聽emerged victorious through three days of pitching against a group of 100 finalists at the Entrepreneurship World Cup Global Finals. NERv Technology is聽an innovative monitoring system for post-operative patients that strives to ensure that no patient loses their life because of an undetected post-operative complication, received a US$500,000 cash prize and a 鈥淪henzen Prize鈥 package to help the company expand into China and in-kind support and services from a collection of EWC partners.
"The experience has been absolutely fantastic. We鈥檝e been around like-minded individuals from hundreds of different countries, speaking different languages, engaging with people from different cultures, but we all have one thing in mind 鈥 we鈥檙e all persistent and working really hard to make our startups a success. To be the winner today is a testament to everything we鈥檝e been doing, we鈥檝e been working really hard for five years in order to make this dream a reality.鈥
The EWC global finals in Riyadh were the culmination of a year-long competition organized by the Misk Global Forum and the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), along with strategic partners including the Global Education and Leadership Foundation (tGELF),聽Global Silicon Valley Labs (GSV Labs) and the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST).
Over the course of 2019, 102,000 entrants from 187 countries were narrowed down through national and regional finals to 100 startups from 67 countries that took the stage at the global finals.
The 100 finalists enjoyed a two-day bootcamp at KAUST to make last-minute adjustments and improvements to their pitches under the eye of expert mentors.聽 The 100 startups were then gradually narrowed down through heats and elimination stages to a final five which were selected by a panel of four international judges, all of them world leaders in business and entrepreneurship, and an audience vote.
Read the full story on the Entrepreneurship聽World Cup website.聽
NERv鈥檚 co-founding team includes Youssef Helwa, CEO, Amr Abdelgawad, COO, Abdallah El-Falou, CTO, and Mohammed Okasha. Youssef, Amr, and Abdallah are all University of 蓝莓视频 Alumni. Youssef earned his Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc) in聽Nanotechnology Engineering聽in 2015 and his Master鈥檚 of Applied Science (MASc)聽Electrical and Computer Engineering聽in 2017. Amr earned his Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.), Nanotechnology in 2015 as well, and his聽Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET)聽in 2017. Amr is also the recipient of the 2017 Enactus Canada Student Entrepreneur award. Abdallah has a MASc in Electrical Engineering from University of 蓝莓视频 and a BASc degree in Biomedical Engineering from Ryerson University. Mohamed earned his Honour鈥檚 Bachelor degree in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences from McMaster University.