Meet the 4 Egyptian Winners of Facebook's Bots for Messenger Challenge

It was a busy and buzzy evening at our Cairo office last week, as our mother company MO4 Network hosted Facebook's Bots for Messenger Challenge award ceremony, where its Head of Partnerships in the MENA region, Zak El Fassi, both winners and runner-ups their juicy prizes. 

Earlier this year, and inspired by its grassroots entrepreneurial origins and its growth out of a hacker culture, Facebook had launched the challenge as a geeky way to cast the most talented developers across 65 countries in the Middle East and Africa. Egypt, indeed, proved to be a breeding ground for innovative developers, as the country was the launching pad of half the 30 finalists across the entire region. With over 1000 submissions charged with creativity and a flurry of functionalities, the bots were were judged on both their technical and non-technical quality, as well as their user experience, resulting in these fabulous entrepreneurial bots awarded top prizes. 

1. MathHook  

Built by a student and poised to 'bring math into everyone lives,' MathHook helps users to solve complex math problems, while allowing them search for math courses across 3,000 math videos on Youtube. The Chabot also has a chat function to connect users with teachers or other students, in order to solve math problems. 

2. Sip of Ink

Sip of Ink is a consultant bot for bookworms on-the-go, where users can share a book title or a photo of a book cover, returning with a description of the author, the time needed to read, the rating, and reviews. Ideated for readers to use while exploring books in a book store, or library, the Bot also integrates reviews from Goodreads for people to make a decision before acquiring the book. 

3. Adam (9 months)

With a suggestive name and a useful platform, Adam (9 months) equips pregnant women with updated information not only regarding the stages of pregnancy but also when searching for a nearby pregnancy care, baby or maternity clinics. The bot also connects mothers within a safe community via bot, without having to share personal data.

4. Mastermind Games Bot

Mastermind Games Bot is a collection of five interactive games to solve codes based on various combinations of logic and memory. Every time a user guesses the correct code, a cave safe will open to obtain a diamond. Users can share games with their friends as they vie for the top scores.

Both receiving three months of Facebook mentorship, winners took home $20,000 and runner ups $10,000. During the award ceremony at the MO4 Network office in downtown Cairo, Zak El Fassi, Head of Partnerships at Facebook MENA, took to stage alongside MO4 Network co-founder Adam Mowafi, to introduce the winners, while announcing the launch of MO4 Network's development arms, which not only includes the MO4 x Facebook VR Developers Incubator, but also an app development department. 

Photo and video by @MO4Network's #MO4Productions.