A team of students from University of Bahrain have won the Imagine Cup Bahrain with Glare, which is your own personal coach, director or trainer for developing public communication skills. Their passion to use technology to solve the world’s toughest problems takes centrestage as they talk with Bahrain This Week about their vision and challenges.
Tell us briefly about yourself and your team.
We are students from the University of Bahrain. Our team consists of two computer science students (Malik Jehangir Riaz and Muhammad Hamza Zubair) as well as a business and marketing student (Ali Inayat) mentored by Miss Diane Prieur who is a professor at the University of Bahrain.
Give us a brief summary about all of your educational and professional background.
We are in our final semester at the university of Bahrain, and expect to graduate with Bachelors in Computer Science, in the upcoming months. We are passionate about using technology to solve the world’s toughest problems.
What are your guys doing for a day job? where do you work?
We are currently in our final semester, two of the team members (Malik and Hamza) are currently doing an internship, whereas Ali Inayat works as a professional photographer.
When and how did you get around to developing Glare?
We perform plays written by William Shakespeare at our University, as well as we have courses where we see many students backing off when it comes to presentation. They were frightened to go out in public. On research and survey, we found out that Middle East has the highest percentage of these types of fears. ‘Glare’ is an interesting solution.
Tell us more about the application and how did this idea strike you?
Glare, in short, is your director, coach, trainer for presentation, job interviews, public speaking rehearsals. While studying at the University of Bahrain, we have seen people suffer due to many problems, which they face on public exposure. So, we decided to help them via Glare.
What have been the initial challenges and how did you overcome them?
Once you start a project, the challenges are endless. We faced hardware sensors compatibility issues, we faced problems with our business projection, testing the solution and lot others. We never lost hope, we kept on going until there came a time when we felt our solution, ready and strong as steel. Happiness is overcoming these challenges.
How is Glare unique?
Well, the current market fills half of the table i.e. virtual reality only. Glare is something more than that. We have used the amazing power of Azure Cloud features in our solution.
Where do you see Glare in the next 3 years?
Today, if 2 out of 4 people benefit from Glare. In the next 3 years, we see more than half of the world that would’ve benefitted out of this.
If you were to list 5 essential qualities of a successful entrepreneur, what would they be?
Parent to his baby i.e. the idea, confident, creative, open minded, having trust in his team.
How has Glare developed so far?
Few more changes and touch ups, and
we will be ready to release it across the market.
How did you find Ch9 Bahrain?
The passion of participating in Imagine cup Bahrain led us towards getting to know CH9’s presence on this island. We are very proud to say that CH9 has played a vital role in polishing our solution.
Being the winner of Microsoft Imagine Cup, how do you feel?
Neil Armstrong took his first step towards mankind, while on the moon. For us, this win at the Bahrain national finals, is the first step towards the mankind. To help them until they feel confident when it comes to achievement of goals.
List us three things you have learned.
Be realistic especially in business, stick to narrow approach when it comes to target market, and always deal challenges with a smile because it is you who have taken a step to sustain the world through technology. Be confident!!
What is your message to aspiring entrepreneurs in and around GCC?
Believe it in yourself and the world will be yours.