Pitch@Palace UAE winners selected for 2019 with support from Sia

The Pitch@Palace UAE winners have been selected for 2019, with management consultancy Sia Partners providing support for the event.

What do cooling suits for workers contending with high temperatures, a platform that links homeowners with licenced maintenance and decoration service providers, and easier access to doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies have in common? They’re all ideas which have led to 2019 Pitch@Palace UAE awards for their inventers, and a chance to represent the nation at the global event at St. James Palace in December.

Established by the Duke of York Prince Andrew in 2014 to support budding entrepreneurs, the global Pitch@Palace initiative provides a platform for innovative start-ups to showcase their wares before the international business community, including influential mentors and investors. According to the organisation, Pitch@Palace has to date supported entrepreneurs from 62 countries, generating more than £1 million in economic activity.

Completing the third cycle in the UAE, the four Pitch@Palace winners have been selected for 2019; ‘Aryam’, which offers cooling suits to help workers contend with high temperatures; ‘Arabee’, which provides children with a comprehensive Arabic language learning toolkit; ‘Doctorsae.com’, a searchable web-based platform for health entities in the UAE; and ‘Rafeeq’, a platform that links homeowners with licenced maintenance and decoration service providers. 

“Year after year, we get impressed by the extraordinary young Emirati talents that we meet. We annually receive large high-tech and creative entries from Emirati entrepreneurs across the country. These are no ordinary projects because all of them are designed to boost the country’s vital sectors,” said Mouza Al Nasri, acting CEO of The Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development, which is hosting the event alongside a number of strategic partners.

Among those strategic partners is management consultancy Sia Partners, with the firm providing coaching during a two-day boot-camp for twelve country finalists in the lead-up to the awards ceremony, and Middle East partner Rafael Lemaitre serving on the judging panel. Keynotes were also delivered at the event by Sia partner Roberto Wyszkowski Canal and senior consultant María Fernanda Garrido Bustamante among others. Also making an appearance, Prince Andrew.

“It is a great pleasure to be able to showcase the incredible innovation going on in the UAE,” the Duke of York said during a welcoming note at the event, which was held at the Emirates Palace. “Please remember that this organisation is about collaboration and working together as a team. We are not here to pick winners, we are here to help businesses grow. All of us can make an enormous difference to these businesses by the things we can do for them.”

Evaluated on their potential to positively impact people’s lives, the ‘winners’ will now advance to the regional finals to be held late next month in Bahrain, featuring entries from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, with the global finals looming in London in December. According to the organisation, which has received more than 50,000 applications across the life of the event, the survival rate for Pitch@Palace alumni companies is over 97 percent, with 930 entrepreneurs backed to date.