Aviram Awards in Marrakesh to feature Bill Clinton

The final phase of the Aviram Awards competition will be held this week in Marrakesh on May 16, 2023. The competition is meant to identify, mentor, and support ventures in the MENA region that possess the potential to drive substantial social and environmental change through groundbreaking innovation and technology. The competition is a joint venture of FORBES and the Aviram Foundation.

The winner of the competition gets a $500,000 prize; while the 2nd and third places get $100,000 and $50,000, respectively. This year’s award announcement event will take place in Marrakech on May 16th, 2023, and will feature the former President Bill Clinton as a keynote speaker.

To be eligible for the 2023 Aviram Awards, participants were required to be the business owner or team leader of a tech start-up in at least the pre-seed or seed phase, with a well-established concept that positively impacts humanity. Additionally, they were required to reside in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates.

This year’s finalists were announced earlier by international judging panel. Five entrepreneurs hailing from North Africa and the Middle East have emerged as exceptional finalists of 2023 Aviram awards. The list of finalists include:

1. Youssef Bouyakhf, CEO and co-founder of Deepecho (Morocco): Deepecho employs artificial intelligence to aid minimally trained ultrasound technicians in advanced video diagnosis. Their product detects birth defects, enabling timely responses to premature birth, including low birth weight.
2. Hilla Ben-Pazi, CEO and co-founder of StrokeAlert (Israel): StrokeAlert has developed a wearable neck monitoring system that generates automatic alerts for strokes, enabling early detection and treatment.
3. Arik Ganor, CEO of QD-SOL (Israel): QD-SOL utilizes photocatalysts combined with sunlight to extract hydrogen from water, providing affordable and profitable green hydrogen production that is independent of electricity grids.
4. Rodrigo Jimenez Sandoval, CEO and co-founder of Polymeron (Saudi Arabia): Polymeron specializes in producing biodegradable and compostable plastic pellet formulations using organic waste from the poultry and date farming industries as raw materials. This innovative approach addresses the pressing issue of plastic pollution while also offering solutions to organic waste disposal and food security concerns in the Middle East.
5. Dan Deviri, CEO and co-founder of Carbon Blue (Israel): Carbon Blue offers a groundbreaking solution for extracting carbon dioxide from the sea, simultaneously capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. Their technology is cost-effective, compact, energy-efficient, requires no logistics or feedstock, and demands minimal maintenance.

On the day of the event, the finalists will have the opportunity to present their pitches live on-stage to a panel of business leaders in Marrakech on May 16, 2023. The panel of judges include Ziv Aviram; Randall Lane, Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine; Melda Akin, Founder & CEO of D14.AI; and others.