Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) accepted eight winning teams of the Business Plan Competition (BPC).
Winners will join Technology Incubators Program (TIP), whose main purpose is to push forward innovative ideas and private business activities in the field of information and communication technology (ICT).
ITIDA Executive Vice President Dr. Sherif Hashim confirmed that the winning teams passed the Entrepreneurship Qualification Program, the second generation of BPC. The program was designed as an advanced assessment tool for business plans in terms of ideas, operational process, teamwork and the person in charge.
Workshops on advanced administrative and organizational skills are offered covering the basic principles of starting a private business. Through these workshops, the performance of each team is evaluated to figure out its ability to run a business.
The program aims to test the submitted ideas and business plans as well as the teams so as to ensure the highest success rate of the nominated projects.
The winning companies submitted a variety of business plans, Dr. Hashim said. Tagipedia, specialized in mobile applications and GPS services, won the first place for a business plan on offering GPS services inside buildings via 2D computer codes.
Company X, which operates in software engineering applications, won the second place. The third place went to e-Marketing-Egypt, which offers e-marketing solutions and competitive strategies for online professional marketers and businessmen.
Damlag came in the fourth place for presenting rich e-content in different languages enabling Arabic and non-Arabic speakers to find scientific and cultural information.
Datanil, which works on web designing, communications and databases, won the fifth place for proposing a project on providing GPS services for users of GSM networks.
Bashar Soft, offering online recruitment systems and applications, is the sixth company, followed by 3 Developers, which works on 3D applications. 3 Developers submitted a business plan on producing Virtual Estate (VE), a virtual marketing program enabling real estate agencies to showcase real estate properties in an attractive way for potential clients.
The business plan of Expert Investment came in the last place. Expert Investment is specialized in applications of financial services. It presented a business plan for a service named Updated Stock Analysis.
The proposed project offers data on the stock market through a program that uses mathematical and statistical prototypes to measure the values and risks of stocks and investment portfolios.
Dr. Hashim noted that the number of projects incubated so far since the program kicked off in is 10 private ones carried out by small and medium-sized companies. These projects, he added, offered about 111 job opportunities for specialized young calibers.
A total of eight projects were launched in the market after being incubated, Dr. Hashim said, adding that two more projects will be released by next February.
BPC is underway in Alexandria University, while another is under construction in Mansoura University, Dr. Hashim noted.
It has been decided that the two incubators of Cairo University and Assuit University will incubate a number of projects by the end of 2009.
TIP has been applied for the past four years in the Smart Village. Supervised by ITIDA, the project aims at incubating startup and small and medium-sized ICT companies and projects through offering them an enabling environment and financial and technical support, generating competitive products for local and international markets.
About ITIDA
Established in 2004, the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) aims at developing and promoting the Egyptian IT industry. Relying on unequivocal governmental support, ITIDA utilizes the vast array of advantages bestowed upon Egypt and synchronizes public and private efforts in order to keep the country at the forefront of the global ICT market.
