NERv Technology emerged victorious through three days of pitching against a group of 100 finalists at the Entrepreneurship World Cup Global Finals. NERv Technology is an innovative monitoring system for post-operative patients that strives to ensure that no patient loses their life because of an undetected post-operative complication, received a US$500,000 cash prize and a “Shenzen Prize” package to help the company expand into China and in-kind support and services from a collection of EWC partners.
"The experience has been absolutely fantastic. We’ve been around like-minded individuals from hundreds of different countries, speaking different languages, engaging with people from different cultures, but we all have one thing in mind – we’re all persistent and working really hard to make our startups a success. To be the winner today is a testament to everything we’ve been doing, we’ve been working really hard for five years in order to make this dream a reality.”
The EWC global finals in Riyadh were the culmination of a year-long competition organized by the Misk Global Forum and the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), along with strategic partners including the Global Education and Leadership Foundation (tGELF), Global Silicon Valley Labs (GSV Labs) and the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST).
Over the course of 2019, 102,000 entrants from 187 countries were narrowed down through national and regional finals to 100 startups from 67 countries that took the stage at the global finals.
The 100 finalists enjoyed a two-day bootcamp at KAUST to make last-minute adjustments and improvements to their pitches under the eye of expert mentors. The 100 startups were then gradually narrowed down through heats and elimination stages to a final five which were selected by a panel of four international judges, all of them world leaders in business and entrepreneurship, and an audience vote.
Read the full story NERv Technology from Canada Takes Top Prize at EWC Global Finals on the Entrepreneurship World Cup website.
NERv’s co-founding team includes Youssef Helwa, CEO, Amr Abdelgawad, COO, Abdallah El-Falou, CTO, and Mohammed Okasha. Youssef, Amr, and Abdallah are all University of Waterloo Alumni. Youssef earned his Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc) in Nanotechnology Engineering in 2015 and his Master’s of Applied Science (MASc) Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2017. Amr earned his Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.), Nanotechnology in 2015 as well, and his Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) in 2017. Amr is also the recipient of the 2017 Enactus Canada Student Entrepreneur award. Abdallah has a MASc in Electrical Engineering from University of Waterloo and a BASc degree in Biomedical Engineering from Ryerson University. Mohamed earned his Honour’s Bachelor degree in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences from McMaster University.