Google has finally announced the winners of its dubbed ‘Ebda2 with Google,’ with Bey2olak.com walking away with US$200,000 in seed capital.
Bey2ollak is an Egyptian startup aimed at solving the vehicular traffic problem in Egypt. The app, founded in 2010 by five cousins namely Mohamed Rafea, Aly Rafea, Gamal Sadek, Yehia Ismail and Mostafa Beltagy, utilizes multiple platform mobile applications to enable users share real time information about the traffic status in Egyptian highways.
The platform already enjoys a huge following and has since established itself as a niche market boasting of over 200,000 users.
The grand prize the group won is expected to serve as seed capital to inspire winning business ideas to the market, says Google.
The first stage of the four Stage competitions attracted over 4,000 tech startups. Two hundred startups qualified for the second round, and 50 in the third round. The fourth round saw 20 finalists battle it out for the grand prize.
Google also expects other contestants to turn their ideas into viable businesses in Egypt, a country whose unemployment rate is reported to be on the rise following the Egyptian revolution last year.
Some of the finalists included Groupstream and Intafeen.
The competition, Google launched last year September, was part of the search engine company’s initiative to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in Egypt.
