Three contestants won the prestigious Sirb Awards for Young Entrepreneurs at a prize ceremony held in Jeddah’s Laylati hall on Sunday.
Jeddah Gov. Prince Mishaal bin Majed honored the winners and presented the prizes on behalf of Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal. The winners were awarded cash prizes and received full year memberships in specialized mentoring programs to further develop their skills and ideas.
Prince Mishaal congratulated the winners and lauded the organizers for hosting the event.
A panel of seven judges, selected from national and international companies, including Prince Saud bin Khalid, Ghassan Al-Sulaiman, Adel Dahlawi, Haidar Freihat, Usama Fayyad, Fadi Ghandour and Lama Al-Suleiman, selected the three winners.
The winners were chosen from seven nominated projects, which were presented in the final ceremony to the judges, investors, officials and academics.
Shater educational company project by Mohamed Ashgar won the first place; Matjar Mango Jazan (Jazan Mango shop) project by Abdulrahman Alsahely secured the second place; while, Hawee project (Amateur) by Anas Dahlawi secure the third place.
“Regardless who the winners of the competition are, the future of Saudi business environment will benefit from these intelligent and novel entrepreneur ideas; our future lies with the young generation of today,” said Mohammed bin Ibrahim Al-Suwaiyel, president at King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST).
A large number of young investors participated in the contest. Only 25 of them were short-listed in the first phase and underwent a series of training exercises and workshops.
In the second phase, seven projects were chosen and finally, three contestants were awarded during the ceremony earlier this week.
“All seven of the projects were innovative and of high quality. I do not envy the panel of judges, as they have a difficult job of selecting three candidates from a number of great ideas. For me, these young participants are all winners,” said Nawaf bin Attaf Al Sahhaf, CEO of the BADIR program for Technology Incubators at KACST.
Sirb is an Angel Investor Network established by KACST and a part of the Badir program for Technology Incubators. It was designed to encourage technology entrepreneurs to develop distinct technology projects and present them to angel investors in order to build successful partnerships.
Author: Fouzia Khan