Omar Ellou­mi, 22, a com­put­er sci­ence under­grad­u­ate from UTC, has cre­at­ed MyMatch, a mobile appli­ca­tion ded­i­cat­ed to ama­teur soc­cer play­ers, enabling them to book pitch­es eas­i­ly, orga­nize match­es and fol­low team per­for­mances through sta­tis­tics, rank­ings and badges to be won.

The MyMatch appli­ca­tion, cre­at­ed at UTC thanks to Omar Ellou­mi, has a tremen­dous social aspect, offer­ing play­ers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of join­ing teams that are short of par­tic­i­pants, or reg­is­ter­ing for com­pe­ti­tions. For grounds man­agers, MyMatch sim­pli­fies book­ings thanks to an inter­ac­tive dash­board and detailed sta­tis­tics on the use of their facil­i­ties. “I myself am an ama­teur play­er in an envi­ron­ment that is strong­ly marked by soc­cer. My father was a pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller and every­one around me played soc­cer, so our dis­cus­sions con­stant­ly revolved around match­es and famous play­ers. After mov­ing to a new town, I found it dif­fi­cult to find play­ers to orga­nize match­es and book pitch­es. It was from this expe­ri­ence that I began to think about a sim­ple and effec­tive solu­tion for soc­cer fans. I quick­ly real­ized that many oth­ers shared the same dif­fi­cul­ties: gath­er­ing enough play­ers to make teams, man­ag­ing pitch book­ings and main­tain­ing a social dynam­ic around soc­cer”, explains Omar Ellou­mi, who is look­ing to raise funds to sup­port the app’s tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment, finance mar­ket­ing and pre­pare for inter­na­tion­al expansion.

Entrepreneuriat Élite, as a catalyst

The appli­ca­tion has been avail­able since Novem­ber, with an ini­tial launch in Tunisia, fol­lowed by Moroc­co and Alge­ria, before being made acces­si­ble to Euro­pean coun­tries such as France, Spain and Italy. The aim is to make the appli­ca­tion avail­able on sev­er­al con­ti­nents, while adapt­ing func­tion­al­i­ties to local speci­fici­ties (lan­guages, pay­ment sys­tems, etc.). “UTC’s Elite Entre­pre­neur­ship pro­gramme has enabled MyMatch to take shape. It acts as a cat­a­lyst for its devel­op­ment. We have access to expe­ri­enced men­tors who help us refine our vision, strat­e­gy and busi­ness mod­el. It also gives us prac­ti­cal advice on mar­ket­ing, project man­age­ment and prod­uct devel­op­ment,” enthus­es the young cre­ator, who spe­cial­izes in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and data analy­sis. “My aim is to com­bine my pas­sion for tech­nol­o­gy and sport to bring inno­v­a­tive solu­tions that enhance user expe­ri­ence and have a pos­i­tive impact on the glob­al sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty.” MyMatch will then roll out to oth­er ama­teur sports such as bas­ket­ball, ten­nis and rack­et padle. “Our vision is to cre­ate a mul­ti-sport plat­form that will enable ama­teurs to orga­nize them­selves eas­i­ly around their sport­ing passion.”

KD