We were the kitchen behind Alinma Bank's Amad initiative: one platform that took 3,632 university students from a QR scan to a founder's pitch.
PROJECT DETAILS
NAME
Amad
COUNTRY
Saudi Arabia
SERVICES PROVIDED
Platform Design & Development, Learning Journey & Assessments, Automation & Admin Dashboard, Reporting, Social Media Campaign
YEAR
2024
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Amad is Alinma Bank's initiative for Saudi university students, built on three values: Edrak (Awareness), Musahama (Contribution) and Daymuma (Sustainability). For its first round, the Saudi innovation hub IBE HUB led the client relationship and brought us in as the kitchen: the team that designs, builds and runs everything behind the scenes. We received the identity and the idea of a question bank, and delivered the domain, the platform, the learning journey, the selection engine, the admin dashboard, the reporting and the launch campaign.
CHALLENGE
Alinma didn't want an ideas inbox. It wanted students to learn before they pitched, and proof that the learning worked. That meant gating every idea behind a test, tracking thousands of students across seven universities, and reporting back every two weeks, all while the partner, not us, stood in front of the client.
SOLUTION
We designed one guided journey: register, take a 12-question pre-test, learn through a knowledge bank of tailored videos, then sit the post-test. Only students who pass can submit an idea. Behind it, custom automation and selection programs scored and filtered participants, an admin dashboard gave the team a live view, and detailed PDF reports went to the bank every two weeks, per university and as one consolidated summary.
University students registered in round one
Student founders submitted a startup idea
We Were the Kitchen
Some of our best work carries another company's name on the front door. On Amad, Alinma Bank owned the initiative and IBE HUB, a Saudi innovation and entrepreneurship hub, owned the client relationship. We ran the kitchen: design, development, automation, reporting and the launch campaign, delivered under the partner's lead.
We received two things: the Amad identity and the idea of a question bank. Everything else was ours to build, from buying the domain to sending the last report.
Learn First, Pitch Second
Amad isn't an ideas inbox. Every student walks the same path: register, take a 12-question pre-test, learn through a knowledge bank of tailored videos, then sit the post-test. Only students who pass can submit a startup idea. The journey is built around the three Amad values: Edrak (Awareness), Musahama (Contribution) and Daymuma (Sustainability).
The Platform
The registration landing page sells one promise in Arabic: learn, compete and win up to SAR 50,000. It leads straight into the journey, with the numbers that matter up front: six learning stations, 200+ minutes of content and an 80% target pass rate.
Under the Hood
Behind the pages sit the question banks and test pages, plus custom automation and selection programs that scored every attempt and filtered who could move on. An admin dashboard gave the team a live view of every university, and we demoed each piece on WordPress before it went live.
Taking It to Campus
Students reached the platform through QR codes at on-campus Amad activations across Saudi universities. Between November 2024 and February 2025 the codes were scanned 3,679 times, 98.9% of them inside Saudi Arabia. Riyadh drove more than half of all scans, February was the busiest month, and 79% of scans came from iPhones, which is why every page was designed mobile-first.
The Launch Campaign
We also ran the social media campaign that launched the first Amad hackathon.
Reporting the Bank Could Read
Every two weeks we sent a detailed PDF report for each university, including Qassim, Princess Nourah, Majmaah, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud, Prince Sattam, King Faisal and KFUPM, plus one consolidated report for the whole initiative. Each covered traffic, QR scans, test results and a selection of the ideas students submitted. The reports stay confidential; the platform analytics below show the scale they tracked.
Round One Results
3,632 students registered. 1,299 passed the pre-test and post-test. 487 went on to submit a startup idea. Positive answers rose from 30% in the pre-test to 80% in the post-test, the proof Alinma asked for that students learned before they pitched.
What Came Next
We delivered the first round end to end. Amad has since moved to Tuwaiq Academy for its next editions, and the work qualified us for later projects with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
If you're an agency or partner in Saudi Arabia with more briefs than hands, we can be your kitchen too.
