The recently announced winners of the inaugural edition of the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Center (Sheraa)’s $250,000 equity-free prize purse ‘UCAN’ or the Ubuntu Care And Nurture Startup Awards, as part of the inaugural proceedings of the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival 2020. UCAN was launched in September to empower entrepreneurs in the region invested in creating high-impact tangible solutions for the post-COVID world.
Winners
Jordan’s Raad Al Kalha, co-founder of Carers App – a technology platform that connects households with the best caregivers including in-home nurses, physiotherapists, and childcare specialists by matching patient needs with the caregiver’s expertise, was adjudged the winner in the healthtech track.
While, the Kenya-based Caitlin Dolkart, co-founder of Flare – a next-generation mobile-based 911 emergency response infrastructure that combines all users within the emergency ecosystem on a real-time platform to create an integrated response network, was named runner up.
In the Agri-Foodtech track, Abdulrhman Elhalafawy, co-founder of CUP MENA, an aِgri-tech and waste management startup from Egypt, was announced the winner for building a waste collection system to collect spent coffee grounds (SCG) and maximise its value by reusing it to grow natural produces.
South Africa’s Nneile Nkholise, who founded 3DIMO, was named runner-up for pioneering the use of novel connected technology and data driven approaches to enable early detection of health risks among farm livestock.
Winning startups in each track will be awarded a $100,000 grant each, while runners-up will receive a grant of $25,000 each.
Since its launch, UCAN received more than 650 applications from across Africa and Middle East, among which 20 startups were shortlisted by Sheraa last month under the two tracks of the award: “Healing the World” for healthtech, and “Feeding the Future” for agri-foodtech.
Part of Sheraa’s wider response to the Covid-19 crisis, UCAN reinforces the organisation’s commitment to the #UbuntuLoveChallenge – a global movement founded by Sheraa Chairperson Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi and Africa 2.0 Foundation founder Mamadou Kwidjim Toure, to inspire changemakers worldwide to actively help their communities during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.
“Purpose trumps profit,” said Raad Al Kalha, who transformed the “personal and unpleasant experience of finding the right professional homecare expert for a family member” to create a new value proposition for the homecare industry with the launch of the Carers App in Amman in 2018.
“Many people faced the same struggle – how do you trust a stranger or ascertain the right quality of care and experience?” said Al Kalha who started with 35 caregivers and only two services. “Today, we have expanded our services to include nursing visits, physiotherapy services, and blood tests and have a network of 300 caregivers who have provided more than 28,000 hours of care, created 5,000 job opportunities, and achieved 300 percent year on year growth from 2019-20.”
CUP, which stands for Coffee Utilisation Products, stemmed from the idea of converting a waste material into a product of value by reusing it to grow natural products, said co-founder Abdulrhman Elhalafawy. He explained that using ground coffee waste as a natural fertilizer will minimise thermal emissions and serve as a nutritional source for growing mushrooms faster. “It has many useful applications in other industries too and we are currently looking to expand to other agri-solutions,” he added.
3DIMO, which offers biometric identification of livestock, empowers farmers globally with data insights to trace animal movements and monitor their health and welfare, said Nneile Nkholise, who belongs to a farming family. “When we started six months ago, I was merely solving a problem for myself, and I was the first customer in the business,” She explained adding that co-developing the technology with others expanded its horizons to encompass the needs of the farming community across Africa or anywhere in the world.
“My advice to all entrepreneurs at SEF 2020 is just do it – open yourself to the opportunity to learn, unlearn and relearn. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Focus on the journey, not the destination, and just celebrate the little steps you take along the way,” she said.
