Maria Sultana Mina and Latifa Alnaimi (both right) receive first prize at Mubadara 2022
Maria Sultana Mina and Latifa Alnaimi (both right) receive first prize at Mubadara 2022

CMU-Q students win Best Company of the Year Award at Mubadara 2022

Business administration students on first place team at national INJAZ competition

Latifa Alnaimi and Maria Sultana Mina were on the winning team for the 15th Annual Young Enterprise of the Year Competition (Mubadara 2022), hosted by INJAZ Qatar. Alnaimi and Mina are business administration students at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), a Qatar Foundation partner university. A third member of the team, Jana Elbana, is a student at Qatar University.

The team was awarded the Best Company of the Year Award for their app, Homey. The app features home businesses so customers can browse and order products and services in one place. The app also provides the home businesses with licensing, marketing, and social media support. 

Fuad Farooqi, area head of business administration at CMU-Q and an associate teaching professor of finance, congratulated the students on their impressive showing. “Programs like those at INJAZ Qatar provide a good opportunity for students to practice the knowledge they are learning in the classroom. Congratulations to the students for their hard work and creativity.”

The three teammates met through the INJAZ Qatar Company Program, which took place over several months prior to the competition. The program guides participants as they develop an idea into a full-fledged business plan. More than 60 teams participated in the competition, with 16 advancing to the final round.  

“My coursework at CMU-Q, especially in business analytics and entrepreneurship, were very helpful as we developed Homey,” said Alnaimi, who will graduate at the end of the academic year. “But in the end, I think it’s the communication and presentation skills that we learned at CMU-Q that made the difference.”

Mina, who was a first-year student at CMU-Q when she began the INJAZ program, valued the teamwork aspect of the project. “This is the best team I ever met. I didn’t know a lot of the concepts when I first started the INJAZ program, but we learned together.”

The team was mentored by Noura Al-Jurdi, an alumna from the Class of 2015 at CMU-Q. As part of the prize, the winning project will be incubated by Qatar Development Bank. For Alnaimi and Mina, this is an excellent opportunity to further develop their idea.

“We think this idea has a lot of potential,” said Alnaimi. “We want to take it to the next level.”

Students in the business administration program at CMU-Q learn quantitative decision making, an approach pioneered by Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. Business administration students have many opportunities to explore entrepreneurship, including individual courses, a four-course concentration, or a minor in tech entrepreneurship.

CMU-Q also offers programs in biological sciences, computer science and information systems

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