MENA Opportunities

Picture the perfect weekend: you leave work early on a Thursday as you have secured tickets for the Madinat Jumeirah theater performance of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, with a new cast list consisting of Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier. On Friday you take in an intimate jazz session with Bob Dylan in a bar along Sheikh Zayed Road and you round off the night with a retro concert with a jam-packed line-up of names including Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Elvis Presley, James Brown and Kurt Cobain. It all sounds like fantasy but it can all be (almost) possible with the latest advances in hologram 3D technology. No longer the domain of Star Trek fiction, the sophisticated projection devices currently available mean deceased superstars can be brought back to life for one more performance beyond the grave, or existing artists could play exclusive concerts without being physically present and appear simultaneously on stage in London, Abu Dhabi or Las Vegas. Joe Tabet...

Riham Mahafzah, a co-founder of Jordanian start-up Gallery Alshark, is proof of how Middle East entrepreneurs can tap into the Arab-American network of Silicon Valley trailblazers looking to help the next generation of business founders. In the past 18 months, she placed third in the MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition in Doha; had a month’s intensive mentoring with TechWadi, a non-profit in San Francisco that builds bridges between Silicon Valley and the Arab world, and returned to Silicon Valley for a week-long visit as part of a group of 30 rising Middle East entrepreneurs. Now the businesswoman is in San Francisco participating in a four-month accelerator program run by 500 Startups. Although near the start of the program, Ms Mahafzah has already tweaked her business, which sells stock images online. She now believes her market extends beyond just the Middle East to eastern Europe, Turkey and Asia and has changed her company’s name from Gallery Alshark to Silk Road Ima...

According to American information technology research and advisory firm, Gartner, total Middle East IT and telecoms spend is set to grow 24 per cent from USD 195.6 billion last year to USD 243 billion by 2018, with device spending set to jump 30 per cent from USD 30 billion to USD 39 billion over the same five-year period. The surge in IT and device spending represents huge potential for increased automation opportunities in nearly all fields of industry, as businesses seek to leverage a rise in mobility, smart government, Big Data and the Internet of Things - the interconnection of embedded computing-like devices, systems and services across a variety of protocols, domains and applications that go beyond standard machine-to-machine communications (M2M). According to a recent report issued by Frost & Sullivan, half of all global businesses find M2M, mobile device management and mobile software applications to be highly-effective technologies. The number of international business...

Emirati entrepreneur Ahmed AlMentheri encountered the same problems that a lot of other young enterprise hopefuls mention - closed doors, and a lack of hard knowledge as to the process of converting an idea into a real business. His UAE-based company, Kaizen Blitz LLC (KB), is working with one product at present, an energy drink made in the U.S. named +RED. He’s currently employed in the oil and gas sector, and prior to launching KB did mostly “small business deals like selling plate numbers and classic cars.” As for the concept behind his new company’s corporate identity? AlMentheri explains that the Japanese name is “well-known in quality control,” and that their brand means “continuous improvement”. Improvement indeed, working with his co-founder, Walid Alkhaili, the duo wanted to get their idea off the ground, and went to Tejar Dubai for guidance after a slew of disappointments. “I came up with the idea when I was looking for a franchise to bring to the UAE, but with the demand...

Nabil Habayeb’s office is a modest set-up. Occupying one corner of an executive floor in General Electric Co (GE)’s headquarters in Dubai Internet City, there’s a few framed family photos on bookshelves and his desk, a three-piece lounge on the other side of the room, a few coffee table books and even an Emirates Airline model plane, presumably in a nod to the two companies’ extensive links. Sitting with the president and CEO of the global manufacturing giant’s Middle East, North Africa and Turkey (MENAT) operations, a particular painting hanging above his head catches my eye. It’s a piece by Bahraini painter Raif Shehab, he says. “It was a gift from my employees when I celebrated 20 years with the company,” he adds, before casually dropping the fact that he is currently celebrating 32 years with GE. Indeed, while his office may be rather modest, his achievements at GE are anything but.

Entrepreneurship hub The Bedaya Center for Entrepreneurship and Career Development has held a training program to develop Qatar’s future oil and gas leaders. The eight-day program took place in Doha for 23 Qatari interns from Qatar Chemical Company (Q-Chem), helping them adapt to their new work environment and develop their life and business skills Hamad Al Kubaisi, board member of the Bedaya Center, said: “This is the second time we have cooperated with Q-Chem, as oil & gas is one of Qatar’s vital industrial sectors. “Our program helps to develop the skills of those who have recently entered the industry and prepares them to be the sector’s future leaders.” Q-Chem general manager, Michael Zeglin, added: “This is part of Q-Chem’s ongoing efforts to support our commitment of Total Quality Qatarisation.” The training was held at the Qatar Independent Technical School (QITS), and covered several key, youth-related areas such as career planning, handling staff personality difference...

Many art ventures over recent years have been established around the world to make the buying of art for collectors, first time or seasoned buyers easy. Most of these ventures are based in the USA or Europe and many recently have secured venture capital funding.  Now is the turn of the MENA region… welcome to artscoops.com, an online art platform. Artscoops.com was started by mother and daughter team Raya & May Mamarbachi after realizing that there was a gap in the market regionally with regards to promoting artists and making ‘art’ accessible to all online. After long brainstorming sessions ‘Artscoops’ was born. Artscoops.com works with both galleries and artists. Artworks are handpicked and consigned to the website for sale for a period of 6 months. Artscoops endeavors to introduce, promote, negotiate and conclude sales of artworks online. Artscoops is pleased to have created a partnership with Paddle8 and will be holding its first online auction between the 10th and 21s...

Iraq has the region's lowest internet penetration, yet enjoys a higher level of mobile subscriptions than Qatar, Lebanon, and Turkey, while Palestine and  Turkey have the highest percentage of 3G subscribers — ahead of better known 3G markets such as UAE and Kuwait. These are just some of the findings from a huge data-pack published last month by the global marketing and communications agency We Are Social. Harnessing data from a variety of sources including GSMA Intelligence, InternetLiveStats (both of which are home to some rather cool live counters) as well as the US Census Bureau, the slides offer deep dives into each country in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey (MENAT) grouping alongside the wider regional picture. Building on a theme we've seen consistently in Heat Sink over recent months, Simon Kemp, regional managing partner at We Are Social, told ZDNet that it was the "disparity between the haves and have-nots in MENAT" which stood out, "from t...

As political unrest continues to grip the Middle East, it is hardly a surprise that many international investors are wary about the region’s business prospects. Whether that is warranted or not, the International Finance Corporation, a World Bank Group subsidiary that promotes the private sector in developing markets, is trying to change that perception by stepping up its investments in the financial and power sectors. “We have a strong appetite to do more in the region after the Arab Spring,” said Dimitris Tsitsiragos, vice-president at the IFC. “There are many things to do to help restore confidence as the whole transition process has taken longer than expected and is still ongoing,” he said. Dimitris Tsitsiragos says the IFC has a strong appetite for more investments in the region. One of the IFC’s priorities centers on investing in financial companies to spur intra-regional trade, Mr. Tsitsiragos said. In the past years, for example, the IFC invested in Bahrain’s Ahli United Ban...

In the early 1980s, at the age of 17, Ramzi Haidamus migrated from his war-ravaged home of Lebanon, leaving his family behind. He completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in electrical and computer engineering at California’s University of the Pacific. After graduating he spent seven years working for Stanford Research System (SRS), a firm that designs, builds, and manufactures scientific research products and equipments. He then moved to Dolby Laboratories, a software and hardware company, where he spent 17 years in a variety of roles, most recently as the Executive Vice President of worldwide sales, marketing, and business development. At Dolby he led several innovative efforts, including those related to Dolby’s technological roadmaps and standards development for DVD and BluRay. Recently, he secured the naming rights to the theater where the Academy Awards are hosted every year in Los Angeles (formerly the Kodak; now the Dolby Theater), closing a $200 million USD d...

Q-Cab Transportation, slotted for launch next month, will utilize new technology to enable customers to order taxi services by using mobile applications and social media. The founders are a trio from across the Middle East; Qatari Nasser A. Hatbeen Al-Yafei, Yemeni Ali S. Muthanna Al Yafei, and Palestinian Tariq A. Awadallah, who all graduated from Qatar University as mechanical engineering grads. The three Q-Cab founders all currently working for RasGas, the Qatar-based natural gas company. “The idea of creating Q-Cab derived from my personal experience with taxis in Qatar. I faced some problems when trying to find a taxi, problems such as waiting for a long time and the unavailability of taxis in some districts around Doha. It took about 10 weeks for Q- Cab to have a well-established business plan, which is the duration of the Lean Startup Program- a training and coaching workshop provided by Qatar Business Incubation Center (QBIC) for entrepreneurs,” says Awadallah. One of QBIC’s...

As the Arab world has become home to the world’s most active gamers, it has increasingly been eyed as a potential hotbed for game development. Back in 2011, estimates put the value of the regional market at $1.4 billion USD, and revenues in 2013 crossed the $100 million threshold in the Middle East. But the space is not too crowded yet, and there is still a big piece of the pie to be distributed between ambitious entrepreneurs interested in getting a seat at the table. One such entrepreneur is Lebanese-Russian Piotr Yordanov and his latest venture, trivia game SwypeOut. At 23, this entrepreneur is already on his third project, having started out with real estate startup BaytBaytak (now shut down), and so-called ‘Pinterest for People’ Beepl. Yordanov’s ambition was clearly apparent during our chat, and he’s clearly applying the lessons he learned from past startups to SwypeOut, which launched earlier in July. SwypeOut is essentially the newest trivia game to come out of the region, b...

Two young Lebanese were selected last week as part of the MIT Technology Review's 2014 35 Innovators Under 35 list. The magazine honored entrepreneur Ayah Bdeir, 31, and inventor Fadel Adib, 25, for their work with littleBits and the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, respectively. According to Javier Garcia Martinez, the Director of Molecular Nanotechnology Laboratory at Spain’s University of Alicante, who served as one of the competition’s judges, increased access to technology has been the reason behind an increase in regional innovators. “Technology is lowering the bar for young innovators to make an impact, regardless of their location, providing easy access to millions of potential customers, but also to information, education, and financing,” Martinez said in an email. According to the judge, this year’s results are part of an ongoing trend of awardees hailing from the Arab region. This isn’t the first accolade for Bdeir’s littleBits (the entrepreneur i...

Over the past few years, we’ve stumbled upon the expression Big Data ever more frequently, and heard many conflicting definitions for the term. One recent definition I read and liked was Lisa Arthur’s article in Forbes, where she presents it as “a collection of data from traditional and digital sources inside and outside your company that represents a source for ongoing discovery and analysis.” As big data has become more popular, challenges have arisen in terms of presentation, quality control, and dissemination. To surmount these obstacles, a Lebanese startup has launched, with the goal of commercializing reliable and accurate data, on often-misreported topics relevant to the MENA, through a subscription-based online service. EQLIM, which means ‘region’ or ‘territory’ in Arabic, wants to build fundamental real-time data on human activities in emerging economies. “We identified a lack of data availability and accessibility across the Middle East, in addition to frequent distorted a...

Entrepreneurship has become faddish of late, and business school students are not immune to the fervor. Entrepreneurship is almost never about working in flip-flops in an incubator; it is tough work that requires extraordinary effort. It is super full-time and super risky. In today’s tough job market, “doing a startup” may sound better than “unemployed,” “getting my third master’s degree,” or “staying with my folks awhile.” But entrepreneurship is for those who are laser-focused on building a company that will scale; it is a marathon, not a sprint, usually requiring a decade or longer of commitment. Students, like the rest of us, should be prepared to separate myth from reality. Like most fads, entrepreneurship has its own mythology. Here are some examples: Having a startup makes you an entrepreneur: Saying that starting a new venture automatically makes you an entrepreneur is a little like saying that if you put on skates and grab a stick, you’re a hockey player. The vast majority ...

Not to put too fine a point on it, banks across the world are not renowned for their transparency. Small print, hidden costs, lack of information, misleading interest rates and other frustrating issues have left customers feeling varying degrees of disappointment, anger, suspicion and confusion as they try to find clarity before making important financial and life decisions. Websites overseas, such as moneysupermarket.com in the UK, and bankrate.com in the US have become consumer mainstays, helping people find the best, cheapest, most appropriate offerings on the market, paving the way for expat-driven businesses to be launched in the UAE and Gulf region, such as souqalmal.com, moneyshop.ae, moneycamel.com, and compareit4me.com. But, until recently, there wasn’t a website focused solely on the banks. In 2013 Bayzat.com arrived to fill that gap. Meaning ‘cash’ or ‘change’ in Arabic, Bayzat allows users to compare and contrast banking products, from credit cards and loans to time depo...

Mobile phones in emerging markets are still widely used for texting, making phone calls, taking pictures, reading news, and using social networks, but countries like Kenya are also using them as a method of payment. M-Pesa in Kenya is a mobile payment and transaction service that was launched in 2007, and it’s now used by 70% of Kenyan adults in the country. Operating through Vodafone, it allows users to send money, pay their bills, recharge their prepaid cards, and withdraw money from other digital wallets or bank accounts. Due to its reliance on text messaging to send verification codes to complete transactions rather than the internet, the service has gained huge popularity. Now, around 20% of the country’s GDP goes through M-Pesa. Arab countries are now getting their share of the cake with ever more mobile payment and banking apps and services cropping up. In 2012, PayPal partnered with Aramex to launch its operations in the MENA. In the same year, mobile payment company MOBIbuc...

You may not have heard of Hills Advertising, but if you are a frequent traveller down Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road, then you’ll be more than familiar with the company’s product. Run by founder and chief executive Sami Al-Mufleh, Hills has grown to become by far the largest player in the UAE’s outdoor advertising industry, with what he says is an estimated 65 percent of the market. Despite only launching in 2003, the company has tied up with some of the city’s biggest entities, including the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), Meraas Holding and Dubai World Central. The result? A mixture of locations for static banner advertising that have been hard for Hills’ peer firms to compete with. So it’s not surprising to find that Al-Mufleh, a 44-year-old Jordanian, has so much to say. A 30-minute interview with the man that refers to himself and his workforce as “innovation engineers” ends up going well over the hour mark. And, as he says, the firm is still just getting into its stride. “Duba...

Internet has become the most common use of marketing by the people around the world. This MENA business depends on the e-commerce for the online marketing strategy. Electronic Commerce commonly known as e-commerce is used for trading products or services using computer networks such as Internet. This is generally considered to be the sales aspect of business done online. This online store of buying and selling in the shopping sector includes mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, internet marketing, online transaction and processing, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Inventory management systems and automated data collection systems. This is a most effective and an efficient way of communicating within an organization in the useful ways of conducting business. By this way, the people in the MENA parts are gaining more and more income, without putting more efforts. Introduction to Marketing: Marketing in online is the best way to create awareness, publi...

If you’re active in the Lebanese startup ecosystem, then you’ve probably already met the young entrepreneur behind Sociatag, the social integration platform hailing from Beirut. In less than two years, Wassim Hakim and his booth have quickly become staple figures at startup events. With a background as a web developer at digital advertising agencies ClearTag (which has smartly been acquiring startups and is part of digital media umbrella group DNY, and also owns Innovo) and Eastline Marketing, launching a product to bridge the online and offline worlds seemed like the logical next step. Hakim thought up the idea during graduate school, but needed some time to find the right edge, as it is, granted, not the first idea of its kind. But the idea didn’t stop evolving when he eventually launched. What started as a way to allow event attendees to interact with any online platform by simply swiping magnetic cards over physical boxes quickly evolved into a full-fledged social integration pl...