In the annual StartEgypt Forum five companies came out victorious, with a total of EGP 200,000 distributed to those winners. The event was held in the Greek Campus on 29 January 2020, with the forum hosting 11 participants chosen from 45 applicant companies.

Pyro finished in first place and was granted EGP 100,00. The company is an on-site customized Pyrolysis system that works on any agricultural waste to generate bio-charcoal. The system takes in the cellulosic agricultural wastes and produces bio-charcoal as briquettes.

“It has been a great challenge for us to win such a prestigious competition against so many innovative ideas. It all paid off in the end and us featuring on the podium of the competition was good exposure for the company.”

Islam Mohamed, Co-founder, Pyro

And the co-founder of Pyro company added “The amount awarded by the competition will help us in completing the prototype for the production of charcoal, after we were working on the laboratory model to test the idea, and before we move on to the commercial model to produce more quantities sufficient to satisfy the market.”

The other four winners of the competition were Biofeedx, Mycellium, Banlastic and Shetla, they ranked second, third, fourth and fifth respectively.

​​Biofeedx produced a wearable device that accurately measures the muscle’s electrical activity during a workout. The measured data is visualized on the user’s mobile app in gamified visual feedback. The app sends a report to either the individual’s trainer or doctor about the user’s performance with the ability to modify the user’s training parameters.

Third-placed Mycellium is a biotechnological company that grows eco-friendly biodegradable biopolymer (mycelium) on agriculture waste to make sustainable products that can replace the plastic in the field of packaging, construction, and furniture.

Banlastic introduced an eco-friendly shopping bag made from cloth, as an alternative to plastic shopping bags. The company hopes this will be a strong starting point for people to stop consuming single-use plastic bags, which has a very adverse impact on the environment as each Banlastic bag is reusable.

Finally, fifth-placed Shetla presented its mobile application that assists farmers in agricultural operations, irrigation and fertilization and the detection of diseases.

The 11 companies took part came from multiple governorates across Egypt and took part in a series of competitions hosted in Cairo, Assiut and Alexandria during the past year to get the opportunity to be at StartEgypt Forum.

StartEgypt, is funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), supported by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, and powered by Flat6Labs, is a pre-acceleration incubation program. It was established to inspire and support thousands of Egyptian entrepreneurs in the field of social impact enterprises.

The program was originally launched in Cairo in 2017, with the first cycle starting in June 2018. After their launch in Cairo, StartEgypt recognized the potential that entrepreneurs in non-centralized cities had. Therefore, in 2019, the program expanded to Assiut and Alexandria, graduating 45 social impact startups over the course of 2 cycles in Cairo, 2 cycles in Assiut, and 1 cycle in Alexandria, with entrepreneurs coming from all over Egypt, and startups working across various industries, offering innovative solutions to disrupt the market. 

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