Omar Sakr, the founder and CEO of Nawah-Scientific, has won the “elevator pitch” competition, held last week at Africa 2017 at Sharm-el-Sheikh, in Egypt.
The prize is an entry to a training programme at Stanford Business School in California, the spiritual home of modern day entrepreneurs.
The competition, as part of Young Entrepreneurs Day, offered a chance for African start-ups to gain exposure and raise their profile by pitching their business ideas to an international delegation of executives representing capital prospects, business mentors, and advisors.
From more than 100 start-ups and entrepreneurs, 18 were selected to make ‘elevator pitches’ — each a maximum of three minutse in length — where these young business leaders had the stage to present their idea and opportunity, highlight their needs and generate new leads.
“I am thrilled to have won this competition,” says Sakr, “There were some amazing start-ups here and I am pleased to have won the opportunity to go to Stanford for the business management exposure.”
Nawah-Scientific is the first, private, multidisciplinary research centre in Egypt catering for natural and medical sciences. Nawah’s online platform receives task requests from individual scientists or industrial clients, samples to be analyzed are picked up via a partnership with courier services, experiments are carried by high-calibre scientists and finally results are sent back online to the client.