Sponsored by Intel, the Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI) has organized an award ceremony in the Grand Park Hotel in Ramallah on the 27th of April 2009 and announced the winners of the Technology Business Plan Competition for the 2008/09.
The competition was sponsored by Intel with a dedicated cash awards in the total amount of $15,500 that were distributed over 18 winning projects in West Bank and Gaza, with Mr. Bassem Hadaydeh won the top prize in the amount of US$3000 for his “e-Drive” business plan. The competition was also launched in cooperation with the Centers of Excellence at four Palestinian universities including Birzeit, An Najah, Polytechnic and Islamic University.
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At his welcoming note, Dr. Sabri Saidam hoped that there will be prospects for these business plans to be transformed to reality to better serve the citizen and community thus raising national economy. Moreover, Dr. Sabri thanked Intel for its sponsorship, all partners and co-organizers for organizing the competition. Dr. Sabri Said that “it’s up to the youth and entrepreneurs to build the future” trusting the Palestinian youth energy and capabilities, Dr. Sabri pointed that “there is no life with despair and us Palestinians are not a frustrated community, but rather we are a more productive community”. |
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In an interview with Ms. Rula Habash, Intel Corporate Affairs Manager for Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon, has declared in an earlier statement that the goal of Intel’s sponsorship for this competition is to raise technology entrepreneurship and innovation culture in Palestine, specifically among universities and student community in general as means of creating high growth businesses that may tend to start small. The Business Plan Contest is part of Intel Higher Education Program that brings cutting-edge technology expertise to universities, encourages students to pursue technical degrees, and helps move technology out of university labs and into local communities. Ms. Habash talked how Intel is working within the US Palestinian Partnership (UPP) to ensure speedy ICT development in Palestine through education. She added that the Competition compliments the “Theory to Practice” technology entrepreneurship seminar that took place in Ramallah on July 7th and 8th of 2008 and presented by two Professors from the Lester Center at the University of Berkeley.
Mr. Ihab Jabari has pointed out that this competition comes as part of the general strategy of PITA to develop entrepreneurship in Palestine. Hence, encouraging youth to take the lead & jumping through the hoops in Palestine. Mr. Maher Hamdan have shared his experiences as the Executive of the Paltrade with the audience the exporting services to the region, including software development and technology outsourcing, is a great opportunity for the national economy.
Mr. Laith Kassis at PICTI commended Intel for their role in supporting the competition. He added that. PICTI’s focused mission is to support technology entrepreneurship in the ICT sector, whereby “the Technology Business Plan Competition project is an educational tool to specifically raise technology entrepreneurship awareness, increase competitiveness amongst university students and community in general, in addition to taking the first steps in commercializing innovative ideas to be running as start-up companies in the near future”. Mr. Kassis highlighted the important participation by the Gaza community to bring its innovations forward to the competition despite the difficult situation that they are facing.
During the event, Eng. Hasan Omar gave an overview of PICTI and its success stories. He also featured presentation about the Intel sponsored competition. Mr. Omar pointed that 78 projects were received from which 15 student business plans were awarded cash prizes from An-Najah University, Birzeit University, Polytechnic Palestine University and the Islamic University in Gaza and 3 business plan were awarded to entrepreneurs from the community Mr. Omar hopes to link the winning projects with seed financing sources to be incubated through different initiatives at PICTI as start-up companies. It is also worth mentioning that the Business Incubator in Gaza has organized an award ceremony in Gaza in parallel to the event in Ramallah in order to announce the winners and award the cash prizes to the winners.
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Winning Projects - Technology Business Plan Contest 2008/09
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1. Birzeit University: |
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1.1. WSPAL (Window Shopping) Website:
WSPAL is being designed by by Ahmad Nasr, Ayman Nasr, George Abu-Gazzaleh, Ghassan Dahu, Jafar Abu-Libdeh, Omar Jaber, Saleh Mansour, Sari Harb and Shadi Shaheenas as a local shopping service website that will contain lists of products and services with its prices in Palestine. WSPAL will have the advantage of being the first website in Palestine to provide such service, thus introducing the local market to e-business which has become quite popular worldwide...
WSPAL intends to establish and operate a shopping service website that will provide customers with the experience of Window Shopping and comparing goods that are sold in Palestine without the need of leaving their houses for zero cost, thus saving them the trouble of visiting multiple stores to buy what they want and also to get the lowest prices.
WSPAL is in a unique position throughout Palestine to provide knowledge of goods and services prices easily using the Internet, it is also the first mover in this field which will give it high competitive advantage. Additionally, WSPAL offers 100% free advertisements for shop owners and services providers by showing their goods and services on the website. The major profit will come from the banners located in the website that can be used by companies and shops to place ads.
Mission:
WSPAL's mission is to provide convenience to customers in Palestine by allowing them to Window-Shop through the Internet. WSPAL seeks to become countrywide company, utilizing the power of the Internet to become the market leader in on-line Window Shopping websites. To accomplish this, WSPAL will try to reach a point where it can combine the experience of shopping from home with getting the lowest prices for products.
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2. Islamic University Gaza: |
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2.1: Telephone Line Powered:
Due to frequent electric power outages in Gaza, Halima Ali Abed Elazeez and Osama Zeyad Elbelbessi thought of an innovative demo (Telephone Line Powered Lamp) for providing an emergency lighting in homes and small business during power outages.
The Telephone Line Powered Lamp comprising; a body having mounted thereon one or more light emitting diodes (LEDs); a lens cover coupled to the body for focusing light from the LEDs; a telephone jack mounted on body for receiving a telephone cable for supplying electrical power to the lamp; and, a circuit board mounted within the body and coupled between the telephone jack and the LEDs for regulating the electrical power supplied to the LEDs from telephone line.
In the current stage, the entrepreneurs will market the products locally to all people who have telephone landline subscription in Gaza Strip. Future plans include the market in the West Bank.
There are many types of Telephone Line Powered Lamp, as Ceiling, Wall, and Desk lamps and our objectives is to manufacture the product on industrial basis so it ships at every home. And Establishing and expanding the company certified production lines, And Marketing products regionally.
The estimated price for the product is US$15.5 – US$24 per unit. |
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2.2: WAIN …. facilitate your life:
Since everything in the world becomes electronic and depends on the internet, Fatma Abu Dagga Team leader, Samara Abu Dagga, and Eman Ahmad think of utilizing a website to serve our Gaza customers in Gaza city through the use of website to:
1. Facilitate finding restaurants
2. Quickly deliver food to customers
3. Facilitate finding celebration halls and booking it.
The idea in this project is similar to regional initiatives such as otlop.com but different as added the service of booking of celebration halls
Vision:
Our website is a leader in providing the best choice in a short time with little effort.
Mission:
Our website will be the only place that provides quick service to Gaza customers to select the best choice with regard to getting food or booking a celebration hall. This fits well with the age of speed we live in. Our principle is working hard to have more people use the needed information to get the service they want. |
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2.3: Smart Kids Center for Child Training:
Fedaa Kamel Mohammed Elderdesawi, Fadi Kamel Mohammed Elderdesawi have developed a concept for Smart kid's center will be for children training who are between 4 -14 years to improve their capabilities and talents in different fields like computer, drawing, sound, art , math and critical thinking . Also the Center will provide them with good environment for Innovation and excellence.
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3. AN-Najah University: |
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3.1: MAM-101:
This product is a classic diffusion of technology in the stone and marble sector. Ashraf Salous and Muath Ibrahim have identified a market opportunity to cover a compelling need to buy a machine that can withstand the characteristics of the Palestinian limestone to increase efficiency and effectiveness of production. The machine is an incremental enhancement to imports from Italy as it takes into consideration the local environment. The machine also promises to replace the manual process of hammering the stone. |
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3.2: Accounting Software:
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Not your typical accounting software! Murad Sulaiaman, Mohmmed Adnan, Firas Shakaa embark on developing an online service application to provide the cost analysis, feasibility study analysis and financial analysis for large and medium companies in most fields of industries to support the
business decision making process. |
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3.3: Market Place (L3ndk):
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Yousef Rabi, Yousef Faris and Haytham Sawalha worked out an E-Commerce solution to facilitate selling and buying for locals between shops and Individuals from advertising the products and buying them electronically to delivering them to the customer. |
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3.4: AlMuraqeb - Project Mgt System:
Thafer Shaheen sensed the need for a program that facilitates the work for a project manager by delegating the activities to the staff, keeping an overview of their progress and making sure of their completion on time. The program will also generate a report upon completion with an overview and mistakes to overlook in next project. |
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3.5: Alshamel Electronic Website:
Rami Abu Shehab and Mahmoud AbedAlRahman developed a national, social, and cultural Palestinian website that includes all clubs data… (participants, activities, news, plans, achievements…)
The idea behind it is to unify the Palestinian clubs ,in the country and in diaspora , in one place , and to create a communicating environment among the Palistinian youth with an aim to reinforce authenticity among those clubs and the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
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| 4. Palestine Polytechnic University: |
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4.1 HGB System:
Ahmad Tamimi, Bashar Hamouri, Motaz Qawasmi have come up with the aims to control the TV through hand gesture without remote control through a simple, expressive, and limited number of gestures that are easy to be memorized. The second one is recognizing these gestures. A solution to these problems is that, the User has six gestures to handle television control: the open hand to switching ON the TV, the closed hand to switching it OFF, the other two gestures are for increment and decrement operations (for both volume and channel), the fifth one is to switch from the channel mode to the volume mode, and the sixth gesture for no operation mode. The recognition of the gestures solved using Neural Network classifier. We made a prototype of this system using a computer, webcam, interfacing circuit, parallel port and television, knowing that a black background was adopted. The system was implemented and tested successfully with an accuracy of 93.8%.
Feature extraction is a very important phase in our work. Gradient edge orientation histogram is the feature that is used in this work. The advantage of the edge orientation histogram is that it is simple to extract, fast in real time applications, translation invariant, and robust against changes in illuminations.
PICTI also believes that this innovation can also be used in other applications. |
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4.2 SofaCms:
Tarek Takrouri is about to empower internet users with a powerful tool to develop their own dynamic websites.
Some of the screen shots of the tool: |
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4.3 Car Catalogue - Cars Guide center:
Mohannad Al-Natsheh Cars Guide center is dedicated tool so that car showrooms can take advantage of this tool to promote the vehicles they have for sale.
The online product provides internet users with access to information on cars available for sale at different showrooms, provides search facilities, provides a GUI tool to the showrooms as a front end control panel. The business model is based on subscription model by the car dealers and also space for advertising. |
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4.4 ITop auction system:
The main goal of the project is to create a demo for an online auction system. The demo will show a real, functioning system, although with potentially limited functionality.
At the demo stage, the product will essentially be usable to let users (bidders) to bid on available items after registration (once) and paying bidding fees for each bidding action.
The project team members have converged the bidding fee payments via SMS. The design of the system will be modular enough in such a way that new features can be added in future without making any basic changes in the system. Investigating such new features to be added in the future is another challenge. The sample customers at this early stage are PPU students and people who are interested in auctions as bidders, and computer stores in Hebron as exhibitors. |
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4.5 GPS system:
Ra’fat Al-Juneidi has designed a mobile based geographic positioning system to be deployed for tourism applications. The competition includes Google and Nokia maps, but the business plan is about scanning and developing a local database that will give the project its differentiation factor. Ra’fat used C++ as the development language for this project and XML database. The application can run on Nokia mobiles handset running operating system: Symbian 9.2, S60V3 Ra’fat believes that the system can benefit business, tourist attractions and operators, universities, public works and municipalities, telecommunication companies. |
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4.6 Smart home:
Based on the electrical wiring grid at home, Omar Ghanem is set to empower home owners to control the utilities and functionalities of their house through voice recognition (through the Phone connected to the PC or microphones capturing instructions in the house) and analyzing the DTMF signls whereby the PC that will interpret the verbal commands and instructions and convert them into mechanical, electrical or otherwise actions.
Omar has also developed a Web tool that provides with user with a Control Panel. Omar made a live demo of the application during the Award Ceremony where he controlled the dimming of the light fixed in his lab remotely using this Web tool.
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| 5. PICTI: |
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5.1 e-Drive … Learn to Drive a Car:
Mr. Bassem Hadaydeh has identified a cost effective way for individuals to learn how to drive theoretically and test drive in the process of obtaining a drivers license.
The business encompasses all the business stakeholders involved in the process of teaching people how to drive. The plan is to transform all theoretical tests to be converted to computer based training and tests.
The company will also take the learner as the center of its activities and provide him/her with an online portal of service providers, user content generation with an animated interactive station equipped with multimedia effects to increase the learning capacity of the driving. The online product will offer a simulation for illiterate and literate people to accelerate their learning process.
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5.2 Advanced Mobile Payment Services:
Ashraf Yasin Al-Asta is a senior system engineer who has his own research, (MBA degree thesis was titled "The use of simulation for evaluating branchless banking servicing opportunities via cell phones" and has analyzed a Palestinian case study Palestine Islamic Bank).
Mr. Al-Astal is planning a business for mobile financial services basically. M-Commerce is potentially important for a wide range of industries, including telecommunication, IT, finance, retail and the media, as well as for end-users. With the effort for gaining competitive advantage, new forms of distribution channels for financial services are invaluable outlets for financial institutions since they provide the opportunity for cutting costs without diminishing the existing service levels.
The main interest in this idea is to establish Mobile Payment application that will eliminate the need for traditional payment systems especially that we faced in Palestine many difficulties during the past years related to the lack of liquidity for the main currencies in addition to the long queuing lines phenomena in front of ATMs and Banks for withdrawing money.
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5.3 E-Tours:
Capitalizing on Mr. Salem Hantoli knowledge in the hotel and tourism sector, the E-Tours will be the first destination for an online travel agency serving the Palestinian market. It will provide conventional services such as airline ticket price comparison and purchases, tourism packages and hotel rentals. E Tours will also aim to be the most comprehensive source for general, tourism and travel information for the Holy Land*.
E Tours marketing will be geared heavily towards Palestinian and Jordanian travellers who are planning to travel and explore local areas thus creating local tourism industry. Other target groups include the large Palestinian Diaspora communities living abroad as well as international travellers who are travelling either for business or tourism.
What makes E Tours so unique is that it is will be the first true E-based travel agency for a large travel market that will in join the rest of the world in being the prominent online real estate for online travel services in Palestine. | |