Three startups prevailed as champions of the Get in The Ring challenge, held for the first time in the Palestinian city Ramallah on November 19.
Mockapp, Fadfid and Batuta were the winners in the light-, middle- and heavyweight classes respectively at the end of a fierce competition that has caught the attention of the startup community in Palestine.
Winning startups will travel to Saudi Arabia for the regional competition in February 2016, Wamda reported.
The international GITR competition began in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 2012 to help startups network and access investors. It has had three international finals since then.
GITR is now in over 64 countries, including the MENA region. The event is like a boxing match in that startups of the same “weight class” compete against one another.
“Weight” is determined by its valuation and size. Each round has two startups that answer questions from the narrator and the audience in front of a jury that decides a winner.
“The reason we are doing this is because we have been supporting startups for about 10 years, and we thought that we could help startups around the globe connect to resources that they had a hard time getting,” said Erwin Koenraads, chairman of the Get in the Ring Foundation.
“GITR is an opportunity for startups to get out of their comfort zone and get hooked into an international network of startups and investors, and to have fun in the process.”
Co-organized by Bader and PNB Palestine as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, Ramallah’s one-day event was a peer competition between startups of similar size and valuation in front of a jury of experts from Jawwal, Ibtikar Fund, Sharakat Fund and Siraj Palestine Fund.
The audience was diverse, with entrepreneurs from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as representatives of public, private and development organizations.
The event was sponsored by Paltel Group, Bank of Palestine, CCC and Coca Cola.
