The Mohammed Bin Rashid Innovation Fund (MBRIF), an initiative launched by the UAE Ministry of Finance to support innovation in the UAE, has announced the addition of 11 new members to the Fund’s accelerator programme.

Representing businesses from four countries, the Winter Cohort joins 28 businesses from around the world previously selected for the programme, bringing the total number of MBRIF Accelerator members to 39 since its launch in December 2018. Eight of the new members are UAE-based businesses: Arnab (Transport sector); Englease.com (Education sector); Farmin (Technology sector); Food-ATM (Technology sector); HoloGuide (Technology sector); ProvenMed (Health sector), RIZEK (Technology sector) and Shiftling (Technology sector). International members are South Africa-based Excel@Uni (Education sector); JustChain (Technology sector) from the United States and Toucan Toco (Technology sector) from France.

Several of the Winter Cohort members have already achieved notable successes. Local company Farmin, which uses artificial intelligence to improve farming profitability, won the GeoTech Innovation Program hosted by the UAE Space Agency. Food-ATM, a UAE-based solution that enables blue-collar workers to eat for free using a smart card topped by corporations as part of their CSR budget, was recognized as a finalist in the GITEX Future Stars competition held last October. HoloGuide, a mobile app that provides a multilingual augmented reality (AR) guide for tourists and residents, was an Angelhack Dubai Winner in July 2019, and a top 10 finalist in the Ideas Track at the MIT Arab Startup Competition in 2019. RIZEK, a tech startup aimed at creating more jobs across Mena, raised US$1.5 million in seed funding in 2019 - the same year it was launched.

WAM