which will operate an early childhood safety education programme designed to introduce all types of safety conditions to five and six-year-old children in Qatar.
E-Pharmacy student Noora al-Kubaisi said: “Taking part in Al Fikra has taught me to follow my dreams, stay strong and independent. Its true working alone was tough, but what helped was the application of knowledge I’ve learnt during the past three years. Even if I do not win the final prize, reaching this point has actually made me
believe in myself.”
Safety City team leader Melissa said: “This is our passion project, starting up a non-profit educational organisation to implement basic safety education for young children in Qatar. This issue is becoming more and more of a concern in our community and we are incredibly honoured and excited to compete in this competition.
The Al-Fikra 2013 Business Plan Competition, an initiative of Enterprise Qatar, is a competition designed to encourage the establishment of new companies and foster a culture of entrepreneurship in Qatar.
The 2013 competition was launched alongside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition in partnership with ALJ Community Initiatives and delivered in partnership with Silatech, founding partner of the SILA Angel Investment Network, and with the support of ExxonMobil and QNB as main sponsors.
As semi-finalists, the four teams are competing for a chance to win cash and non-cash prizes that will help contestants be successful and competitive both in Qatar and abroad. Winning teams will receive QR50,000 and the runners-up will be awarded QR30,000 in order to begin their businesses. Winning teams will also be offered packages which encompass incubation and subsidised Enterprise Qatar services.
In the run-up to the final, the teams have been invited to participate in events including the QHackathon, the MIT Enterprise Forum workshops and the WAMDA Mix n’ Mentor event.