Sunday 04 / May / 2025
Muscat: A student team from Oman was ranked among the top 30 teams in the world at this year’s Imagine Cup—a global technology competition.
The Beta Team, comprising Alya Al Shanfari and Hana Al-Raisi, represented Oman in the top 32 teams globally, at the worldwide championship of the Imagine Cup in Seattle in July, after winning the Regional Championship in Lebanon.
A third member of their team, Sultan Al Subhi, attended the Arab regional finals in Lebanon.
The team reached the world quarterfinals with the help of their Bee project, an app that is connected with Beacons technology for retail shopping, and which aims to enhance shopping experience and better analyse shopping decisions and environment.
“The idea was my final year graduation project at GUTech, and we’ve taken it from the local Oman Imagine Cup, all the way to the world championship. 54 teams have come from around the world to Seattle, and some of the teams hail from prestigious universities, such as Stanford and Princeton,” Al Shanfari told the Times of Oman.
“It’s been very competitive, but also incredibly motivational and friendly throughout. We started with a tech booth to represent our solution to three judges individually, and from all 54 teams, the best 32 teams were selected. Luckily, we were in the top eight and presented in the quarterfinals,” she added.
The Imagine Cup ended up being awarded to a Czech team, but the Omani duo was excited to represent the Sultanate and make it to the global competition.
“The experience was fantastic, and we have learned a lot from it. Oman had previously participated in Imagine Cup and secured the second position in the Regional Finals in Bahrain, which were held in 2015. However, this time we were stronger based on our experience.”
The Bee app has also been recognised in Oman as the top project of the Upgrade programme, a student development programme launched by The Research Council aimed at transforming promising undergraduate projects into Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
“Since we have been selected as one of the top three projects from among all graduation projects, we will have the support and guidance from high-levels companies, such as Omantel, TRC, Riyada and more. Through this, we will transform our project to a real technology start-up, and we believe we can more forward very strongly.”
"Omantel and Microsoft Oman were really our best supporters throughout all our journey, for both Imagine Cup & Upgrade, as they gave us coaching sessions and guidance throughout," Al Shanfari added.
