Developing entrepreneurial skills and expanding future prospects for the youth

SkillUp Start program 2022 edition attracted 1,500 students who presented their business ideas, in a program developed by the UAE branch of Silicon Valley-based education consultancy BizWorld and The Entrepreneurial Nation, through the initiative of the UAE Ministry of Economy which aims to create 20 unicorns from the UAE over the next 10 years.

Mohamed Ali AlKetbi, won the top prize of the Skillup Start Competition for his grocery app idea, Dukkan, together with team members Rashed Saif AlTeneiji, Mohamed Saif AlTeneiji, Ali Saif AlKetbi, and Zayed Sultan AlTeneiji.

Mohamed said that his business idea is “not just a program for ordering daily groceries, but the first smart program in the world that uses machine learning technology and artificial intelligence algorithms to track the customer’s consumption patterns daily and to order foodstuffs before they run out.”

He plans to raise funds for Dukkan to invest in product development and enhance the customer experience. “In 2023, we plan to start cooperating with local supermarkets, aiming to cover 85% of our service area in UAE, and then in the second half of 2023, we will launch the app for the public.”

The SkillUp Start program, which operates under the SkillUp Academy, taught young people how to start and operate their own businesses. According to H.E. Dr. Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi, the former Minister of State for Entrepreneurship and Small and Medium Enterprises, emphasized that the SkillUp Start program marked a new phase in the growth and prosperity of the entrepreneurship and SME sector in the UAE.

With reference to the extensive participation of applicants between 8th to 12th grades, H.E. Dr. Al Falasi said, “It reflects a great deal of awareness on the importance of acquiring and developing entrepreneurial skills and financial information, which are essential for professional and institutional success. These considerably expand future prospects for our students in line with our wise leadership’s vision to support and empower young people and enhance their contribution and involvement in the national economic development, given their potential roles as essential drivers of sustainable growth and leaders for the future economy.”

The Jabbar team, first runner-up, SkillUp Start competition. Source: Bizworld/The Entrepreneurial Nation

The 2022 edition of the SkillUp Start program attracted 1,500 students, who were divided into over 160 teams composed of 3 to 6 members.

The SkillUp Start program ran across all the seven emirates, and received applications from UAE students from grades 8 to 12 of all nationalities and from both public and private schools. After completing the full, six-week-long training program, ten teams were selected to pitch in the competition. The judging panel was composed of Wissam Younane, CEO of BNC Publishing; Rashid Al Ghurair, founder and CEO of CAFU; Nour Al Hassan, founder and CEO of Tarjama; Raghad Al Jughaiman, Project Expert – Office of UAE Minister of State for Entrepreneurship and SMEs at the UAE Ministry of Economy; and Dr. Hassan AlSayegh, Advisor to the UAE Minister of Education.

The first and second runners-up of the event, Jabbar app and Be Better app respectively, announced their big plans for 2023. Haya Shaikh, co-founder of Be Better app which presented a solution against food waste, said that her team plans to “focus further on research and development, and provide a platform for restaurants, bakeries, and other food institutions to list the surplus food that hasn’t been sold, providing alternatives for cheaper, more accessible, and more sustainable options for buying food.”

Shaikh and her team members Precious Guanga, Alvis Jackson, and Soha Hitesh Barot aim to turn the users of the Be Better app into active ambassadors for conscious consumption. Shakih adds, “The mission of our startup is proof that the ideas of young entrepreneurs should be taken seriously.”

The Be Better team, second runner-up, SkillUp Start competition. Source: Bizworld/The Entrepreneurial Nation

Ghaya Ghanem Alameri, co-founder of the first runner-up -the Jabbar app which promotes  the adoption of electric vehicles, said that “it was the very process of learning and discovering that led him and his team to start working on this concept in the first place”. He added, “The main problem that we concentrated on was the rise of petrol and gas prices, which led to people buying electric cars, but because electric cars are a new invention, many cons were discovered, and so we first tried to make the lives of owners of electric cars easier. But we then realized that Jabbar also helped in saving the environment by decreasing carbon emissions from cars by helping convert vehicles that work only on petrol to vehicles that can work on both petrol and on electricity.”

Jabbar app was developed by Ghaya Ghanem Alameri together with team members Ghaya Jasim Alnaqbi, Shima Hassan Almhri, and Saeeda Sultan Alsuwidi. All of them are now looking for investors who would support the launch of the Jabbar app in the UAE market. Ghaya Ghanem Alameri added, “Our plan is to install Jabbar on 1,000 vehicles in the UAE, and in line with our leaders saying that we all are partners in this country, in its happiness, progress, security, concerns, we also want to contribute to the UAE as we are all responsible for the development of this country.”

Source:  Entrepreneur Middle East