DUBAI: UIQT Inc., Airspace, 16Trips, and Travezy – four start-ups with original innovative business concepts in the aviation, travel and tourism space – have successfully graduated from the tailored mentoring programme offered by Intelak, the UAE’s first industry focused incubator programme led by the Emirates Group, GE and Dubai’s Department of Tourism & Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism). The four start-ups progressed through several rounds of rigorous evaluation, fending off intense competition at every stage, to access Intelak’s AED 50,000 seed funding and a 60 day intensive mentoring programme with industry experts at the Dubai Technology & Entrepreneurship Centre (DTEC).
The four teams are the latest to join the growing ranks of innovative companies in the UAE that have been nurtured in their early and crucial stages of conception by Intelak. The incubator programme’s ultimate ambition is to build a home-grown innovation ecosystem that will usher in the future of aviation, tourism and travel not just in the Middle East but also globally.
The winners of the fourth cohort marked their graduation from the Intelak incubator programme by presenting their investor pitches to a senior team of stakeholders from the principal partners as well as alumni and previous participants of Intelak. Investor pitches form an important part of the start-up lifecycle as an impactful pitch can help in securing capital and funding from investors.
Start-ups graduating from Intelak use the insights they gain during the programme to flesh out and refine their business concepts and investor pitches. The programme’s learning opportunities include a boot camp with a variety of training sessions on value creation, marketing, growth hacking and financial modelling, as well as interactions with mentors, experts from the principal partners and members of the local startups ecosystem such as LMTD, BECO capital and Tajawal.
Impact Report
On the occasion of the successful graduation of its fourth cohort, Intelak released a report outlining the positive impact that the incubator programme has had on the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in the UAE. Over the last two years, the principal partners of the programme have contributed close to AED 1.6 million in seed funding and in-kind support in the form of technology, mentoring and access to resources and equipment. The Intelak programme has received over 1000 applications, worked with over 80 teams through the innovation boot camp, graduated 16 teams through its accelerator programme and organised over 50 workshops. Intelak’s Idea Lab has also supported over 30 Emirati innovators in translating their ideas to proven business concepts.
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Awards and success stories
Two past graduates of Intelak were honoured at the Agility Awards 2018 organised by Entrepreneur ME magazine. ‘Dubz’, which developed a practical and technology-enabled service to collect and deliver passenger baggage before or after flights later acquired by dnata, was named ‘Logistics Innovation of the Year’. ‘The Concept’, a team working on making inflight food trays lighter, ergonomic and more easily stowable, was presented with the ‘Startup of the Year’ award.
‘SweepTeQ’, one of the graduates of Intelak’s second cohort, won a place at Startupbootcamp London accelerator programme enabling it to work with key industry partners to take its robotic technology, originally proposed to detect debris on aircraft runway, to other industry verticals.
‘Trift’ from Cohort 3 presented their travel experience curation app to HH Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum during GITEX Future Stars and were also offered additional financial support by Dubai Tourism.
Fifth cohort applications open
Innovators, early stage start-ups and students with unique ideas and business concepts that have the potential to redefine aviation, tourism and travel are invited to apply to join the fifth cohort of the Intelak incubator programme. Applications are open until 31 December 2018 and can be made online by visiting www.intelak.com. News Desk
