Archive for the ‘United Arab Emirates’ Category
Video: Online Shopping Portal Nahel.com At Dubai Tech Nights
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 24, 2010 – 1:09 pm |
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Nahel.com is an online shopping portal based out of Dubai, United Arab Emirates; that aims to become the biggest B2C online retailer in the region.
Nahel.com was founded by Saeid Hejazi, and was officially launched in July 2009. It currently only covers the UAE, although there are plans to expand to the GCC region, with hopes to reach the whole Middle East in the future.
They’ve worked on building an inventory of thousands of new brand-name products covering several categories, from electronics, to games to perfumes, watches and clothing. They source products from wholesalers and distributors in order to be competitive in terms of selection, quality and prices.
N2V Announces Investment In Emirati Startup Yebab
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 23, 2010 – 1:27 pm | View Comments
National Net Ventures N2V, one of the top internet groups in the Middle East just announced its investment in Yebab.com, the Arab portal specialized in organizing wedding celebrations in the United Arab Emirates.
Rashid Al Ballaa, CEO of N2V, stated that the project comes in line with the group’s current and future plans to expand its presence at the regional and the international levels. The plan is obviously to enhance the portal’s growth and presence, expanding it into other Arab Gulf countries, and the rest of the Middle East region, establishing it as the most trusted wedding directory in the Arab world.
Yebab.com, which was launched from the UAE in 2009, has proven really successful in the UAE, becoming a leading portal providing a directory of wedding services in the country; including listings for the various suppliers and services from caterers to dressmakers, artists, photographers and traditional musicians. The site shows strong potential to perform just as well and more in other markets around the region.
DuShare: A Simple P2P Direct File Transfer Service
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 17, 2010 – 10:53 am | View Comments
duShare is a simple P2P direct file transfer service that aims to make the act of sending files between people as easy and effective as possible.
The service enables users to send files of unlimited size to one another though the system, and without having to go through uploading the file to a central server in the process. File transfers are handled through a peer to peer, secure direct transfer connection between the sender and the receiver.
Also as connections are direct between users and don’t go through any central server, files and chats aren’t monitored or viewed by duShare, which gives users a bit of extra privacy.
Cobone, A Group Buying Venture From Jabbar Internet Group
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 13, 2010 – 2:43 pm | View Comments
Cobone is a new startup that is looking at using the power of group purchasing in order to offer its users the best deals, allowing them to save on the things they want.
Cobone aims to offer online shoppers in the Middle East region one deal everyday from every city’s best hotels, goods, services, meals, spas and more; with savings they say will start at 50%.
Shoppers are encouraged to invite friends, colleagues and family to join in on daily deals so as to increase their own chances of successfully making a purchase. Customers will also be given the flexibility to purchase coupons for themselves or their friends using a selection of online payment options, from credit cards to other options like CashU (another Jabbar company) and PayPal.
AnaZahra, 32-year-old Zahrat Al Khaleej gone online? Or is it a step in conversion?
Saleh Esmaeili | July 21, 2010 – 9:25 am | View Comments
Abu Dhabi Media Company(ADMC) is “the” pioneer in the digital publishing space in the Middle East, hands down. New digital platform? They implement n’ use it before anyone else. A media company that techno-geeks love to love. Apart from owning some of the best performing titles in print they’ve been busy going digital as fast as they could and in full steam.
AnaZahra is ADMC’s latest addition to their digital/online portfolio of titles. AnaZahra was introduced as Zahrat Al Khaleej’s branch online, or the Online version of the same magazine? It could get one confused as ADMC introduced a new business unit headed by celebrity Zoya Sakr. It was launched with Zahrat Al Khaleej’s brand used as an endorser and a sister brand, even AnaZahra’s branding borrows from Zahrat Al Khaleej, but then once you go online, print content and online are worlds of differences.
Video: Book Trader For Buying And Selling Text Books At DemoCamp Dubai
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 2, 2010 – 11:48 am | View Comments
Book Trader is a project that was launched by two students at the American University of Dubai, Alexander Fuchs and Jamal Al Bloushi. It’s a website that allows students to buy and sell their used textbooks, the idea being to enable students to save some money on books and make some money out of their used ones.
The website is only available within the AUD (American University of Dubai) campus for the time being, but the founders hope to be able to expand it to other universities and publicly for all students.
As is the case with other online trading services, students can go onto the site and add the books they have and want to sell, putting in all the details for them and how much they want to sell them for. On the other hand, users can search through the site for books they have to buy for their courses and find what available options exist, what their prices are and pick what they need..
Monaqasat, An Online Tender Process Management Platform
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 1, 2010 – 4:11 pm | View Comments
Monaqasat is an online tendering service that covers all middle eastern markets, and aims to be a central hub for all tendering activities, from sharing of documents to online bidding.
The idea is to enable users to manage their tendering and procurement process in an easy, efficient and secure way; catering to the needs of all types of institutions of all sizes and industries in the Middle East region.
Monaqasat aims at offering a full experience to the institutions using it, by implementing the complete tendering process, allowing its users to create tenders, invite stakeholders, submit and review tender documents, submit their online bids and automatically generate tender reports the instant the tender is completed, all from the confort of their own offices.
Video: Twtrtales Collaborative Story Writing Through Tweets At DemoCamp Dubai
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 30, 2010 – 2:20 pm | View Comments
Twtrtales is a new project that was launched out of the UAE, which aims to enable collaborative story writing through tweets.
Users would basically get to start a new hashtag for a story, and then they’d start contributing to writing the story one tweet at a time by appending that hashtag. On the site, readers would be able to say whether they like a specific contribution or not, and through that decide what goes into the story and what doesn’t.
So in essence, it’s a new kind of publishing platform that hopes to unite tweeters/writers of all kinds, to create and tell stories, which could be general stories or written for a specific cause.
Video: Loomni Presents Education Project At DemoCamp Dubai
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 29, 2010 – 11:48 am | View Comments
Loomni is a new service for the region that aims to empower continuing education, making it more accessible and affordable to everyone. The service was previously reviewed here.
The overall idea of the startup is to fill the existing gap and provide learning opportunities for people who can’t afford expensive courses, nor have the time to spend locked up for long hours in a training venue somewhere.
It aims to do this by providing focused practical courses delivered in 90 minutes, at a fraction of the price available in the market, by working with another profile of instructors, mainly experts on certain fields who can share their knowledge and experience, educating people about their areas of expertise, but also helping market themselves and their services along the way.
Video: The Question Company Presents SMS Based Q&A Service At DemoCamp Dubai
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 26, 2010 – 11:58 am | View Comments
The Question Company is a UAE based company that provides a question and answer sms-based service, that enables users in the UAE to sms any question to them and get an answer back in a few minutes time.
The guidelines to use the service are really simple, you basically just think of a question, text it to the number 4644 and then wait for them to send you the reply back. The target on their side is to have replies sent out in less than 10 minutes, and they say their current average is 6.55 minutes.
The service is available for both Etisalat and Du subscribers and costs 3 Dirhams per question, answering all types of questions, but refraining from providing any legal, financial or medical advice.
