Continuing its focus on emerging markets, Seedstars World hosts Dubai round

In 2005, Mohamed Elwazer witnessed a disturbing scene while waiting for a train at a metro station in Egypt. A security officer was behaving brusquely with a young boy who appeared to be deaf-mute. As Elwazer watched the hapless boy struggle to communicate with the officer, who continued to rebuke him despite his obvious inability to speak, Elwazer wished there was a way the boy could communicate in a way that the officer could understand.

This episode stuck with Elwazer long after he secured his engineering degree at university. Together with likeminded fellow student and friend Eman Hassan, the duo set to work understanding the nuances of sign language and natural user interfaces to eventually launch KinTrans: a revolutionary real-time communication system for the hearing impaired that translates sign language into voice and text.

It was KinTrans that emerged as the Grand Prize winner at the Dubai regional round of the 2014 Seedstars World Startup Competition earlier this month. CrowdAnalyzer, a social media monitoring tool for brand communications and development, co-founded by Ahmed Saad and I.T. Flakes, a clinical operations and social app for dental professionals co-founded by Mohamad Hijazi, secured second and third place respectively.

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Continuing its focus on emerging markets, Seedstars World hosts Dubai round