The 7 V-Lab Challenge finalists are here

In support of Egypt’s entrepreneurial sector, the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program (EIP) of the American University in Cairo's (AUC) School of Business launched the Venture Lab Challenge; a competition that aims at recruiting innovative teams and startups and welcoming them in the university’s incubator, which will be launched later this year.

“We were looking for value, innovation and impact and wanted to make a point that the word startup does not automatically translate into IT,” Sherif Kamel, Dean of AUC’s School of Business told Egypt Business Directory after the announcement.

From 160 applicants, seven finalists were chosen yesterday:

- AlKuttab: creation studio for games and cartoons.

- CoolScreen: architectural screens of perforated porous ceramic blocks capable of speeding, regulating, and cooling air flow.

- Kashef: mine-finding technology.

- ZadIT: promoting Egypt’s Spinning and Weaving Industry.

- Zimoro: website and application bringing the latest in shopping, entertainment, and outings.

- KLC: reliable transportation solutions.

- Mubser: a haptic belt for visually impaired people.

”We are very excited about being one of the winners of the V-Lab Challenge. The experience really helped us network with experts and other startups in order to take our project to the next level,” Khaled AbuShady from the team behind Mubser stated.

The V-Lab Challenge is just one milestone in EIP’s path to launching its incubator Venture Lab, which will be on the AUC Campus in New Cairo. The launch was supposed to take place on the 26th of June 2013, but was postponed till September. “We found that not all the people we had hoped would attend could make it due to the energy crisis in Egypt, which is why we postponed the launch,” Kamel explained.