Providing a launchpad for ideas, the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Center (Sheraa) hosted Startup Weekend from the 15th to 17th of February 2018. The 54-hour event brought together designers, developers, marketers and startup enthusiasts to share ideas, form teams and launch startups.

The event was held in partnership with Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development and Sandooq al Watan. They introduced the Emirati Innovator Track prize, that would reward Emiratis innovating in the field of entrepreneurship.

The three-day event kicked off with a ‘pitch-fire’ shortlisting process to decide on the 16 ideas that will be worked on in the weekend. Day 2 saw the teams working on their idea while attending workshops and getting feedback from mentors. Day 3 ended with the teams pitching their finalized ideas to a panel of judges to win the grand prize of AED 35,000, along with enrolment into Sheraa programs, access to the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program, a dedicated 2-hour session of mentoring on customer acquisition from Sendgrid and 3 hours worth design consulting from Maek Digital Agency.

With only 54 hours and a set time-table to accomplish their objective of winning an opportunity to turn ideas into reality, Giftrapp triumphed as the winner of Startup Weekend with the idea of an online platform allowing users to create and share wish lists from any online and offline stores in order to prevent giving and receiving unwanted gifts, beating 16 other teams.

Team Mabany was awarded the Startup Weekend Emirati Innovator Track award for their idea of a SaaS facility management and tenant communication platform.

“Startup Weekend is the perfect storm to give budding entrepreneurs a taste of the startup world,” commented Najla Al Midfa, General Manager at Sheraa. “To be in the midst of creativity, talent, dynamics and energy is always inspiring. This event is a building block in the startup ecosystem and we’re proud to be able to offer the right resources to these innovative ideas. Now that they have kickstarted their journey, Sheraa will be taking these ideas to the next level by incubating and accelerating them into scalable startups.”

H. E. Abdullah Saeed Al Darmaki the Chief Executive Officer of Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development said, “Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development is very proud to join Sheraa and Sandooq Al Watan in this new initiative in order to empower the young Emiratis especially in the Northern Emirates, to raise their efficiency, stimulate their abilities and explore their talents to serve the country’s growth.

Startup weekend as major component of Emirati Innovator initiative, is one of the outstanding initiatives that Khalifa Fund is supporting since many years together with other initiatives Khalifa Fund supported and implemented throughout the last decade of empowerment of innovation and entrepreneurship in the UAE.”

“The Fund will provide all possible support for the success of any project that meet the financial and technical requirements of Khalifa Fund. The Fund works to build the values of leadership, creativity and innovation among various Emirates segments and work on encouraging them to adopt these concepts and transform them to permanent behavior when planning to establish their own businesses”, added Al Darmaki.

Mohamed al Qadhi, Director General of Sandooq al Watan said, “We are very proud to partner with Sheraa and Khalifa Fund in launching Sharjah Startup weekend 2018. The event contributes greatly to

the Emirati Innovator Program and plays an important role in developing a comprehensive entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports entrepreneurs from across the country.”