Syrian Startup Reviving Home Scores €20.000 at SINGA’s Berlin Newcomer Startup Award

The startup, founded by Hadi Soufan, aims to help displaced people to rebuild and revive their war and crisis-torn cities. Bote and Niuversity took the second and third prize.

By Rana Hafez 

Last week in Berlin, newcomer entrepreneurs competed to win prizes of more than €50.00 at Berlin Newcomer Startup Award, organized by SINGA Business Lab. Reviving Home, an online crowdfunding platform founded by Hadi Soufan, which aims to help displaced people to rebuild and revive their war and crisis torn cities, took the biggest award of the night, valued at €20.000.

Amongst the already founded newcomer businesses – seed-stage businesses – the jury awarded €5.000 to Bote in third place, a smart shoe insole that parents use in their kids’ shoes to ensure they never get out of sight. Niuversity, an innovative online educational institution that uses live interactive teaching through the use of virtual classrooms, won the second place and took home an award of €10.000. 

Educational startup Niuversity and smart wearable startup Bote won the second and third prizes.

The award took place on December 17th, where ambitious newcomer entrepreneurs with great business ideas and successful founded startups pitched their ideas to the German startup ecosystem. The awards were funded by the Berlin Senate (the Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises).

Aside from the prizes, 10 Kickstart Packages were awarded to Idea-stage newcomer entrepreneurs, who won a membership to a co-working space in Berlin, founding package sponsored by Firma.de, and €1.500 – €3.000 in cash prizes. Here’s the list of the 10 lucky startups:

GingerBread: An online platform that deploys technology to enable neighbours in Berlin to share food amongst each other purposefully and effortlessly.

DishCourt: An online App aimed at identifying unique home-made recipes that are rated by a community of food lovers online and providing a platform to cook these with the support of the platform and selling them to home-cooked food cravers both at the DishCourt and delivery.

Aram Craft: An impulse that helps Syrian women be proactive in their life and society through new handicraft skills and opportunities that will support their integration and add value to them and their time.

The team behind SINGA Business Lab Berlin organized the Berlin Newcomer Startup Award, which offered entrepreneurs €50.000 in cash prizes.

Germany Global Cargo: A startup that helps importers in Arab countries and exporters or producers in the European Union and China to build business relationships and enlarge their business by opening new markets.

Easy Language Lab: An online language school for professionals and university students.

Smart Shower: A smart device to control water temperature, pressure, shower height, and direction by touch screen and voice commands.

Roots and Radicals:  A food store, with a circular economy concept which looks into developing new lines of products that arise from a no food waste perspective.  

Syrian entrepreneur Hadi Soufan founded the startup to help people in war-torn areas rebuild their homes.

MotorSkins: A bio-inspired system that harvests the energy from the users’ step and uses it to power the movement of the limb.

Choogh: A project that aims to bring female newcomers and locals together through textile based events where they can work, talk and be creative.

Big Berlin Food Coop: A collaborative supermarket in Berlin, based on the successful model of Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop and its 17000 members.

Read our interview with Bote’s founder, Raafat Hantouch here.

Photos: Courtesy of Singa Business Lab.