"POVASYS" the 48th team to qualify for this year's MIT semi-finalist round

This story is provided by MIT Enterprise Forum - Pan-Arab Region.

Emirati “POVASYS” has been selected as one of the semi-finalist teams for this year’s MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Start-Up Competition for the Startups' Track.

POVASYS project helps SMEs growing by enabling them to build string relationships with customers. It develops a pure digital platform where there will be no need to print cards or applications since all the process is accomplished online. The platform also encourages businesses to get integrated to social matters through social campaigns conducted by customers who donate their points to specific social causes.

Inspiration

Mustafa Sadek’s experience in Nike and Intel companies where he worked for several years inspired him by reconsidering the stories of how those giant companies have started and all the challenges the founding teams had to go through to make their dreams become true.

When the financial crisis occurred, he decided to quit the US and move all the way to the Middle East with the aim of working on a startup. He worked on scouting the market and understanding its intricacies. There he also met with old college mates of him, Nehme Boghdadi and Salam Saadeh, with whom he started discussing different ideas with the general premise that they want to build a company that would be a ‘feel good’ for everyone.

It so happened that they all had different negative experience with the existing customer loyalty programs deployed in the market, so they to come out with a new solution that will benefit consumers and businesses at the same time.

Project briefing

When the team started looking deeper into customer loyalty, it was noteworthy that SMEs are really left to fend for themselves because customer loyalty programs were in general too expensive for them and the ones that they could afford were very limiting in terms of helping the business engage with their customers.

So POVASYS decided to re-define what customer loyalty should be about, taking into consideration the advances in technology, social media, and consumer trends; the team believes that customer loyalty should be easy to manage and in real time since SMEs cannot afford to hire specialized teams and that it is very rare nowadays to find a business that doesn’t have a page on Facebook or other social networks.

This analysis led to the birth of POVASYS (Point Value System), a digital platform that enables SMEs to launch and maintain their own digital loyalty program through smartphones and online, reward existing customers, and attracts new ones through features including social media integration, referrals, gifting and more. It also enables SMEs to collaborate together and exchange customers, as well as allow their customers to make donations. It provides management with a powerful live dashboard with important statistics about their customers.

The team will be introducing a new platform to highlight their business partners and provide their customers with a fun and rewarding experience. The new platform is launched in April and will be called UrbanBuz.com.

Advice for entrepreneurs

The team firmly believes entrepreneurship is not an easy trip and it is not a short one either. “However, what make it bearable are the people you team up with to go through the challenges and overcome the hurdles” says Mustafa.

Find out more about POVASYS by:

Watching a video pitch about their project: here

Checking their website: www.povasys.com