Arab Conference at Harvard
Startup Competition
"Five bold ideas. One stage. The Arab world's next chapter."
Live · April 19, 2026 · Harvard University
5
Startups
15
Founders
5
Sectors
ACH26 Theme · "Honoring Our Past, Shaping Our Future"
The ACH26 Startup Competition is a stage for highlighting innovation, entrepreneurship, and impact within the community. The competition brings together founders, investors, and industry leaders for a dynamic exchange of ideas and insight as early-stage ventures focus on the Arab world.
Selected ventures will pitch to a distinguished panel of judges with experience in startups, venture capital, and industry leadership. Each presentation will be followed by a structured Q&A, offering founders the opportunity to engage directly with judges on their vision, execution, scalability, and real-world impact.
In recognition of excellence in innovation, impact, and execution, winning teams will receive prizes and support:
Cash Prize
Marketing Support
Networking Opportunities
E
Estad
A swipe-based mentorship app connecting students with professionals who actually want to mentor them. Both sides opt in — no cold outreach, no ghosting, just conversations that happen.
Estad is a swipe-based mentorship app connecting students with professionals who actually want to mentor them. Students browse mentor profiles by industry and background, swipe on the people they want to learn from, and match when there's mutual interest. No cold outreach, no ghosting. Both sides opt in, so conversations happen.
Team
Ali Asfar — PPE & Cognitive Sciences / Middle Eastern Studies Minor, University of Michigan '28
Ahmad Algaraawi — Economics / Political Sciences Minor, University of Michigan-Dearborn '28
Ali Elghoul — Accounting & Finance / Psychology Minor, University of Michigan-Dearborn '28
Adam Elghoul — Accounting & Finance, University of Michigan-Dearborn '28
A
Almora Jewelry
The Middle East's first online ring customizer — pick your metal, shape, size, and the four Cs, and get instant transparent pricing. Targeting a $13B market with lab-grown diamonds growing 15%+ annually.
Founded after living the problem firsthand — as a Saudi woman shopping for an engagement ring, founder Sara Soleja faced overpriced mall brands and opaque souqs with no customization or pricing transparency. Almora fixes this with the region's first online ring customizer: pick your metal color, shape, size, and the four Cs, and get instant transparent pricing. Every piece is made to order, creating an asset-light model with minimal inventory risk. Lab-grown diamonds are already over 50% of the US engagement ring market but under 5% in the Middle East — a category growing 15%+ annually. Early traction: 14.8% click-through rate (15× benchmark), 32.5% gross margin (2× benchmark), $53 customer acquisition cost (10× better than benchmark), and $775 contribution profit per order.
Team
Sara Soleja — MBA, Harvard Business School '26
Ax
Axeris
An independent clinical intelligence layer that intercepts pharmacy claims before employer payment — flagging $100B in annual waste from unsafe and unnecessary drugs, without depending on conflicted PBMs.
PBMs control 80% of US prescriptions but profit from volume, not safety — leaving self-funded employers covering 100M Americans with zero clinical visibility into $100B in annual waste from unsafe and unnecessary drugs. Axeris is an independent clinical intelligence layer that intercepts claims after PBM adjudication but before employer payment, using FDA-backed rules, machine learning trained on prescriber records to catch fraud and outlier patterns, and patient context filtering to suppress false positives. Sitting at the exact moment in the claims workflow where a clinical reviewer is paid to act, Axeris achieves structural leverage that EHR alerts and conflicted PBMs can never match.
Team
Adan Eftekhari — Regenerative Biology & Economics, Harvard College '28
Kareem Malhis — Electrical & Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins '28
Khartik Uppalapati — Economics & Biochemistry, University of Chicago '30
P
Poirot
The AI-native replacement for expert networks in private markets — automating expert sourcing, outreach, and scheduling, then turning every call into structured institutional knowledge that compounds over time.
Poirot is building the AI-native replacement for expert networks in private markets. The platform automates expert sourcing, outreach, screening, and scheduling, then turns every call into structured institutional knowledge that compounds over time. By expanding access to high-quality expert operators in niche and historically undercovered markets — including the Middle East — Poirot helps investment teams get differentiated, ground-truth insight beyond the same saturated expert pools, and build a proprietary intelligence layer that improves with every interaction.
Team
Saif Almadani — Finance & Statistics, The Wharton School, UPenn '27
Araash Ahuja — MS Data Science, UPenn; BS Statistics & Finance, Wharton '27
Adam El-Bahey — Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign '26
Anirudh Venkatraman — Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign '27
iC
iCleanMedX
A hardware-enabled platform reducing hospital-acquired infections by transforming reusable medical tools into measurable infection-control assets — starting with the stethoscope, disinfected in under 30 seconds.
iCleanMedX is a hardware-enabled platform focused on reducing hospital-acquired infections by transforming reusable medical tools into measurable infection-control assets, starting with the stethoscope. Their portable, automated UV disinfection device enables healthcare providers to disinfect their tools in under 30 seconds while seamlessly capturing compliance data. Paired with their platform, this data helps hospitals track, improve, and verify hygiene compliance — driving measurable reductions in infection risk and addressing one of the most overlooked gaps in infection prevention: consistent, real-time, trackable compliance at the point of care.
Team
Sondos Alnamos — MBA×MS in Medical Device Design, Columbia University '26
Sandra Alnamos — BS Human Factors Engineering & BS Computer Science, Tufts University '27
Nishani Kanthasamy — BS Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology '27
Startup Competition
Questions?
Reach out to our Business & Entrepreneurship Content Director Zaid Al-Ississ at startup@acharvard.com