Winners of TiE Women Global Competition revealed in UAE

January 2021, Dubai, UAE – In partnership with Dubai Internet City, TiE, an international organisation with the mission to foster entrepreneurship, has announced the winners of TiE Women, a global initiative dedicated to empowering women entrepreneurs from across the world.

The competition for the coveted title had participation from startups based across the globe, and was hosted in the UAE – an international hub for business development and innovation. The grand finale was held in Dubai Knowledge Park, next door to Dubai Internet City, the region’s largest business district for talent and technology.

From the nominations received, 26-chapter finalists were invited to present their business concepts to a grand jury comprising of industry luminaries. The jury evaluated each presentation based on their business idea, value creation, global market opportunity, competitive advantage, operational and technical viability, management team capability, raise and exit strategy, financial acumen and lastly the presentation strength.

Eight finalists pitched their business idea to a specialized judging committee from different professional backgrounds comprising of Ingie Chalhoub, President and Managing Director, Etoile Group; Majed Al Suwaidi, Managing Director Dubai Media City, Dubai Studio City and Dubai Production City; Vivek Oberoi, Entrepreneur, investor, women empowerment ambassador and philanthropist; and Zanubia Shams, Co-Chairperson, Zulekha Healthcare Group.

Among the many extraordinary women-owned organisations who participated, awards were presented to three organisations –

• Medtech startup Inochi Care from TiE Kolkata that developed a device for multi-therapeutic wound healing won the first prize of $100,000
  
  
• Ahammune Biosciences Private Limited, a startup redefining the dermatological therapeutics market by carrying out discovery-oriented innovative research to provide new therapies for skin diseases from TiE Pune, India was announced as the second winner, being awarded $25,000
  
  
• WeavAir, a startup from New York, United States that offers proactive end-to-end software & hardware solution for air distribution systems that prevent the spread of air contamination and infection while saving energy and reducing operational and maintenance costs was announced as the third winner with $10,000

The three successful startups will also receive training, mentoring and access to funding to develop their entrepreneurial initiatives.

Ashish Panjabi, President of the Dubai Chapter of TiE commented, “The core objective of TiE is to help expand the entrepreneurial ecosystem by working within our local community. This means creating platforms in the UAE such as TiE Women, The Young Entrepreneur – University programme, Tie Hustle – our program for communities that are generally don’t have access to entrepreneurial resources or TiE Mentorship – our mentorship program for start-ups in the region, It is great to see women entrepreneurs making incredible strides in the field of business. I would like to extend my heartiest congratulations to the winners of TiE Women Global competition and even to the shortlisted entries for the badge of honour and being an inspiration to those women interested in starting a business. I would like to thank esteemed judges for their support and contribution with their time and knowledge.”

“The global start-up economy remains large, creating nearly $3 trillion in value, a figure on par with the GDP of a G7 economy and the ratio of men entrepreneurs to women entrepreneurs in 2019 was 10:7. A recently released Visa’s second annual State of Female Entrepreneurship report highlighted that 66% of women entrepreneurs find difficulty in obtaining the funding they need to succeed on their entrepreneurial journey. The main aim for us to launch the TiE Women Global Competition is to provide a support network for women in start-ups and to help them with the right tools to grow and manage that business,” added Ashish.

For his part, Ammar Al Malik, Managing Director of Dubai Internet City and Dubai Outsource City, said: “The UAE is a pioneer regionally in gender equality and several initiatives were launched over the past decades to empower women and cement their contributions in developing the knowledge and innovation based economy. As a result of these efforts, women in the UAE have been able to pursue entrepreneurship and we have several success stories that we are proud of in Dubai Internet City. At in5, our enabling platform for tech, media and design entrepreneurs, more than a quarter of the startups are led by women and we look forward to growing that percentage.”

Built upon best practices from local chapters’ women-centric initiatives, TiE Women will specifically result in capacity building, increased networking, knowledge-sharing, and visibility, providing a ‘safe space’ for women entrepreneurs to learn without inhibitions and judgment.

The second edition of TiE Women initiative will open for registration in February 2021. Businesses founded or led by women can submit their nomination by checking updates on https://dubai.tie.org/