Categories
Submit nominations in the following categories:
We aim to handpick and honour a few of the influential GCC-based female leaders either in their respective industries or in the entrepreneurial community at large, who have not only started and built a locally based business, but also committed their time and resources to mentor other women in business. The Women In Business Award will be given to the successful business woman whose second name is multi-tasking.
Our newly-established award category will recognise a new approach or deployment of a technology - website, mobile application, online video, and social media campaigns – allowing their audiences to consume content in new, creative and more user-friendly ways.
Starting and growing a business is never easy. However, a number of truly resourceful entrepreneurs have shown outstanding performance and tenacity in developing one or a few GCC-based businesses. This award is dedicated to the entrepreneur whose business ventures have solved real problems in the market and generated value for its customers.
Every year we expect that more and more start-ups will close their fundrasing rounds, hoping that the deal size will also increase signalling more confidence among the industry players to support new business ventures. The Funding Initiative of the Year nominees will be judged on the amount of money raised, how the team will use this money to grow their business, and how their investors will help them in their endeavour.
The number of start-up incubators and accelerators – programmes offering low-cost shared office space, learning opportunities, one-to-one mentoring sessions, funding, connections with leading investors, and much more – is a measure of the maturity of a country’s tech start-up scene. Fortunately, there are so many GCC-based incubator and accelerator programmes to choose from to get your start-up idea off the ground. Now it is up to you to choose the Incubator/Accelerator of the Year.
You don’t have to start a new business venture to be entrepreneurial. There have been many examples of risk-taking employees’ thinking out-of-the-box to ensure that their employers do not miss out on a huge business opportunity. Our Intrapreneur of the Year award is a chance for locally based companies – large or small, public or private – to acknowledge the efforts of their entrepreneurial employees.
Friends and family, angel investors, seed stage investors, Series A, B, C, or D investors, and so on – who is the bravest of them all? The list of nominees for our newly established Investor of the Year Award will reveal the region’s risk takers who possess experience, knowledge, but above all a desire to help you succeed.
It is not a secret anymore that having a mentor – a person to build a strong bond with in order to mutually benefit from each other’s knowledge and experience – is a gateway to start-up success. But with so many ‘advisers’ willing to add your start-up’s name to his/her mentorship portfolio, how do we define a good mentor? This award aims to celebrate those start-up supporters who are usually less interested in gaining public recognition. Please share with us who they are.
A recent report by Dubai SME, the agency of the Department of Economic Development (DED), reveales that limited sources of funding to start and grow small businesses in the region have been holding back growth in the SME sector. The SME Bank of the Year Award aims to honour the bank that has implemented measures to support innovative ideas and technological breakthroughs, despite the risks associated with financing new business ventures.
An SME leader exemplifies the spirit of entrepreneurship by running a businesses that is not only successful, but sustainable and growing year after year. A few years after the venture’s often humble beginnings, the SME leader we intend to honour has built a market leader with continued profitability, kept on employing more people, and impacted local community in a significant manner.
The SME of the Year award recognises those GCC-based businesses that have grown into household names. We measure these growth-oriented ventures not only by their revenues, profitability, and number of employees, but also by other characteristics indicating the company’s continued progress toward long-term sustainability regardless of its current leadership.
Social entrepreneurship – defined as launching for-profit companies to offer innovative and sustainable solutions to society’s most pressing problems – has grown in popularity around the world, and the GCC region is no exception. The Social Enterprise of the Year award is our contribution to helping GCC-based social entrepreneurs scale up their innovative solutions.
The Start-Up of the Year award recognises the new GCC-based business that has demonstrated exellence in its industry sector – either through its innovative products or services, its evident business growth, its market competitiveness, or its local and regional impact – in 2016.
The number of start-up programmes on offer across the GCC region has increased rapidly over the past years, with governments, corporates, universities, and individuals joining forces to speed up entrepreneurs’ learning curve and to provide them with a cushion to fall back on when hard times arise. One of the strengths of the GCC start-up scene is that all entrepreneurship-related organisations cooperate among themselves to push most promising regional entrepreneurs forward. The StartUp Programme of the Year Award recognises the initaitive that has made the biggest impact in 2016, alone or in cooperation with others.
It is never too late or too early to pursue your entrepreneurial dreams. Recognising that there is no age bar for entrepreneurship, we aim to acknowledge the efforts of those young GCC-based entrepreneurs, aged 23 or below, who have identified and seized new business opportunities.
Event Details
Arabian Business StartUp Awards
Venue: Dubai, UAE
Date & Time: Tuesday, 15th November 2016 07:30 PM