Ten teams worked around the clock from Thursday night through to Saturday evening to develop a business model in the hope of winning the top cash prize of BD4000. The 10 competing business ideas were Charitime, Paycell, Ally Pha, EveryWeb, Peasy, Future Mobi Network, Student Tube, Gozilla, Recell and Search Bahrain.
On Saturday evening, each team was given five minutes to present their business plans in front of a panel of judges made up of experienced senior management and business leaders. Following in-depth discussion Charitime was declared the winner, with Student Tube being awarded second place and Paycell the third spot. The top three teams have walked away with BD4000, BD2000 and BD1000 respectively.
The final presentations, which were filmed, will now also be reviewed by Tenmou, the Bahrain Business Angel Company, with a view to providing any ideas deemed to have economic potential with up to BD20, 000 funding to develop and launch the business.
The first placed three teams will be given free enrolment into Bahrain Development Bank’s Entrepreneurship Development Programme. Additionally, BDB which evaluated the projects during the weekend as part of their pre-seed Capital Support Scheme, that is jointly run with Tamkeen and carries a grant of up to BD5000. The winners of BD 5000 one time grant were gone to three of the ten teams include Peasy, Student Tube, and Ally PHA, have been shortlisted for further evaluation and an announcement will be made soon.
Batelco Innovation Centre as part of its ‘Ideas’ project is providing one team considered to have the most innovative idea, with the Startup Pack prize which consists of a Smartphone, Tablet, Personal Computer and High Speed Broadband Connection for one year. The selected team idea for this prize was Charitime.
Batelco appreciated the speakers and mentors from leading companies including Mumtalakat, Microsoft, Ericsson, BDB, O2, Venture Coms, Dynavate Technologies, 4 Spots and Batelco, who all volunteered their time to support the teams in developing their business ideas during the event.