StartUpArabia – Page 49 – Everything About Arab Startups And Entrepreneurs

Info2cell Launch SMS and MMS Content Services In Sudan

July 19, 2008July 19, 2008 MMM

Info2cell.com, the leading mobile application service provider in the Middle East, has launched mobile short message (SMS) and multimedia messaging (MMS) content services in Sudan through a joint venture with ADU Communication Technology, a local telecommunications specialist.

The partnership will see high-quality SMS and MMS content services for the booming domestic mobile telecommunications market in Sudan, covering several categories including news, sports, Islamic and entertainment content; BBC SMS News and Sport and DUOA Islamic channel with audio MMS are presently supported.

Recent projects launched under the new services include the LAKI and Women in Islam channels and full coverage of Euro 2008 via SMS and MMS. Additional planned services are ringtones, Java games and the introduction of ‘Magalati’, the first SMS magazine in the country.

Info2cell.com’s subscription base continues to expand significantly around the Arab world, with a further 23.3 percent increase expected by the end of 2008.

Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition Nominated Teams Announced

July 18, 2008July 18, 2008 MMM

The nominated teams have been announced for the third iteration of the Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC), which aims to be a driving force for entrepreneurship and innovation in Jordan.

The following are the names of the nominated teams, who have successfully passed the first stage and will compete for the QRNEC awards for this year.

Academia Entrepreneurs:
– VStock Exchange
– Friends
– Genesis JO
– ELSIRAJ
– SAFEtech
– YAMAMA
– Mis
– biotechnology
– JUST team
– GREEN LIGHT POWER
– Jeeks
– ecgteam
– Innovational Team
– Human Heater

Mature Entrepreneurs:
– Grooshat
– Populace Ads
– Talasim.com Team
– ProcHub
– TrueI
– Monitoring Systems
– F1 “Help at the Click of a Button”
– National Center for Electronic Care (NCEC)
– Royal Scientific Society & Dr.Farqad F.M.Saeed
– Energy & Environmental Technologies
– MIDA Technologies
– HubbleDesk
– Saba Fawzi Mohammad Al Nsairat
– Biomedical Engineer
– KEENWASH

These nominated teams will be receiving advanced training courses and mentorship.

# QRNEC Results

Tvosz.com, New Egyptian Video Sharing Service

July 17, 2008July 17, 2008 MMM 6 Comments

Tvosz.com is a new Cairo-based online video sharing service, which aims to be an alternative video sharing website for Egyptian and global internet users alike, and a place for family-friendly content.

Anyone can have access to upload, download, view, share and experience everything from short clips captured on mobile phones all the way up to full-length, high-definition feature films.
However all videos are submitted for approval by the website’s team to ensure that all posted content is family-friendly non-offensive material.

Every video available on Tvosz is compatible with over all major manufacturers’ consumer electronics devices, making it easy to play back videos anytime anywhere.

Videos can be made public to be shared with the whole world or private for sharing with family and friends, whom they can invite and connect with through the websites social networking functionalities.

Finding interesting videos to watch is really easy by navigating through the several channels and groups; surfing through the different tags; checking out the latest, most watched, top rated or some randomly chosen videos; and of course also by searching the website using the built-in search engine.

Users can leave comments on videos, rate them, add them to their favorites, and even download them to their desktops, which is something other video sharing services don’t usually natively offer.
Users can also always go back and find videos they’ve watched by visiting their online playlists.

In the same spirit of sharing, videos from Tvosz can be directly posted to users’ favorite social bookmarking services; or embedded in users’ blogs or homepages easily using a provided bit of code.

The website is very well designed, organized and really easy to use. The interface is in English only for the time being.

Tvosz was launched from Cairo, Egypt, by Ahmed Samir, Osama Awwad and A. Abdel Aziz.

# Tvosz.com

Synergos Middle East & North Africa Social Innovators Program

July 16, 2008July 16, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

In October 2007 Synergos launched the Middle East and North Africa Social Innovators Program, with funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors. The three-year initiative seeks to identify and support twenty individuals from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine who are implementing successful social projects.

In order to be considered for selection, a candidate must be implementing an idea that has demonstrated positive social change and impact at a local level with the potential for replication in other communities and expansion to a national level. Social innovations will be considered which have as a focus one or more of the following fields; economic, social, or sustainable development; health; education; and culture.

The Program will invest in these Social Innovators through professional development and financial support to better enable participants to transform their small-scale projects into sustainable programs and organizations.

The selected Social Innovators will have access to training, mentoring and peer learning through a network of professionals and social entrepreneurs to help build financial and organizational sustainability for your innovation; as well as facilitation of connections to business, government, philanthropic and other civil society leaders in the area and across the world to leverage their innovation and make a greater impact. Financial awards of up to $17,000 per year, for two years, are also offered to help develop the winner’s social ventures.

The application period for the Social Innovators program began in early May 2008 and goes on until mid-September.

For more details about the program and project submission, check out the official program website: Synergos Social Innovators Program.

Sukuk.net, Online Islamic Finance Portal

July 15, 2008July 15, 2008 MMM 1 Comment

Sukuk.net is a new online financial portal dedicated to “Sukuk” (Islamic Bonds), and Islamic financing, that aims to be the definitive source of information on the global Sukuk market and the premier online destination for the Sukuk industry providing investors, financial services professionals, researchers and institutions with up to date market information.

It also hopes to go one step further by providing investors with all the tools necessary to understand the market and analyse the competition and market data; and assisting firms in developing strategies, market forecasting and identifying new business and investment opportunities.

Users can track global Sukuk activity, market data and register for market tracking analysis tools. The website’s Sukuk Wire also provides an up to the minute feed of the latest news and information on global Sukuk.

The launch of this portal is in response to a growing number of investors and enterprises seeking Shariah compliant funding and general public interest in Islamic finance; The Sukuk market, in particular, is seeing rapid growth and Sukuk paper has the advantage of competitive pricing as a risk-mitigation structure.

Sukuk.net is a Dubai and Jeddah based initiative formed through a joint venture between Siraj Capital Ltd., a leading Saudi based Islamic asset management company, and alClick Ltd., a leading provider of online advertising and marketing services in the Gulf region.

# Sukuk.net

Interview With Twffaha Co-Founder & CEO Ashraf Mansoor

July 14, 2008July 14, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

Before anything, I’d really like to thank Ashraf Mansoor, the co-founder and CEO of Twffaha, the job portal for Arab women, which was previously reviewed here, for taking some of his time to answer our questions about Twffaha, and give us more insight into the startup, how things have been going so far, as well as sharing some tips and advice for other entrepreneurs.

How would you describe Twffaha in your own words?

Twffaha is an endeavor to endorse and promote recruiting women in the Middle East. It is an online job portal that strives to provide women job seekers with state-of-the art tools, and tips that will help them unearth jobs in accordance with their skills and qualifications. A platform for employers to land their next greatest prospect, and a belief that women are an underrated asset that if recruited properly will guide to economic growth and sustainability in the Middle East.

How did you get the idea for Twffaha? And what made you feel passionate about this specific idea?

The idea for Twffaha came in late 2007. We came across different studies that showed the rate of recruiting women in the region is far beyond the international rates. At the time we were designing a job portal for a different purpose, and then we thought we need to find a niche in order to compete with the numerous job portals in the market, that’s when we decided to launch an exclusive women job portal, and came up with the name Twffaha.

What difficulties or challenges did you face making Twffaha a reality?

As an Arabic startup you are destined to face challenges. The atmosphere is not conductive for startups. One of the problems was finding the right people who believed in the idea and who can be a driving force. We also encountered major outages during our public beta that forced us to reconsider our infrastructure, and find new reliable partners. We believe problems are an integral part of a startup structure, so we embrace them.

The True Entrepreneur Is A Doer Not A Dreamer

July 12, 2008July 12, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

“The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.

— Nolan Bushnell ; founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s

Middle East & Africa Mobile Revenues To Hit $107 Billion By 2013

July 11, 2008July 11, 2008 MMM 1 Comment

Mobiles Operator-billed service revenues across the Africa & Middle East region are expected to rise to more than $107 billion in 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research.

The report found that growth would be driven by mobile data services, fueled by the greater availability and wider variety of rich-media content coupled with lower browsing costs.

However, it noted that regional operator-billed voice revenues were likely to peak in 2011 and would subsequently fall away due to increasingly competitive pricing in that sector.

Other findings from the Juniper Research report include:

The Middle East/Africa mobile user base is to grow at an average annual rate of 10.5% between 2008 and 2013.

Mobile data services are expected to contribute 24% of operator-billed service revenues in 2013, against just 9% in 2008.

Saudi Arabia will provide the largest share of cumulative regional revenues over the forecast period, followed by Nigeria.

The detailed report provides in-depth coverage and forecasts for six key Africa & Middle East markets (Egypt, Israel, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates) as well as for the region as a whole. It also includes regional overviews for key revenue drivers including mobile advertising, mobile entertainment services, mobile financial services and mobile ticketing.

Whitepapers and further details of the study ‘Mobile Africa & Middle East: Opportunities, Markets & Forecasts 2008-2013’ can be freely downloaded from Juniper Research.

If anything, I think these numbers show the potential the mobile data services market in the Middle East and Africa holds, and that it could be a very lucrative market for startups in the region, who can use the growth in this sector to fuel their own business growth.

# Juniper Research Press Release

MBR Foundation Center For Entrepreneurship and Innovation In American University Of Beirut

July 10, 2008July 10, 2008 MMM

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation today announced plans to establish a new center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Olayan School of Business, American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, as part of its continuous efforts to instill the spirit of entrepreneurship in the Arab world.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, aiming to serve as a regional nucleus for entrepreneurship research and knowledge dissemination in the Arab world, will be established in collaboration with AUB with an endowment of AED18.3 million (nearly US$5 million).

Under the agreement, the Foundation and AUB’s Olayan School of Business will combine forces to support and develop entrepreneurship-related research, training material and expertise in the Arab world. Through the new centre, the Foundation and AUB will also work towards enhancing regional business capabilities, leading to a better understanding of current and future entrepreneurial activity and challenges in the region.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation will develop and provide research and training materials fostering entrepreneurship and innovation in the Arab World, thereby contributing to creating conditions conducive to furthering employment and supporting economic activity across the region. Additionally, it will conduct regional entrepreneurship studies to identify barriers to entrepreneurship that individuals, business leaders, corporations and governments can help alleviate.

The center will also serve as a knowledge center for e-students, entrepreneurs and policy-makers by providing entrepreneurship sector analysis, country analysis, profiling and policy recommendations, regular data surveys, as well as relevant business case studies.

Operating as an open source institution for its published output, the centre will offer access to its resources to eligible entrepreneurs, researchers and relevant stakeholders as determined through mutually agreed criteria set by the Foundation and the AUB.

Aimed at promoting job growth and business creation in the region, the Foundation seeks to develop entrepreneurship programmes that facilitate business mentorship, expertise and services among successful and aspiring entrepreneurs. In developing a series of related programmes that support young businesses, the Foundation aims to assist emerging entrepreneurs to explore, identify and seize potential business opportunities across the Arab world.

As part of its efforts to support regional centres dedicated to advancing business education and supporting young enterprises, the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation recently signed key partnership agreements with a number of leading organisations and educational bodies across the Arab world including the Dubai-based Young Arab Leaders (YAL), Al Akhawayan University in Morocco, and the Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI) in Palestine.

# More: Zawya