Viewit took part in the Sharjah Entrepreneurial Festival this year, and it was a blast. The festival celebrates entrepreneurship (obviously) and all the interesting new things happening in the UAE and beyond.
The event took place at the Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park, a wonderful indoor / outdoor facility which was established in 2016. SRTIP is focused on promoting research, technology, and innovation in various fields, including healthcare, energy, environment, and technology. The venue was perfect for SEF which took full advantage of the excellent weather (20-22°C – perfect) and the large indoor halls as well as the sunken auditorium in the middle of the facility as the main stage for the main speakers. With notable names such as His Excellency Mohamed Alabbar, founder and managing director of Emaar Properties, to Jessie Inchaupse, a biochemist and New York Times best selling author to the impromptu drop-in by the famous Steven Bartlett, a British entrepreneur and podcaster, the event was jam packed.
SEF Zones
The festival was split into 7 zones;
- Creative stage
- Community stage
- Sustainability zone
- Startup town
- Workshop area
- Souq zone
- Impact zone
Each zone had speakers, workshops and booths with businesses and startups discussing and promoting their solutions and businesses. Viewit was located in startup town where a carefully curated number of startups got great wooden booths with a TV, branding and sponsorship from the sponsor that picked that company. Emaar chose to sponsor Viewit and it was a great honour to be picked to represent them and SEF at this prestigious event.
We had probably the best startup booth which was located as soon as you entered startup town on your right. We met a lot of wonderful folks, from investors to real estate agents to tech enthusiasts to everyone in between. Almost everyone we spoke to loved what we were doing and those that were from out of town wanted us to expand to their country. We got a lot of requests to launch in Saudi, Bahrain, India, Sudan and the UK. We met a lot of investors too and met with one in the investors lounge, an exclusive area for selected startups to pitch to VCs who would like to talk to them.
Finally, the pitch competition! We were selected as 1 of 3 startups to pitch on the main founders stage in the creative category. Each category had 3 startups that were very carefully selected and were invited to pitch their business for 4 minutes followed by Q&A from the judges for 4 minutes. Ashar Iqbal, the CMO and co-founder of Viewit delivered an excellent pitch and answered all the questions from the judges really well. It was no easy feat to stand in front of at least 100 people and pitch confidently without missing a beat. We didn’t win the AED 50,000 but got a lot of amazing feedback and got to share our vision with a room full of folks which was awesome.
Closing thoughts
SEF was wonderful and well organised. We enjoyed ourselves immensely, the team got to work together to pitch our product, our vision and our mission to lots of people from different walks of life and enjoyed the positive feedback we received. Thank you to SEF for putting together an unforgettable event, to all our friends that came to see us and most of all to the viewit team for coming together to put on a great show and to SEF, we look forward to participating again next year!