Womentum: Empowering Women Entrepreneurs in MENA

Launched by Dubai-based angel investment group Womena and in partnership with Standard Chartered, Womentum is an acceleration program for women-led tech startups across the MENA region.  The program is designed to engage early stage start-ups in an innovative ecosystem and introduce them to Womena’s network of investors and partners. They also leverage their media platform to produce creative content to narrate the start-up’s story to a global audience.

After four months of acceleration and equipping seven leading start-ups with the necessary tools to grow their businesses, the program wrapped up its second cycle on October 10^th, 2019 with Demo Day. Standard Chartered awarded three cash prizes amounting to a total of $50,000 after each group presented a pitch in front of an audience of investors, mentors and media.

Coming in at first place was Egypt’s FreshSource, an innovative tech start-up founded by sister-brother duo Farah and Omar Emara. It is a B2B platform that connects smallholder farmers to the modern value chain providing modern solutions to the problem of food waste in Egypt and creating a more efficient process for farmers. The start-up received $25,000 to help expand their business in the region.

Second place, which is worth $15,000, went to another inventive Egyptian start-up called Pas-sport that connects athletes to college sports scholarships and aims to transform their lives with global opportunities. Founder and CEO Nada Zaher commented on the Womentum experience saying, “Womentum was challenging in the most positive way. Being around such a talented pool of entrepreneurs and the top mentors in the field really allowed me to push myself to become a much more confident and mature founder.”

At third place came Dimension 14, a unique AI-enabled algorithm that can help large scale organizations find cheaper and more efficient solutions for planning problems. Co-founder of the Dubai-based start-up Melda Akin has always been passionate about problem-solving and has been coding since she was only 12 years old. The start-up was awarded $10,000.

“Womentum 2019’s graduating cohort has been through four months of intense business building and development in order to be ready to scale and be hypergrowth businesses,” commented Christina Andreassen, Womentum’s managing director. “They’ve had their business models validated by mentors, investors and consulting firms. They’ve rebranded, built world-class tech, achieved double digit growth rates and proven to us that they have the business acumen and work ethic to lead some of MENA’s leading tech companies,” she added.

The program is an inspiration for many female entrepreneurs in the region looking for the resources to expand their ideas and take their start-ups further. Womena is dedicated to empowering and encouraging women entrepreneurs and change-makers and as a platform has a mission to promote diversity and inclusion in order to integrate more women in business.

By Noha Kira