MENA Opportunities

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Shereen El Feki is a brave woman. Spending five years quizzing Arabs about the intimate details of their sex lives is no easy task. But having done so Ms El Feki, a science writer (formerly of The Economist), broadcaster and vice-chair of the UN’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law, has produced in “Sex and the Citadel” a fascinating survey of sex that is rich in detail. Despite its comprehensive title, the book focuses for the most part on Egypt, though Ms El Feki (who is half-Egyptian and half-Welsh, and raised in Canada) does travel to and report on other parts of the region. Understanding the attitudes and practices of Egyptians when it comes to sex is intriguing in itself. But Ms El Feki also uses sex as a means to understand better a country and society that has been rocked by revolution. The Arab world today is widely criticised for its sexual intolerance. Women hide their charms under dark billows of fabric; girls have their genitals mutilated by elders determined to keep...

Arabreneur announced an investment of $440,000 USD in four “leading, innovative” Palestinian startups, which will enter its acceleration program. This is the first investment round for Arabreneur, which launched recently in partnership with USAID, and plans to invest in ten to 12 companies a year, creating between 50 and 100 new jobs annually. Arabreneur’s acceleration program, located in a 300 square meter space in Ramallah, will include “technical assistance, logistics services, assistance in penetrating regional and international markets, networking opportunities with partner accelerators in North America, Europe, and Australia, and exposure to new partnerships with potential clients and partners.” The four Palestinian beneficiaries are as follows: 1) Aidbits: an online data management platform for the non-profit sector to monitor activities, indicators, and beneficiaries 2) Fariqak: an online fantasy game based on international football leagues 3) LiveTop: a social educ...

Palestine’s first startup accelerator, Fast Forward, announced its second class on January 20th. The new group of startups focuses on tech-based solutions to a variety of issues, ranging from digital music distribution to bringing the cash economy into the digital age. Four teams were selected from a pool of 75 applicants in a rigorous, two-phase application process. They are now embarking on an intensive, four-month long acceleration that aims to bring the nascent businesses to market readiness. One of the teams represents a collaboration between veterans of the Palestinian indie music scene that is developing an innovative, online platform to help musicians and bands reach audiences. The project, still untitled, is about “giving indie musicians and bands ways to distribute their music through their fans,” according to CEO Abed Hathout, who is also a member of the band Khalas. Drawing inspiration from gaming strategies and online music sharing, the team’s interface will provide in...

New entrepreneurs welcome all the help they can get, especially because most of them need to invest their every penny in development and expansion. Mobile apps are increasingly filling the needs of entrepreneurs in the region and around the world. Mobibus, a new project recently launched to develop apps, is helping the app makers help entrepreneurs – and everyone who uses apps. Mobibus embraces the idea of DIY, giving SMEs, entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and individuals the opportunity to design applications quickly, simply, and affordably. Similar companies have been proliferating for few years now, like Infinite Monkeys that targets Arab users, or the famous US App makr, launched in 2011. However, Mobibus considers itself a unique product, since it is the first to present multilingual services. “With Mobibus,” says Mohammed Johmani, the services’ co-founder, “the application is designed in both Arabic and English, unlike traditional app makers that design a paid app for each lang...

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At a time when the digital technology sector’s growth is skyrocketing, PushBots, an Egyptian startup, has launched Instapush, a service that helps entrepreneurs monitor critical transactions carried out on their websites by receiving instant notifications. This service includes notifications at different levels such as technical, commercial, and news. It notifies entrepreneurs of every new sign-up, purchase transaction, update, search, or download made from the website. The user can specify which notifications they are most interested in, and then integrate the Android application with the service to receive all notifications on their mobile phone, without having to develop a special application or devote long hours to keeping track of critical things that are happening on their website. The two founders of PushBots, Amr Sobhy and Abdullah Diaa, noticed a “hunger” in the technical sector for notification services, especially after the success of the Tweet-to-Notify service they lau...

As technology becomes integral to everyday life more than ever before, the need for digitizing healthcare is ever increasing. While the region is clearly on a trend to localize online medical content and to create interaction between patients and physicians, with websites like Altibbi, Sohati and WebTeb, Egyptian startup DrBridge has launched an app in order to create the first integrated healthcare virtual community. This app, available on both Android and iOS, aims at linking the patient with all medical entities, including doctors, analysis, and radiology laboratories. DrBridge started, in April 2012, as an app targeted at doctors. A doctor could use it to access their data and manage their clinic financially and administratively through analytical reports for appointments and measurement of the clinic’s performance, as well as patients’ online medical reports, globally known as EMR. The latter enables doctors to make a complete digital report of the patient’s medical history in...

We read every day about new startups that have raised capital and have just recently launched their app or platform. Of course, a creative idea and raising funds is only half the battle, as was recently pointed out by Zach Miller in a recent post on Forbes on Israel’s flourishing startup scene. Miller argues that the real challenge is building “bigger, lasting firms.” He’s absolutely right. Young developers can be easily caught up in the challenges associated with app monetization, like technology fragmentation and keeping up with innovation. Without a doubt, revenue is essential for a tech company, even more so for small developers. This is completely understandable; many recent mobile apps are the product of a few people – perhaps just one person – with an idea. In this world, all great ideas need a bit of cash to make them a reality. But there are risks with hyper-focusing on monetization early in the game. These products risk marketing too aggressively in their monetization set...

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Over the past year, the gaming sector in the Middle East has gone through a major shift. It's seen the split of one of its most successful teams (from Birdy Nam Nam to Game Cooks and Gamabox), the closure of a few main players, and the launch of several new gaming companies that are experimenting in the space. Overall, it's still a giant experiment; no one has cracked the model yet. From the nearly 30 gaming-focused startups we've covered from across the region over the past year, 18 original games have been launched. Only about nine really stand out. The regional opportunity, however, is huge. The Middle East, and the Gulf in particular, is some of the world's most active consumers of games, with a market estimated to be around $1.4 billion in 2011. Most gamers buy titles for consoles like Xbox and PlayStation, yet online and mobile games are also becoming more popular, thanks to rising penetration rates for smartphones- expected to reach to 39% by 2015- and intern...

Online gaming platform At7addak.com (which means “I challenge you” in Arabic), with 600,000 active users, eight million monthly page views, and 500 contributing writers from Morocco to Iraq is killing it! Since its launch in 2011, founders Brahms Chouity, Abdulaziz Al Faisal and Samer Istambouli have worked to meet the demand of Arabic-speaking gamers through an evolving online platform that has attracted the attention of major international gaming companies such as EA and Activision. The idea for At7addak was born when Chouity, after working successfully in a variety of industries, including hospitality, finance, and motorsports, decided to turn his gaming hobby into a business. The founders first hosted a group of the region’s most promising gaming startups at a booth at Arabnet Beirut in 2011, which helped them gain clout even before their platform was completed. After Arabnet, the founders first created a simple leaderboard platform whereby gamers on different platforms (Play...

Drawing on previous themes and skills they’ve built since their launch in 2012, Lebanese game developer Game Cooks has demonstrated a new maturity with their latest title Escape from Paradise. The new game, just released today, comes on the heels of cofounder Lebnan Nader’s naming as one of the 50 gaming newsmakers who shaped 2013, by popular gaming news source Polygon. Reversing the typical good and evil motif, players enter the mobile game as a little devil character stuck in a beautiful paradise. Tasked with escaping this scenic abode, the game of 150 levels allows players to bounce their way to the finish, collecting mushrooms and potions along the way, all within a fairly strict time limit. As you progress, new blocks are revealed which can either help you around the map or throw you off. Maps slowly get darker and more mysterious as you unlock new worlds. The terrain includes stable blocks, falling rocks, warp portals, explosives, and disintegrating platforms. It’s a challeng...

With his French business school diploma and his job at an international consulting firm, Cédric Maalouf was following the same path that most successful Lebanese follow. But everything changed three years ago, when his heart was broken. Set on finding the right person for him, he signed up for a dating website only to realize there are virtually none in the Arab world. People can opt for either low quality dating websites used to chat anonymously, or social networks like Moroccos AlamJadid, which is designed to help like-minded people meet over common interests. It’s odd, explained the Lebanese entrepreneur, given how the social pressure can be to find someone after a certain age, and how tricky it can be to meet members of the opposite sex person in some areas. There’s a real regional demand, he said, pointing to the booming business that marriage agencies are doing in Saudi Arabia. Decided to seize this opportunity, Maalouf moved back to Lebanon to adapt compatibility algorithm-b...

Souqalmal.com, the Dubai-based financial comparison site led by Ambareen Musa, is set for a quantum leap, after securing 1.2 million USD from Hummingbird Ventures, the Antwerp-based venture capital that has previously invested in MarkaVIP, CicekSepeti, and Peak Games. Today, Souqalmal.com simplifies search for users in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, allowing them to compare and review a range of financial products, including credit cards, loans, cars, schools, insurance, and broadband, on a simple interface. Interested consumers can request a callback from a bank or vendor at a time of their choice, rather than wait on hold. For interested shoppers, it’s a potential timesaver; for banks and providers, it’s a marketing channel that facilitates connection to customers already seeking financial products. “By the time they contact the bank, the bank is chatting with a person who is actively interested in their product, so they are already 50% there,” Musa explains. Un...

Will 2014 be the year of crowd investment? Yes, if startups like SearchinMENA have anything to say about it. The B2B marketplace, founded by Syrian entrepreneur Salim Akil, has just raised $140,000 USD, the largest round yet to be secured through Eureeca, the region’s crowd investment platform. Now, Akil is considering the launch of another campaign, to capitalize on his momentum and raise part of the next $400,000 USD he’ll need to build the platform into the AliBaba of the Middle East (Akil recently secured a meeting with AliBaba that he says “went very well”). If he can succeed, persuading friends, family, and investors he’s never met to continue investing, SearchinMENA.com will become the largest of a new set of startups proving the viability of crowd investment in the Middle East. A year ago, when crowd investment first emerged in the Arab world, buoyed by its support in the US, the concept seemed controversial. Would potential angel investors understand the risk? Would startu...

The rise of social networks has shown just how much people like to express themselves. Feelit, as the name implies, is one social network that takes people’s feelings very seriously. Saudi co-founder Mohammad ElKadi feels strongly about feelings: he says “they are a global language in a world filled with tech and politics,” he says, “so we want to connect emotions to every day things.” So he followed his feelings all right, dropping out of college to launch Feelit in September 2013, with co-founder Dima AlOthaimeen. The iOS app, which recently won the ArabNet Startup Demo in Riyadh, is easy to use. After signing up and choosing a gender, users will have to pick a feeling from the wheel. Whether it’s sad, happy, bored, sleepy, angry, or in love, they then choose to either squash that feeling or embrace it. If they squash ‘bored’ for instance, they’ll get funny videos. A problem, though, arises from the fact that the content is crowdsourced. I noticed while testing, for instance, that ...

"We are the first social network that parents want their kids to use," says Hassan Siddiq, the CEO of DailyThem.es, a writing and review platform that leverages peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and crowdsourcing to help users improve their writing skills. Siddiq is a 27 year-old Yale graduate who was born in Pakistan, grew up in Canada and Pakistan, and is currently based in the US. He is one of the three founders of DailyThem.es; the other two are an Indian and an American. The three met in college. They launched the DailyThem.es platform on October 21, 2013 as an interactive learning platform for those trying to improve their writing. Users write 100-word pieces regularly, without worrying about the nature or even quality of the content. Users are classified according to their skills, and more skilled writers are able to provide feedback to less-skilled peers. Written pieces are published under anonymous pen names, and users can like or comment, as well as provide feedback ...

“We felt like aliens,” says Bandar Al Mashari, on how he and his friend Sultan Al Sharif related to the mobile gaming industry four years ago when they started developing games for the first time. Game development is still a largely untapped field for software developers in the region. Both Al Mashari and Al Sharif got their bachelor's degrees in Computer Science, and Al Sharif continued his education and obtained an MSc in Information Technology. Right after he graduated, they both joined one of the leading oil companies in Saudi Arabia as IT System Analysts, where they met and founded their own game development company. “We thought long and hard about a name that would represent us and at the same time be memorable,” he says. After much back and forth, they decided to go with Local Aliens, to represent their Saudi nationality as well as the fact that Saudi gaming companies are still very rare in the Kingdom. An indie game development studio based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the...

In the great big Middle East venture capital boom (ranging from the active Lebanon and Levant venture capital scene to the UAE venture capital scene to the GCC venture capital scene…), Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP) stands out as a notable player. Led from Beirut by Rabih Khoury, Walid Hanna, Walid Mansour and a small team of investment professionals, MEVP is a Middle East-focused venture capital and private equity, early stage financing, angel funding firm that invests in the early and growth stages of innovative companies run by talented entrepreneurs primarily, but not exclusively, in Lebanon and the greater Levant region. MEVP claims to have a unique combination of backgrounds and expertise that allows them to partner with innovative entrepreneurs and help them grow and develop, especially in their early stages, stages that are notoriously difficult to navigate for new MENA startups. MEVP believes that, today, timing is ideal to start companies in our region. Indeed, t...

Chahe Yerevanian took his family’s struggling real estate development business and turned it into one of Lebanon’s biggest players. Here’s how the company remodeled from the bottom line up. The turn of the millenium bore ill for the three brothers of the Yerevanian family, Vahe, Chahe and Serge. Ara Yerevanian, their father and founder of the family real estate development firm, passed away after months of fighting cancer – and having led the family through a host of other struggles besides. Ara had shuffled his family between Paris and Lebanon with the ebb and flow of conflict in the civil war, and eventually landed his family in Canada. The war hardly could’ve come at a worse time for Ara; just three years before the calamity began in ‘75, he’d been elected a member of the Lebanese parliament. Yet Canada cast its own set of troubles on the family’s fortunes. The recession of the late ‘80s hit the real estate development partnership they’d established with the Armoyan family, a su...

With nearly two decades of experience at JP Morgan, Nabil Sawabini is chairman and CEO of the successful investment firm MENA Capital. But his most enduring initiative might be the Entrepreneurship Development Fund: empowering business people and expanding commerce within and without Beirut. “I was ready to part with corporate life,” says Sawabini, on his decision to leave JP Morgan after nearly 18 years with the financial services giant. Granted, it did take a little convincing to get him to move back to Lebanon in 1996. “I was president of the AUB Alumni Association in North America back in the early ‘90s,” he says. “As a result, I was on AUB’s Board of Trustees with a few Lebanese dignitaries – Rafic Hariri, Selim El-Hoss, Ghassan Tueni and Kamal A. Shair. Whenever we met, they’d say to me, ‘it’s not fair you’re in the US now that the civil war is over. It’s time you came back.’ I finally said, ‘OK, fine. I’ll try." Back in Lebanon, Sawabini began Developing real entreprene...

The Middle East has not traditionally been associated with entrepreneurial endeavor but as many of its countries face the need to diversify their economies it may be time to take heed. Micro, small and medium enterprises(MSMEs) account for up to 45 per cent of employment in emerging economies and up to 33 per cent of GDP, with the numbers significantly higher when taking into account the contribution of SMEs operating in the informal sector, according to World Bank unit the International Finance Corporation. In higher income economies SMEs contribute nearly 64 per cent to GDP and 62 per cent to employment. But the market still remains a challenging one, particularly for digital start ups looking for funding, according to Juan Jose De La Torre, VP Strategy & Corporate Development at digital media company Intigral. “What we find is banks are not open, while angel investors are more inclined to focus on brick and mortar traditional businesses where there is a clear asset and less ...

Sandrine Gaspard is a very interesting young woman. She likes to quote Coco Chanel: “It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong. And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person. I've been in business without being a businesswoman, I've loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I've loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I've done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice.” The quote is not random. Gaspard, the descendant of a long line of French aristocrats, could have easily settled down for a tranquil life. Rather, she has putting all her energy in creating a path of her own: G Fashion. G Fashion ® is a luxury goods and fashion con...

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The last decade has seen an unprecedented interest and massive growth in higher education in the oil rich Middle East. In particular, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE have invested substantially in creating or attracting higher education institutions from the U.S., Canada and Europe to set up local campuses. In the cases of foreign campuses, the assumption is that these institutions will have highest standards of quality and rigor that have enabled them, in their native lands, to become foremost places of learning and inquiry. In the case of new institutions, the goal is to create the crucibles of research that will attract top quality academics and students to the region. The global economic downturn, combined with increasing difficulty in attracting research funding in the U.S. and Europe has also benefitted these institutions in recruiting quality faculty. While the jury is still out on the success, largely because success in higher education can never be measured overnight, the ...

Former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon, who led the Israeli army through many of the nation’s most heroic and controversial military battles, died Saturday at the age of 85 after being comatose for eight years. Here is a selection of reactions from world leaders and others for one of the most influential figures in the modern Middle East. “Arik was not a warmonger. When it was necessary to fight, he stood at the forefront of the divisions in the most sensitive and painful places, but he was a smart and realistic person and understood well that there is a limit in our ability to conduct wars.” — Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mr. Sharon’s former deputy who took office after Mr. Sharon’s 2006 stroke. “On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to the family of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and to the people of Israel on the loss of a leader who dedicated his life to the State of Israel … We join with the Israeli people in honoring his com...

A planned decrease by the Obama administration in funding for democracy promotion and election support in the Middle East is prompting alarm among activists. They say cuts are likely to be more severe than first realized and that the White House appears to be giving up on democracy in the region and downgrading its advancement as a policy priority. In the run-up to Christmas, State Department officials briefed American non-profits funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) about cuts in funding. They were told no money was being earmarked for democracy and governance assistance programs in Iraq and that, for Egypt, the administration was adopting a wait-and-see approach until after a January 15 referendum on a newly-drafted constitution. No extra funding for democracy promotion is being earmarked for Libya, whose transition from autocracy following the toppling of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi has been plagued by lawlessness. USAID democracy programs there w...

Fast food chain Just Falafel plans to open 160 outlets in the United States and Canada in the next five years, building on a recent period of rapid growth that saw it expand in the U.K. and across the Middle East. This fast-growing franchise is already active in nine countries with nearly 50 restaurants and has agreements in place to develop 720 outlets in 18 countries. Dubai-based Just Falafel has been one of the region’s recent success stories in the retail space having started as a single restaurant in 2007 in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates capital. “Expanding in North America gives us the opportunity to capitalize on the growth of the world’s largest consumer market,” said Chief Executive Fadi Malas. Just Falafel is among a few Middle Eastern-based food chains trying to win over Western markets. One example is Dubai-based Shakespeare & Co., partly owned by a Kuwait private equity firm, which has already opened doors in Kentucky. Another is Noodle Hou...

LAMICE embodies a new generation of "e-artists" whose creations are only available on the internet, and can be accessed through her page www.lamice.com. LAMICE is a composer, author and singer. She's been composing since the age of 16. As an expatriate of Lebanese origin, living in France, LAMICE focused first on securing her future. She built a career in business consulting. Once she felt secure, LAMICE managed to give life to her passion for Music in parallel, thanks also to digital technology. She recounts her life away from family and friends through music - her sanctuary. Her situation as an expatriate from a country in war is also a reason why LAMICE developed strong interest for the technologies of communication. She found herself in our modern world where technology transcends geographical borders and allow people to feel less isolated. LAMICE advocates music without borders, without labels, free of trends. Her music is influenced by many styles and various ...

Life sciences companies face the monumental task of adjusting their sales strategies to meet the demands of today’s increasingly restrictive commercial landscape. While teams can adjust their internal strategies, few outside solutions exist to aid these efforts. However, there are some external resources working to introduce non-traditional commercial opportunities into the life sciences arena. RIMEDIO, which aptly brands itself “enlightened healthcare collaboration,” is one such non-traditional solution to sales team challenges. RIMEDIO is an innovative business-to-business platform aiming to bring together all life science industry’s commercial stakeholders. One source has described the service as “eBay meets Amazon sitting on LinkedIn.” This digital meta-community will bring together doctors, payors, manufacturers and patient advocates into a single social platform integrated seamlessly with a Learning Management System, CRM/SFA, CLM iPad offline detailing tool, CLM remote...

While many youth around the world struggle to find work, the Middle East and North Africa battles with the world’s highest youth unemployment rate. A quarter of young men and 42 percent of young women aged 15 to 24 were unemployed in 2012. In contrast, unemployment among youth in the US was 16 percent, while youth in the European Union face 18 percent unemployment. As Di’bas learned, a college degree does not guarantee employment. The World Bank estimates that almost 100 million jobs – or double the current rate of employment – must be created in the Middle East by 2020 in order to close this employment gap. While this “youth wave” appears daunting, young people with passion and skills can invigorate the region through social entrepreneurship. And they are: Youth in the Middle East and North Africa are using their skills to create or join social enterprises that address many of the social issues plaguing the region, such as illiteracy, inequity, health problems, and environmental d...