The five winning start-ups, each of whom earned $50,000, were graduatedfrom the KAUST's Entrepreneurship Programs.
The five winning start-ups included Red Sea Farms, an emergingcompany using saltwater technology for desert agriculture, Dhad (an Arabicplatform for audio book), Faheem application (an educational platform toconnect tutors with students Saudi Arabia), Sadeem Technology for floodmanagement, air quality, and traffic control, and Cura (a telemedicineapplication).
KAUST's Vice President of Innovation and the judge at EWC, dr.Kevin Cullen said that seeing many of the technologies on stage today at theEWC was really impressive as an indication to Saudi Arabia's growing entrepreneurialmomentum during the past year.
For its part, the KAUST Center for Entrepreneurship presented aworkshop entitled "Launching Your Next Art Project" during the final of thetournament as more than 20 participants developed ideas to start usingtechniques such as 3D printing and virtual reality.
KAUST will host the five winning start-ups in its campus during aweek-long training camp in preparation for the finals of EWC, to be held at theannual meeting of the Misk global forum in Riyadh in November.
The success of the KAUST start-ups in the Saudi finals for the EWCis testimony to the University's history of leading the entrepreneurship sectorin Saudi Arabia. In the past decade, KAUST has set up a training and investmentfund for entrepreneurship that has resulted in a network of 206 start-ups, whichreceives financial and advisory support from KAUST and also benefits fromlaboratories and prototype work.
