The American University in Cairo has opened the door for applications to Cycle 3 of its startup accelerator and incubator, Venture Lab.
Mada Masr has formed a partnership with AUC’s Venture Lab and, as a media partner, will regularly feature profiles of promising startups as they complete their incubation and acceleration cycles.
Launched in June 2013, Venture Lab is part of the School of Business’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program (EIP), and aims to turn technologies and innovations developed by local startups into commercially viable ventures.
Throughout the five-month acceleration process, early and growth stage startups are exposed to AUC’s intellectual resources, facilities and research capacities and are able to connect with a large and influential network of alumni, faculty, mentors and investors. This third cycle will start in fall 2014.
The startups are chosen through a selection process that assesses “the novelty of the idea, the team’s track record and cohesion, scalability and potential for commercialization as well as the team’s tenacity and commitment to success,” according to the V-Lab website. Up to 10 are then chosen on a rolling basis.
Startups are awarded LE20,000 for no equity in return and gain access to the university’s co-working spaces. The teams are offered mentoring, coaching and consultancy. Technical support is provided in the form of HR and recruitment, communication, marketing, governance and legal assistance.
AUC students are welcomed into the process by acting as product testers or interns while facilities such as the science, multimedia and film production labs are available.
After a demo day at the end of the five months — where teams pitch to investors — startups showing promise are invited to stay on for a further five months and participate in V-Lab’s incubation process, which includes support in fundraising.
At V-Lab’s first Demo Day this past March, six startups presented their ideas to a roomful of potential investors and entrepreneurs.
“Only crazy, out-of-the-box ideas are successful,” said Sherif Kamel, outgoing dean of the School of Business. “The conventional would not work.”
Others spoke of the expanding entrepreneurial space in Egypt, which has been becoming more advanced and interconnected over the past five years. Incubators and accelerators have made stronger links with potential investors and funders, giving startups more hope for the first rounds of funding.
Angel or informal investors are now coming together and engaging actively with entrepreneurs, with a constant presence at pitching events. A group called Cairo Angels is forming a community of potential investors, and it may be the answer to the longstanding issue of Egyptian startups’ lack of access to finance.
One of the six companies pitching their ideas at V-Lab’s first demo day was Mubser, which develops wearable technology to aid visually impaired people in their everyday lives. Their first product, Sensify, coordinates the user’s smart phone or Mubser pocket computer to detect obstacles and notify the user through vibrations on a bracelet and Bluetooth headset.
En2ly is a web and mobile service seeking to connect Egypt’s fragmented freight transportation industry, while El Shahbander does the same for textile workers, manufacturers and importers through a website and mobile application.
Smart News is a multiplatform content application that provides localized news organized by country, category and interest. It aggregates news from local and international newspapers and provides live streaming services from TV news channels. It also allows people to submit their own news content as citizen journalists. Mada Masr is one of the news sources available on this app.
But an interesting trend over the past year is that startups being nurtured by the ecosystem are going beyond the mobile app world, which dominated the scene for a while.
Kashef Labs has developed a prototype of a ground penetrating radar to detect the thousands of landmines left over from World War II battles on Egypt’s border areas.
“Using an unmanned aerial surveillance tool that is light in weight and utilizes minimal power, the radar flies one meter above desert rock and sand, to scan the ground,” according to the startup’s description. The radar then identifies metal objects and constructs an image that is run against a database of every type of landmines.
The second cycle of V-Labs is currently underway.
