inDrive, a global mobility and urban services platform, announced that six Egyptian startups and one from the Middle East from different tech sectors had made it to the shortlist of the Underdog award, which was launched in September last year to support successful technology startups that are thriving despite facing challenges such as limited resources, a lack of access to funding, and an inability to attend important industry events, because of their location.
Ekaterina Smirnova, Head of the Underdog Tech Award, said: “The Underdog Tech Award is a business award for the ‘underdogs’ of the tech startup world, which is what inDrive once was. We often hear about companies from the same global capital hubs and their founders, who have graduated from the same Ivy League universities. With this award, we want to support companies from other regions and empower founders, who might not have graduated from Harvard, to believe in themselves and to know that they too can change the world. Together, we are building a more diverse and inclusive world, which considers the interests of many different communities and people, including those living in some of the world’s most remote places.”
The Underdog Tech Award rewards winners with cash prizes of $30,000, $20,000, and $10,000 for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places respectively, as well as other assistance, such as training from industry experts and PR support. The winners of the 2024 Underdog Tech Award will be announced on 1 April 2024.
The panel of judges will consist of prominent tech entrepreneurs, academics, and industry experts. The jury members include Fatma Nasujo, Global Head of Corporate Operations at Wasoko; Sean Kim, President and Chief Product Officer at Kajabi; Charles Eesley, Associate Professor and W.M. Keck Foundation Faculty Scholar in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University; Daniel Gándara, Vice President at MercadoLibre; Damla Buyuktaskin, Senior Regional Livelihoods and Economic Inclusion Officer for Asia Pacific Countries in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and Arsen Tomsky, Founder and CEO of inDrive.
The shortlisted startups are:
1. Valify Solutions, co-founded by Omar Ahmed Abdelwahed and Ibrahim Karim Eid from Egypt, is a RegTech company that specializes in digital identity infrastructure technology.
2. Dentolize, co-founded by Mostafa Dawoud from Egypt, is a fully customizable dental practice management solution that scales with clients’ needs and enables dentists to streamline their financial, clinical, and operational processes.
3. O7 Therapy, co-founded by Ashraf Bacheet from Egypt, is a startup that revolutionizes access to mental health services through its digital platform and mobile app.
4. Egrobots, founded by Akhlad Mohamed Alabhar from Egypt, is an agritech platform that enables farmers to produce more with fewer resources.
5. P-vita, co-founded by Mohamed Tarek Mohamed Abdelzaher from Egypt, is an innovative startup that recycles agricultural waste to produce raw materials for the cosmetics and food industry.
6. Credify, founded by Abdelrahman Rashwan from Egypt, is a startup that empowers digital lenders with alternative data insights, optimizing creditworthiness assessments at the point of application and driving hyper-personalized marketing post-onboarding.
7. KESK, founded by Basima Abdulrahman from Iraq, is a startup that built the first green energy platform in Iraq.
8. TuConsejeria, founded by Victor Juarez from Guatemala, is a startup that provides comprehensive psychological and mental health support to the Hispanic community.
9. Rarus Health, founded by Elmira Safarova from Chile, is a digital ecosystem that helps to improve diagnostics, assist families of children with rare genetic diseases, and generate data to accelerate the development of drug and gene therapies.
10. Numera, co-founded by Carlos Andrés García Iguarán from Colombia, is a platform that enables companies to automate their accounting processes, simplifying everyday tasks such as sending and receiving invoices, settling taxes and payroll, and generating timely and reliable managerial reports from centralized data.
11. TausiApp, co-founded by Amos Muthoni Kimani from Kenya, is an application that provides on-demand beauty services to customers who don’t have time to go to a salon or spa.
12. Crustea, founded by Roikhanatun Nafi’ah from Indonesia, is a startup that leverages eco-friendly aeration technology with smart IoT to support advanced aquaculture ecosystems, helping increase pond farmers’ productivity and reduce operational costs.
13. Caare, founded by Chandramouli Samatham from India, is a company on a mission to make basic healthcare accessible to rural and senior communities by offering a full spectrum of healthcare services via its online platform.
14. Vermi-Farm Initiative, co-founded by Royford Mutegi from Kenya, provides smallholder farmers with sustainable and innovative agri-tech solutions to help increase crop yields and reduce water usage while creating routes to market for surplus produce.
15. Digital Innovation for Impact, founded by Sadman Sadek from Bangladesh, is a startup that empowers smallholder farmers by providing them with valuable meteorological, agricultural, and technological insights to help them mitigate their exposure to climate risks.
16. Wiolit, co-founded by Julian Garcia from Argentina, is a startup on a mission to reduce food waste from institutional canteens by providing companies with a platform through which they can monitor their food consumption and adjust production accordingly to help meet CSR objectives.
17. Hyperce, founded by Biplab Karki from the USA, is a startup that provides innovative and personalized e-commerce solutions to businesses of all sizes, to address the challenges of traditional e-commerce technology by offering scalable, cost-effective, and highly customizable modern suite solutions that are easy to manage.
18. GLIBER, founded by Felipe Castañeda from Chile, is a fintech company that provides financial services to gig economy workers, helping them to achieve their financial goals and enabling employers to lower employee turnover.
19. Visionary, co-founded by Constantine Fedosev from the USA, is an energy storage and cloud service for power grid companies that operate low-voltage distribution power grids.
20. VAKA, co-founded by Saúl Paniagua-Lapenta from Bolivia, is a platform that connects farmers with investors, helping investors to finance agricultural projects more easily and farmers to increase production capacity through access to more funding and technical advice.
