AWALAN team members, FROM LEFT: Mohamed Amara; Johanne Medina; and Keivin Isufaj posing with their Al-Fikra Awards. Pic: Abdul Basit / THE PENINSULA
Doha-based young entrepreneurs have developed a mobile app which is expected to help deliver a successful seating management for fans that will watch the FIFA World Cup 2022 games.
The startup company ‘AWALAN’, is one of the winners of the Al-Fikra 2019 competition which was organised by the Qatar Development Bank (QDB) recently.
The startup company is headed by its Chief Executive Officer Dr Roda Al Qebaisi; with team members Mohamed Amara, Johanne Medina, and Keivin Isufaj. The team had won the QDB’s Al-Fikra Startup Award, a competition for general business ideas in Qatar.
Speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the event, Amara said: “The company developed a technology that facilitates seating management in big events. Our Main target are the World Cup 2022 stadiums, and hopefully we will do a big contribution to the games that are coming to Qatar.
“The invention consists of a hardware, sensors, and service buttons that will be attached to the chairs. A mobile application will also be provided to the organizers, and there will be a big data base which will store all the data and perform smart predictive analysis to help organisers in every match”.
Medina added that through the app, organisers will see which seats are already occupied. She said: “Our product also involves a sensor and an emergency button which are connected to the app through Internet of Things (IoT).
The sensor is used to detect occupancy which is useful for the organizers while the button is for emergency purposes which will be useful for the visitors of an event”.
About 1.5 million fans are expected to watch the upcoming Fifa World Cup which Qatar will host in 2022. The games will be played in eight stadiums across Qatar, with Lusail Stadium having the largest capacity for approximately 87,000 people.
Amara also said the company plans to expand even further by covering other big events and stadiums aside from the World Cup 2022. He said: “After World Cup, we’re planning to expand to even bigger events like NFL basketball; and even conventions, big meetings, and other large-scale events or even events with small venues like cinemas.
“Also, we have a very important trip to the US at the start of 2020. Next year we’re visiting Harvard, and we’re going to implement our invention in some of the stadiums in the US. So we’re planning to go internationally hopefully very soon,” he added.
