The jury of the competition of the program for training youth in creating and developing small projects in the field of technology and innovation in the Republic of Azerbaijan held a meeting on Friday, November 12, 2021, to evaluate and select three winners among 16 teams participating in the competition implemented by the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture in the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani National Commission for Education, Science and Culture, the Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) and the New Space for Innovation Program.

During the meeting, held face-to-face and via videoconference, all participating teams presented their projects to the committee consisting of Dr. Muhammad Sharif, advisor to the Science and Technology Sector at ICESCO, in addition to several experts and specialists in the field of entrepreneurship and start-up financing.

At the end of this meeting, the winning projects at the national level in the Republic of Azerbaijan were announced, namely: the “eGifting” project which is a customer-oriented online platform that provides for customers convenient and fast sales of digital gift vouchers; “Insight Hunter,” a brand search engine developed to speed up research and automate marketing processes; and the electronic travel platform “Tridy.”

It is worth noting that this program will be implemented in 10 Islamic countries, and two teams will be selected in each country to present their projects at ICESCO’s International Forum in 2022 in front of a number of donors and investors to secure funding for these projects.