Hind Hobeika is the founder of Instabeat. Hind and her team are a group of dedicated swimmers, triathletes, wearable experts, engineers, and designers from all corners of the world based in Beirut and San Francisco. They build a connected accessory for swimming goggles that captures real-time heart rate, stroke type, and laps. They created a real jewel of technology that helps champions and amateurs improve their performances.
She first had the idea when she was studying at the American University of Beirut and promoted her project during her participation in Stars of Science, season 2, which is a pan-Arab reality tv show where young innovators compete with each other. Hind successfully won third place on the show. In 2011, she was able to present her final marketable product. She says: “Stars of Science was life changing because it taught me the power of outside-the-box thinking”.
Hind won the MIT Pan Arab Business Plan Competition in 2012 and was featured in Time Magazine for it. Hind also took part in international conferences, including the Intel CEO Summit in Huntington Beach, California, USA, the Quantified Self conference in Amsterdam, the MENA Business Women Conference in Dubai and was chosen to speak as a ‘Leader of Tomorrow’ at the St. Gallen Symposium in Switzerland. In October 2012, Hind was selected as a fellow at the INK conference in association with TED in Pune, India.
