Roar chats to King’s College London student Yassin Ali, about his competition-winning app ARENA, which aims to gamify the logistics of sports. Science and Research Correspondent Jana Bazeed writes on the subject.
ARENA, an app developed by students Yassin Ali and Ayani Mohamud, won over £3,000 in funding at the 2023 Idea Factory Competition.
On March 1st, 10 finalists competed in the 2023 Idea Factory competition’s Pitch Off final, run by King’s Entrepreneurship Institute. As King’s’ flagship idea generation competition, Idea Factory aims to nurture the biggest and best ideas from across the university that have the potential to grow into ventures. For the first time in the competition’s history, the team won two prizes: second runners up and the People’s Choice award.
Well done to Yassin Ali from @Kingspol_econ who as part of ARENA got the People's Choice award and came 2nd runner up – winning £3.5k and 12 months of mentoring 👏 https://t.co/XpjqE0A2fQ
— King's SSPP (@KingsSSPP) March 3, 2023
Yassin, a Political Economy student here at King’s, began work on the app with his friend Ayani from Royal Holloway Uni in 2021; and they have since continued to develop the concept together.
“My close friend—and now co-founder—Ayani called me one day over lockdown complaining about the booking systems for 7-a-side games. As we delved deeper into the problem, we realised just how many barriers there were across all sports, and suddenly thought, “What would happen if we just centralised everything sports-related?” said Yassin.
ARENA aims to gamify sports by streamlining the processes of organisation and payment. Users are able to seamlessly book venues, explore new sports, get matched with other users of a similar skill-level via a lobby-system, and more—all through a single easy-to-use app.
When asked about his experience with the competition, Yassin responded enthusiastically, citing the value of the opportunity to develop his entrepreneurial skills, network, and meet like-minded students: “It was a great opportunity for personal development and growth,” he said, “And with the funding and mentorship we won, we hope to continue developing the app further and see our vision become a reality”.
Besides earning over £3,000 in funding to be put towards the development of their idea, Yassin and Ayani will be recipients of 12-months of mentoring provided by experts from King’s Entrepreneurship Institute.
Looking to the future, the team hopes to continue with the validation process and the development of the app, with ambitions to launch ARENA by the end of the year.
For more information on the ARENA app, check out their Instagram (@thearenaapp) and LinkedIn (ARENA).
[pics provided by Yassin Ali, credit to Entrepreneurship Institute]
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