Revive, with a project to support food sustainability, has made successive achievements, reaching this stage after a six-month journey, according to a QU statement yesterday. QU alumni and Revive CEO Katiba al-Ghazali, chief marketing officer Noshin Zehra, and chief operating officer, Somaya Youssef developed the idea, market studies, created prototypes, and networked with different organisations to set up their start-up.
The team which won an on-campus stage and reached the top six in the Doha Impact Summit, won the wildcard tour to join the best global accelerator programme to win the Hult Prize. Revive, the first team to emerge from QU, is currently based in the Qatari market. Within the first phase of the accelerator programme; the team held the top three positions for three weeks out of four, and took first place for two consecutive weeks.
The accelerator programme gives growing companies access to mentorship, investors, and other forms of support that help them become stable, self-sufficient businesses. Companies that use business accelerators are usually start-ups that are past their early stages of being established.
Currently, the Revive team will compete for a place in the final stage of the annual Hult Prize in the UK in the accelerator programme. The winners will then move on to the final stage of presenting their product at the United Nations Headquarters in New York and present it to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Dr Tahra ElObeid, head of the Human Nutrition Department, College of Health Sciences at QU, confirmed that this project is of great importance from a nutritional and economic point of view. Food production requires the use of a lot of natural resources, so food loss or waste results in misuse of resources and will have negative environmental impacts.
"This project is very important as it reduces food loss and waste, which leads to better resource use efficiency," she added.