Student start-up wins prize with mattress technology

BEIRUT: The first edition of Hult Prize Lebanon Saturday awarded a seed grant of $250,000 to a team from Rafik Hariri University that proposed mattresses to keep refugees in tents warm at night. Heatechs, the winning startup, sought to integrate a material into mattresses that would release heat accumulated during the day for up to seven hours at night. The technology in the mattress makes it especially useful for refugees, who, when they turn on their stoves at night, risk fires inside the camps, yet risk freezing otherwise, the startups Chief Marketing Officer Adam Choufi said.

Heatechs technology is now patented after three phases of calculations, software simulation and prototype testing, according to the teams Chief Technological Officer Jawad Haidar.

The Hult Prize annually donates $1 million in seed capital to a startup idea deemed by judges to be the most profitable and sustainable. Its co-founder, Palestinian-American social entrepreneur Ahmad Ashkar, introduced the program to Lebanon this year in partnership with BLOM Bank and the Lebanese Central Bank.

He told The Daily Star that as a member of the Arab diaspora in the U.S., he couldnt think of a better way to give back on [his] success.

As I get older, more gray-haired, it becomes more important for me to get back to my roots, Ashkar said.

Partnering with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and the Clinton Foundation, the Hult Prize challenged this years competitors to harness the power of energy to improve the lives of 10 million people. Among the competing startups in Lebanon were Full-fill, which proposed renting power banks to charge phones; an eco-friendly group-cycling project Electrofit; and the bus-tracking application Yallabus.

Ashkar said he was excited about the latter as a handy tool for dealing with Beiruts hectic traffic.

Other contestants focused on energy consumption. Pro-shield aimed at utilizing machine learning to render solar heaters, used by over a quarter of Lebanons population, more reliable. Startup Solice proposed harnessing solar energy to improve electricity generators by reducing their costs by 60 percent and making them waste-free.

The ceremony and gala dinner took place in BIEL during the Changemaker Festival, another program Ashkar brought to Beirut under the patronage of Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri. Under the theme of Celebrating Youth, Impact and Change, the festival hosted workshops by Berytech Fab Lab, Beirut Digital District and others, in addition to panels by inspirational speakers and social media celebrities, and some smaller-scale competitions.

Elias Boustani from the Beirut Digital District Academy described the event as a unique festival bringing in youth from Lebanons various regions, such as Tripoli, Tyre and the Bekaa. Without university students, our community cannot grow, and we need their fresh perspective to fuel the growth of the companies and make an impact on their lives, he told The Daily Star.

Ashkar promised he would bring his entire asset pool to Lebanon and praised the governments receptiveness to his ideas. While thanking Hariri for advising and assisting him, he also emphasized the need for an ongoing partnership.

We are also looking to [Hariri] specifically to help shape the next decade of our impact, as we have committed to a long-term deal here. This is not a one-and-done, he said.

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