Al Fikra 2024 Competition

The Competition

Al Fikra 2024 is a national entrepreneurship competition for higher education teams, helping them develop skills and create impactful businesses through specialized training.

Competition Tracks:

Junior Idea Track: For teams led by undergraduate students.
Senior Idea Track: For teams led by faculty, researchers, graduate students, or staff.

Organized by Qatar University's Office of Strategic Innovation in partnership with Qatar Development Bank.

Videos:

Who is it for?

Teams (2-5 members) with a startup idea or project.
Lead member must be affiliated with a university in Qatar.
Early-stage ideas only; incubated teams/startups excluded.
Open to students, researchers, faculty, and staff from any university in Qatar.
Priority for undergraduates in their 3rd year or beyond.

Participation Requirements:

English communication skills.
Mandatory training attendance.
Authorized changes to team/idea.
Agreement to be filmed during activities.
In-person training is mandatory; online sessions as needed.

Objectives

Create a collaborative innovation community in higher education.
Develop entrepreneurial knowledge and skills.
Turn research and innovation into socio-economic impact.

History of Al Fikra Competition

Al Fikra has been operated over the past years by Qatar Development Bank, the launch of the National Entrepreneurship Competition (Al Fikra) dates back to 2013, when the first version of the competition was launched as a joint initiative between Enterprise Qatar, the MIT Enterprise Forum, Silatech, and Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, with the aim of fostering and developing entrepreneurs in the country.

Over the years, Al Fikra gained interest from entrepreneurs, sponsors, the business community and various supporters making it the biggest and most anticipated entrepreneurship competition in Qatar. The last edition of Al Fikra in 2022, Qatar Development Bank aimed to shift Al Fikra focus towards Universities for supporting further knowledge & innovation driven startups where Universities normally are core knowledge and innovation entities in the national ecosystem, and hence QDB partnered with the Office of Strategic Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development (SIEED) at Qatar University to run Al Fikra nationally with focus on higher education and Universities.

Al Fikra 2022 received over 200 team’s applications equivalent to 582 team members from over 15 higher education institutes across Qatar. For the first time in Qatar, Al Fikra 2022 provided the opportunity to attract the higher education segment across Qatar including undergraduate students, graduate students, researchers, staff and faculty members to learn how to take their ideas forward while being hosted at Qatar University.

Competition Timeline

Activity	Start	End
Registration	08/09/2023	03/10/2023
Application Screening	03/10/2023	05/10/2023
Invitation to Selected Teams	06/10/2023
QU Juniors Training (in-person)	09/10/2023	04/12/2023
Non-QU Juniors Training (in-person)	11/10/2023	06/12/2023
Seniors Training (in-person)	07/10/2023	04/11/2023
Coaching	11/12/2023	16/12/2023
Video Submission (3-minute video)	01/01/2024
Final Assessment	02/01/2024	15/01/2024
Announcing Top 12 Teams	16/01/2024
Pitch Training Day	24/01/2024
Rehearsal Day	07/02/2024
Demo Day (Top 12)	Last Week of February

All sessions for QU juniors are conducted on Mondays from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
All sessions for Non-QU juniors are conducted on Wednesdays from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
All sessions for seniors are conducted on Saturdays from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm

Application Process

Applicants apply online through the registration form.
All applications will undergo screening for eligibility.
Selected teams will be invited to attend the mandatory training.
Selected teams will submit a three-minute video.
All videos will be reviewed by the reviewing committee based on a unified scorecard.
The top 12 teams (6 from each idea track) will be notified and invited to receive support through additional coaching and rehearsal clinics.
The top 12 teams, after the additional coaching and rehearsal, will pitch at the Demo Day.
An External Expert Judging team will evaluate the pitches based on the judging criteria.
The top three winners from each idea track (6 teams in total) will be awarded Pitch Awards.
The winning teams will be incubated and awarded Incubation Funds against progress milestones.

Prizes

There are two Categories:

The Junior Idea Track, where the leading team member is an undergraduate student
The Senior Idea Track, where the leading team member is a faculty, researcher, graduate student, or staff

Prizes

The top 3 winners from the Juniors idea track will receive:

1st place	15,000 QAR Pitch Award + 30,000 QR Incubation Fund
2nd place	10,000 QAR Pitch Award + 30,000 QR Incubation Fund
3rd place	5,000 QAR Pitch Award + 30,000 QR Incubation Fund

The top 3 winners from the Seniors idea track will receive:

1st place	15,000 QAR Pitch Award + 50,000 QR Incubation Fund
2nd place	10,000 QAR Pitch Award + 50,000 QR Incubation Fund
3rd place	5,000 QAR Pitch Award + 50,000 QR Incubation Fund

Terms and Conditions

Pitch award prizes are valid for one year only, starting from the date of receiving the prize. If any amount of the total balance of the granted advisory services remains unredeemed, the credit will automatically expire at the end of the year.

Beyond Al Fikra

The winners will receive financial grants and vouchers for consulting services according to rank and category.
A SIEED Office advisor will be assigned to each winner, and the advisor will assist the winner in developing a master plan of action and tracking implementation.
Winners can be nominated to avail key SIEED Office and QDB services for their projects, based on the necessity and benefits of the obtaining of such services upon the project’s development and the extent of progress achieved by each winning team in their project.