Skip to main content

The third day of Bahrain’s Technology Week was simply awesome! It started off with Day 1 of the MIT Innovation Forum, where cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, machine learning, and more were discussed amongst an audience of technologists, startups and entrepreneurs from Bahrain and the region.

Later on that night, the FACE-OFF ON THE BAY Pitch Competition kicked off at the Technology Week Pavilion (Datacenter), where 18 startups from seed stage to scale-up were pitted against each other for some great cash prizes from Tamkeen Bahrain, Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits, a Cloud10 Scalerator scholarship from C5 Accelerate, and finally two tickets to Web Summit in Lisbon as part of the first place prize.

You should’ve seen the Pavilion last night! The hall was filled with excitement as the audience cheered for the startups. Make sure to head over to StartUp Bahrain’s Instagram account for full coverage of last night’s pitches!

The Technology Week Pavilion (Datacenter) is a collaboration between the Bahrain Economic Development Board, AWS, and the StartUp Bahrain community. The pavilion is held in parallel with the MENA region’s first AWS Summit which took place on the 25th of September, and the MIT Innovation forum, which took place on the 27th and 28th. Forming Bahrain’s first Technology Week,the events are mainly held at the Four Seasons Hotel Bahrain Bay, while the Pavilion is taking place just two minutes away from the hotel.

 

Here’s what went down last night:

  1. The MIT Innovation Forum’s informative sessions about cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. Did you know that your smart-watch can detect your pulse while pressing the buttons of your atm pincode making you vulnerable to cyber attacks?
  2. The Technology Week Pavilion (Datacenter) was packed with an exciting audience that were there to support their favorite startups at the FACE-OFF ON THE BAY Pitch Competition. Some of the participating startups include Drie, Tamarran, Excpy, Akalati, Bayanat Box, amongst others.
  3. The seed stage startups that made it to the final rounds were: Time Control Technologies and Orddr.
  4. The first runner up for the scale-up technology was Malaeb, an app that allows you to book football fields.
  5. The second runner ups for the scale-up stage startups was a tie and it included: DualNetworks SA and Get Baqala.
  6. The five startups that received C5 Accelerate’s Cloud10 Scalerator Scholarship and $10,000 AWS credits were: WNNA, Malaeb, Time Control Technologies, Glare and DualNetworks SA.
  7. The Tamkeen Bahrain session featuring Amal Sanad, where she shared the different ways Tamkeen can offer support for ICT companies in Bahrain.
  8. The StartUp Bahrain Instagram account went crazy with push notifications of people voting for their favorite startups! Our phones don’t like you very much.
  9. Yasin Aboudaoud, Chief Development Officer of Brinc, and Hadya Fathalla, Executive Director of C5 Accelerate, did a terrific job MCing, hosting, and organizing the FACE-OFF ON THE BAY pitch competition.
  10. And let’s not forget Imran Al-Aradi and how he managed to make the audience roar with laughter with his witty commentary and funny audience interactions. (Also, one more key was lost.)

Didn’t get a chance to experience all of this at the Technology Week Pavilion (Datacenter)? No worries, you can always check out @StartUpBahrain on Instagram for the full live coverage. Also, what are you waiting for? Head over to our Instagram and vote for your favorite startups! They’re counting on you.

The Technology Week Pavilion (Datacenter) will be open until the night of 28th of September, so this is your last chance to make it! . See you there! And don’t forget to follow @StartUpBahrain on Twitter and Instagram, and use #TechWeekBH on your posts! One of our lucky followers will be winning some cool prizes from Batelco.