Startups
If you are a startup owner, you’ve come to the right place.
GIL serves as an enabler, connecting startups with the government to foster business and networking opportunities in the GovTech industry. By contributing to the GovTech movement, startups reinforce the process of digitalising the government, allowing the nation to explore affordable emerging technologies while ensuring that citizens’ demands and needs are met.
You design the future
Can you imagine a world where the power of innovation is harnessed to solve the already-existing challenges of the public sector? The technique to use that is already here, and it’s called design thinking.
By learning the workflow of design thinking throughout GIL, startups build a future that is:
Human-centric
By putting yourself in your users’ shoes, you observe problems from the inside out with renewed empathy, allowing you to not only answer questions but find the right questions to answer.
Responsive
The unmet pain points of citizens deserve to be met with the responsive formation of ideas. Sketching, thinking, taking notes and actively brainstorming will form great solutions, letting the users be the only judges.
Agile
With room for constant improvement, our agile future leans on learning as a key to resilience and evolvement. Once you invest in agility, having constant updates to your prototype based on the users’ needs, you will be ready for what’s next.
To apply design thinking in GovTech, the first step is to define the problem
By focusing on only one life event, you can interview citizens throughout that particular life event, understand their challenges and their wishes, and build empathy that will lead you to find the most adequate solutions.
Identify your persona
Who are you targeting? What are their characteristics?
Identify the challenge
What pain points and unmet needs will you put your focus on?
Do the UX research
What’s the best way to enhance the experience of the users?
Suggest solutions
Based on your understanding of the problem, what will be a suggestion to solve it?
Moving forward...
If you have the passion to design the future envisioned by citizens, governments, and yourself, then here’s what you can do next.
Sign up through our website, add all the information about you, your startup, and the life events / challenges you want to tackle.
A team of experts from MCIT, GIZ, and hands-on experienced accelerators in the market will review applications, conduct interviews, and select 20 shortlisted startups to continue to the next step.
A Bootcamp will be held to identify the final 10-12 startups joining the program.
The chosen startups will then join the Labs where they learn, ideate, design, test, and pitch their ideas.
Qualification
It’s the beginning of the development journey, it resembles the clarifying stage of design thinking. Startups shall receive various training about human-centric design, product design, technology applications, business models and strategies, and digital transformation strategy, as well as one-on-one mentoring sessions, all by MCIT, Zero360, Robusta and more.
Civic
This Lab represents the ideation phase. The knowledge received during the qualification lab will enable startups to conduct UX research on the life events they picked to identify the challenges they will solve.
Prototyping
Through the support provided with all stakeholders on board, startups will prototype their solutions and get constant feedback for iterations. They will also get the chance to co-create and test their solutions with citizens through the online platform.
Apps Lab
Here starts the implementation phase. Starting from the major pitch event where a jury selects the most feasible, desirable, and viable MVPs, moving forward the winning startups will receive training from MCIT to develop their products and get integrated with MCIT’s environment.
After the pitch day, startups will get the chance to develop their apps and get them launched on the App store, then citizens can use the new services for a better experience.
Throughout these steps, you’ll meet a large spectrum of stakeholders
If that weren’t enough..
GIL provides exclusive benefits to the participating entrepreneurs, including:
- Professional and technical training throughout the entire phases.
- A physical space to meet with your team for brainstorming.
- One-to-one mentoring sessions by MCIT together with local and international service providers.
- An opportunity to test your prototype with citizens.
- Pitching tips and techniques to prepare you to pitch your ideas to MCIT personals.
- Extensive networking opportunities, unlocking the potential to secure long-term contracts beyond the lifespan of the program.
Add your unique input to our mission to establish comprehensive e-government in Egypt.
We gladly invite the innovative minds behind growth-staged startups in Egypt to join us in GovTech Innovation Lab.