“My name is Ziad Nesrine. My entrepreneurial journey started in 2018 with the launch of one of the most important events for innovators in the country, the “Algeria Startup Challenge”. Nesrine proceeds to introducing herself.

One of the latest projects Nesrine and her partners have been working on, “Soolvit”, is a startup specialized in open innovation and crowdsourcing in North Africa.

Nesrine holds a master’s degree in supply chain management from HEC Alger and a master’s degree in innovation and optimization of research from the University of Paris Saclay, with a demonstrable expertise in supporting startups and the design of sustainable entrepreneurial programs.

As an entrepreneur and innovation consultant, Nesrine leads multiple projects, she is the co-founder of “Soolvit”, which was able to create a real open innovation dynamic as the first North African platform dedicated to open innovation and crowdsourcing.

She was elected as the youngest innovative female entrepreneur in 2021 by the Minister of Knowledge Economy, Start-ups, and Micro-enterprises during the commemorative ceremony for the International Women’s Day. She is also the youngest Algerian representative of the “African Women Leadership Programme” and the accelerator program “Program for innovative women in the Arab region”, a joint program between the 4 Years from Now (4YFN) platform and UNDP’s Regional Bureau for the Arab States (RBAS).

After being nominated in the category of “B2B and SaaS technology” of this programme, with the support of UNDP Algeria and in order to represent “Soolvit”, Nesrine took part in “GSMA’s Mobile World Congress”, a major and influential event in the connectivity ecosystem, gathering mobile operators, mobile device makers, technology suppliers, content creators major actors from the tech industry coming from all over the world and the global startup community from the 4YFN platform, as well as interested audiences coming together to discover the future of technologies.

“Soolvit” is a startup labelled by the National Committee for the labelling of start-ups, innovation projects and incubators, of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Start-ups and Micro-entreprises, a platform that connects innovators to companies, allowing them to address challenges related to R&D, Marketing or even HR through a collaborative experience in several formats: Challenges, Hackathons and Online to Offline Business Case Studies.

“Setting “Soolvit” in motion was not always easy but we weren’t met with major obstacles”, according to Nesrine, who adds: “Being a woman has not been an obstacle since a lot of people have more trust in young people”, and advises young people to take up the challenge and start their projects and not feel discouraged by setbacks but rather focus on “building a network because it is essential to the success in the field of innovation and technology.”

Taking part in this congress brought the chance to connect with the #4YFN startup community from all over the world and allowed her to share thoughts on how “Soolvit” contributes to providing a tech solution supporting the Sustainable development goals and improve the inclusion of innovators in the Arab region.

“Our goal is to help the Problem solvers’ community, including startups, micro-enterprises, researchers, and engineers to have access to better opportunities and better assert their expertise on one hand, and incite companies and NGOs to collaborate in a profitable way and lead high impact programs on the other hand. Today, we strive to expend our services to the African continent and the MENA region.”. The accomplishment of such great ambitious endeavors is on the right track when looking at the path Nesrine and “Soolvit” are walking.