Archive for the ‘Tunisia’ Category
Tunisie Telecom To Launch Venture Capital Arm ‘Diva Sicar’
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 8, 2009 – 11:29 am |
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Montassar Ouaili, the CEO of Tunisie Telecom, the first Tunisian telecom operator in Tunisia, recently announced that the company will be launching a venture capital arm in partnership with STB Bank and BH Bank.
The new venture will be called “Diva Sicar“, and will be officially established as a subsidiary of Tunisie Telecom on May 19th.
It will have 20 Million Tunisian Dinars ($US 14 Million) in capital, and will be concentrating on projects in the development, innovation and value-added services areas.
Tunisiana, which is Tunisie Telecom’s only competitor so far in the mobile space, also recently announced a new fund for value-added services.
Tunisie Telecom is 65% owned by the Tunisian state, with the remaining 35% owned by TECOM Investments and Dubai Investment Group, which they acquired in 2006.
Tunisiana Launches A New Fund For Value-Added Services
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 2, 2009 – 10:07 am | Comments
Tunisiana, the first private mobile operator in Tunisia, just announced the launch of a fund for value-added services projects.
This move follows the recent publication of a new law in Tunisia relating to the sharing of revenue between telecom operators and value-added services providers.
So in an effort to empower and encourage more entrepreneurs and startups to launch such value-added services, it has created this fund, wherein each project can benefit of up to 30,000 Tunisian Dinars of funding.
The announcement of the fund was made a few days ago at the opening of Tunisiana’s value-added services event where a number of new services were announced by a number of companies, mainly in the areas of business solutions, entertainment and accessibility.
It’s a really smart and welcome move by Tunisiana, and it should be interesting to follow and see how well it goes and how many projects will see the light of day because of it.
I definitely think it’s a model other mobile operators around the Arab world should experiment with for the benefit of everyone: theirselves, these new businesses and their clients.
[Source: WebManagerCenter]
BarCamp Tunisie, Al Ghazela Technology Park, May 9th 2009
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 28, 2009 – 9:36 am | Comments
Tunisia will be soon be getting its first BarCamp event, that will be held at the Al Ghazela Technology Park (Hannibal Hall) on May 9th 2009 starting at 9:00 AM.
BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering, born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. These events are quite intense with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.
A number of Tunisian entrepreneurs will be at the event talking about their startups and demoing their products and services, then opening a discussion about them with the attendees.
The startups that are confirmed to be demoing at the first Tunisian BarCamp so far are the following:
- Keejob: A new Tunisian job portal. (Demo by: Amira Mimouni)
- Wezign: A Tunisian web & graphic design agency. (Demo by: Kais Ben Sedrine)
- Resto Tunisie: A community powered directory of restaurants in Tunisia, previously reviewed here. (Demo by: Kais Ezzine)
- Tools4Com: A simple online invoicing system, previously reviewed here. (Demo by: Mohamed Aymen Ben Abdallah)
- Twitterists: A service that lists and watches celebrities on Twitter. (Demo by: Mohamed Ben Dhaou)
- Je révise: A course revision service for college students. (Demo by: Myriam Sfar)
- Markkit: A web 2.0 text highlighter, previously reviewed here. (Demo by: Slim Amamou)
People interested in participating can sign up through the following form: BarCamp Tunisie Sign-up Form.
For more information and details about BarCamp Tunisie, you can check out the following page: BarCamp Tunisie (FR).
If you’re registered to the StartUpArabia Events iCal feed in your calendar software, the event should already be showing up in your calendar for that day.
The event is being organized by my friend Mehdi Lamloum.
Ekree, A Tunisian Portal To Rent Anything Online
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 26, 2009 – 2:58 pm | Comments
Ekree, which means rent in Tunisian Arabic, is a new Tunisian portal that allows people to post any of their items or belongings online for rent, and gives people who are interested the possibility to rent them.
By providing a platform for renting things online, Ekree aims to fill a gap in the market of classifieds and e-commerce sites, targeting people who can’t afford to buy a certain item, or who only need a certain thing temporarily; and also offering a way for people to make some money out of certain belongings of theirs.
The site is open for both individuals as well as businesses who want to use the site as a platform to provide their products for rent online in hopes of expanding their reach and making their products easier to find.
The interface is pretty straightforward and very similar in principle to any e-commerce site out there, with the only difference being that you rent instead of buy. Available items can be found organized under categories and subcategories or through the search engine, which allows users to filter by keyword, category, subcategories, location, price and more.
After finding an item of interest, the user will find rental conditions with it, and will be able to directly make a reservation to rent the item online from the site.
In order to build customer confidence, Ekree provides a full circle rating system enabling the rating of items/products, renters, and owners. Standardized rent contracts are also generated through the system to organize rentals happening through the system.
The portal is in French and available for Tunisia only for the time being, but should expand to other countries in the future.
Ekree was founded by Habib Redissi and Tarek Nachnouchi, who are behind a young company called World Easy Web that mainly targeted the European market, but is making its first step into the Tunisian market with Ekree.
# Ekree
Tunisian Business Portal Web Manager Center Launches Arabic Version
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 14, 2009 – 9:31 pm | Comments
Web Manager Center, the leading online portal for economic and business news in Tunisia just announced the launch of their Arabic version today.
Over the past years, the French version of the site has become a well known resource for business people and reporters alike.
This move comes to cater to readers from Tunisia who prefer reading their news in Arabic, as well as to reach out to readers from around the Arab world who are interested in economic and business news out of Tunisia.
Web Manager Center provides daily detailed news updates covering the latest developments and events in the areas of economy, business and technology.
The portal works on providing the latest news on the Tunisian economy and its various sectors from industry, to agriculture, to finance, services and healthcare. It also sheds light on the world of business in Tunisia, the deals taking place, investments and partnership opportunities. It also covers the information and communications technology sector in the country, detailing all the latest products and services in the market.
The site also provides a ticker of the latest stock prices on the Tunisian stock exchange, as well as exchange rates for the Arab currencies.
In short, just like the French version before it, the Arabic version of Web Manager Center aims to be a central resource on everything related to the Tunisian economy, business in the country, as well as technology, through the news and analysis it provides.
Damrej, A New Local Thematic Web Search Engine
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 13, 2009 – 11:43 am | Comments
Damrej is a newly launched thematic search engine developed to make it easier for users to look for different items they want to buy online, special offers, cars, properties, jobs and more.
Damrej takes a local approach, and has been launched for Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Egypt for the time being; with versions for the UAE and other countries to follow soon.
The services’ robots crawl different websites from the country building its indexes of shopping catalogs, jobs, real estate offers, cars and other types of classified ads; making them all searchable from one central point. The results provide some collected details about the item and point to the original website where the item or offer can be found.
Some merchants or classifieds services also provide an updated feed directly to Damrej to make it even easier to index their content and provide through the search engine.
Users can search by theme, narrow their search by using theme-specific filters, and get results from one or all online services depending on their choice. Related offers are also served up next to the items found through the search.
Tunisia: Number Of Internet Users Reaches 2.8 Million
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | January 29, 2009 – 10:39 pm | Comments
The number of internet users has reached nearly 2,8 Million and the ADSL networking rate stands at 11,1 Gigabits per second, said Mrs Lamia Chaffai Sghaier, the Secretary of State in charge of computers and free software at the opening of the first edition of “2009 Technology Days on information systems” (JTSI 2009), which began at the El Ghazala technological park a couple of days ago.
The aim of the event is to offer a space of exchange and reflection to the many economic stakeholders involved in ICT. JTSI 2009 presents a number of case studies, discussion panels and workshops.
The Secretary of State talked about the government’s push to boost ICT among industrial units with a view of increasing their competitiveness and creating employment opportunities; as well as the development of the ADSL basic infrastructure services, through the use of optic fibres, to cover 300 industrial areas.
She also said that the government has launched a program aimed at generalizing the use of the internet within the administration through the creation of specialized computer centres.
The setup of an integrated administrative network is currently underway, she said.
[Source: Tunisia Online News]
Tools4Com Launches Facebook Application For Their Online Invoicing System
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | December 24, 2008 – 1:26 pm | Comments
Tunis-based Tools4Com just released a new Facebook application for their online invoicing system Tools4Com OIS; that was previously reviewed here.
The Facebook application enables all Facebook users to generate invoices, quotations, pro forma invoices, and delivery notes in PDF format easily and directly from inside Facebook.
Users already registered with Tools4Com OIS can also access their list of documents and download them from the application as well.
The Tools4Com OIS facebook application is available in French only for the time being. The full service through the Tools4Com website is currently available in French and German, with English on the way, and Arabic planned for the future.
ReKrute.com Expands Into Tunisian Employment Market
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | December 17, 2008 – 10:59 pm | Comments
ReKrute.com, one of the leading online career portals in Morocco, that was launched from Casablanca in 2006, just expanded into the Tunisian market, recently opening an office in Tunis and launching a dedicated version of their portal.
Like other online job portals, ReKrute.com aims to continuously connect companies looking to recruit in Tunisia with the best candidates out there.
The portal is totally free for candidates searching for a job, hoping to become their main access point to the job market, providing them with fresh job offers, information on the Tunisian job market, career advice and tips, online language tests and more.
Of course, the possibility to just post their CVs to the portals database so that they can be found by employers is also possible.
For companies, ReKrute.com provides a global and flexible e-recruitment solution, that enables them to search through a database of CVs that match their exact needs, post their job vacancies and get in touch with the right potential employees for them.
All Job offers through the portal will also be reachable through the MSN Maghreb’s job section which is powered by ReKrute.com.
In order to promote ReKrute.com in Tunisia and increase its visibility, partnership agreements are being finalised with big media entities, as well as a number of important Tunisian and European universities.
Ramla Jamel, who previously was a channel manager at Intel Corp., is the general manager of ReKrute.com in Tunisia.
Mezed Expands Into Italian Market With BidBloom
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | December 6, 2008 – 4:21 pm | Comments
Mezed, the online auctions site that was launched by Tunisian startup La Référence in mid-2007, and that seems to be doing pretty well, is expanding into the Italian market through its recent launch of an Italian version of the site called ‘BidBloom‘.
BidBloom, applies the same auctions system and logic used in the Tunisian site, as well as the new design that was recently introduced.
Mezed was previously reviewed here, with details about their system, and how their auctions system works, but in short the system used by it and BidBloom is as follows: Users get to buy a number of “bids”, that they then place on an item, raising its price by a certain predefined amount and adding time to the life of the auction. The winner then pays the final amount that was reached for the item.
But I still don’t get why an online service has to go on pause, and not enable people to bid whenever they feel like it.
# BidBloom
