Tag: investment

Ras2Ras Social Rating Platform Acquired By Qatari Investor

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ras2rasRas2Ras, the Yemen-based online social rating and comparison platform, that was previously covered here, has been acquired by Qatari investor Ahmed Alaji.

Ras2Ras, which was founded by Amad Almsaodi in 2008, was built around a very simple yet really interesting idea: putting any two comparable things against each other, and letting people vote on which they like best.

Now, even though the tool’s idea is very simple in principle, it could be used for a number of research and user engagement purposes by businesses, with the potential to be a source of some really interesting and useful insights and information.

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AppsArabia, An Arabic Mobile Applications Development Fund

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appsarabiaAbu Dhabi’s twofour54 has recently announced it will be launching a new investment fund called ‘AppsArabia‘, which promotes and supports mobile app development throughout the Middle East and North Africa using the Software Development Kits (SDKs) of all the major mobile and online platforms (e.g. Android (Google), iPhone OS (Apple), BlackBerry, Facebook, OpenSocial and Ovi (Nokia)).

The fund will be offered by twofour54 ibtikar, which provides funding and support to start-up and early stage Arabic content initiatives.

AppsArabia is led by David Ashford, and the plan for it is to invest in the best ideas for apps from entrepreneurs, app developers and businesses, and provide commercial guidance, resources and marketing support to make these apps successful.

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What major obstacle did you face while looking to fund your project? [Poll Results]

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In the latest poll on StartUpArabia, the question that was addressed to the entrepreneur readers was:

What major obstacle did you face while looking to fund your project?

The result of reader voting came out as follows:

Major obstacles getting funding

Out of 89 readers who responded to the poll:

– 37% of them responded that it was initiating contact with potential investors
– 29% said it was allocating and finding the right investors
– 18% think it was measuring the seriousness of the investors
– 8% believe it was the cost of connecting with investors (traveling and attending conferences …etc)

The remaining 7% cited other obstacles.

What do you think? Do you share the same view? What solutions do you see for these obstacles?

Abraaj Capital Acquires Riyada Ventures To Lead New SME Push

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Abraaj Capital

Riyada Ventures

Abraaj Capital, the Dubai-based private equity firm has announced that it has signed a deal to fully acquire Riyada Ventures, the venture capital firm based in Jordan.

The acquisition is at the core of a new push by Abraaj into the small and medium enterprise (SME) space, which is aimed at stimulating and supporting entrepreneurial activity in this vital segment of the MENA region’s economies.

Riyada Ventures, which was set up in the Jordanian capital, Amman, in 2005, and has an office in Cairo, just won the ‘Venture Capital Firm of the Year’ award for a second straight year at the Private Equity World MENA 2009 conference in Dubai just a few days ago.

Following the acquisition, Riyada will be folded into Abraaj and renamed Riyada Enterprise Development Company (REDCO), with Khaldoon Tabaza, the Riyada chief executive, continuing at the helm.

This new subsidiary will be investing growth capital in small and medium-sized businesses, with plans for Abraaj to provide $200m of its own capital, with expectations that amount will grow much larger.

The company will provide what Arif Naqvi, the chief executive of Abraaj, called “patriotic capital” through partnerships with governments in the region to foster the expansion of small and medium-sized businesses.

REDCO will try to follow on the footsteps of Abraaj’s earlier SME successes, including the shipping and logistics firm Aramex and internet company Maktoob, which was recently acquired by Yahoo!.

For companies in which it invests, Abraaj will provide a dedicated back-office platform to offer both strategic support services and operational functionality to facilitate growth plans and provide mentorship to the young entrepreneurs in the SME space, which comprises more than 80% of economic activity across the MENA region.

The acquisition comes at an active period for Abraaj, which also announced it had raised $375 Million, increasing its capital to $1.5 Billion, aiming for property investments in the region and looking to broaden its asset management offerings.

UAE Based NeuString Receives Investment From Intel Capital

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NeuStringIntel Capital, Intel Corporation’s global investment arm, earlier announced an investment in NeuString, a leading UAE-based telecommunications analyst software company, further reaffirming Intel Capital’s commitment to investing in the region.

The funding from Intel Capital is to assist NeuString in pursuing regional growth and development plans in addition to extending the company’s product offerings.

NeuString is a billing software company dedicated to delivering predictive analytics solutions and consulting services to mobile network operators to help them achieve greater financial performance.

NeuString currently has offices in the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Russia, and Ukraine.

The investment in NeuString follows five previous Intel Capital investments in the Middle East this year: two Jordan-based digital content companies − Jeeran and ShooFeeTV; and three UAE-based technology companies – Conservus International FZ-LLC, Pulse Technologies FZ-LLC, and Vertex Animation Studio FZ-LLC.

As has become customary in this part of the world, for some unclear reason, the amount of this investment was yet again not disclosed.

Under the Intel Capital program, Intel plans to continue supporting local entrepreneurship in the Middle East through its investments in education, digital accessibility and specialized technical competencies. The purpose being to help promote technology skills, knowledge transfer and job creation in the region.

4SITE Forum (Sustainability, Innovation, Technology & Entrepreneurship) – Beirut – November 17-18th 2009

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4SITE Forum4SITE Forum (Investing in Sustainability, Innovation, Technology & Entrepeneurship) is an event being held in Beirut, Lebanon, bringing together over 200 investors, innovators, and entrepreneurs in Lebanon and the Middle East region. The goal of the event is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship towards sustainable economic development and social impact.

The event is organized by RootSpace and Baraka Group in conjunction with Global Entrepreneurship Week (a yearly event taking place in November in over 80 countries worldwide), and will be held over two days, full of participatory panels, keynotes, workshops, demonstrations, and networking.

The event will be taking place at Bayt El-Tabib Conference Center in Beirut, Lebanon, on November 17-18th. The plan is for this event to be the first in a series of other 4SITE Forums to take place around the region.

The keynote speakers at the event include Joi Ito, the CEO of Creative Commons, John Wilbanks, the CEO of Science Commons, and Rabea Ataya, the CEO of Bayt.com.

Besides the fixed program, there are some slots in the schedule that are planned for Barcamp-style presentations and demos by the participants.

The full program schedule for the event can be viewed online at the official website here: 4SITE Forum Schedule. Tickets to the event can be bought here.

Along with the event, 4SITE Forum and Hibr are also hosting the Global Innovation Tournament (GIT), an initiative of Global Entrepreneurship Week, in Lebanon, with this year’s challenge being to come up with a way to make saving money fun, in light of the current global recession.

Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority To Launch Global Technology Fund

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Dubai Silicon Oasis AuthorityDubai Silicon Oasis Authority (DSOA), the region’s largest integrated technology park, is planning to launch a global technology fund middle of next year.

“Some of the investments will be from ourselves, some from local and regional investors and also international investors,” said Ray Milhem, the new chief technology officer of technology investment at DSOA.

He said, it will largely target companies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, as well as global companies. The fund’s amount has not been finalised yet.

The fund is another means to attract research and development and manufacturing companies to set up a base in Dubai Silicon Oasis. And they are already talking to a number of companies to establish manufacturing in Dubai Silicon Oasis, with a concentration on start-ups.

Even though the focus is on the Middle East and North Africa, there are some start-ups in Europe and North America that they are looking at for potential investments, in order to get them to open higher-engineering offices in Dubai Silicon Oasis.

Earlier, the authority announced a budget of Dh25 billion set aside for investment in the coming years at DSOA. The whole project has already attracted foreign investments worth Dh1.4 billion. It has set aside about Dh500 million to invest in start-ups that will be spent over the next five years.

Additionally, private investment into real estate at DSOA is Dh13 billion, while Dh10 billion is budgeted for the third phase of the project’s development.

According to Milhem, the authority is in talks with several companies and should be making some decisions and announcing some deals soon.

[Source: Gulf News]

Twofour54 Ibtikar Launches Creative Lab Media Industry Grant Fund For Young Arabs

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twofour54twofour54 ibtikar, the media industry funding and support pillar of twofour54 Abu Dhabi, has launched twofour54 ibtikar: creative lab, a grant funding scheme aimed at engaging with young Arabs and stimulating creativity in order to build a long term sustainable media industry in the Arab world.

twofour54 ibtikar: creative lab offers grant funding and business support to talented Arab individuals from the UAE and across the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region, helping great media and entertainment ideas that would benefit from seed funding, development guidance and planning to get off the ground.

It offers funds ranging from US$1,000 to US$50,000 for creative and original ideas across all media platforms including television, radio, film, publishing, online, mobile, music, gaming and animation.

twofour54 ibtikar: creative lab and young Arab funding recipients will engage in regular brainstorming sessions to develop ideas into fully fledged creative projects. A key part of this collaborative process will include budget creation and training in project execution and support throughout.

Tarek Ghattas, twofour54 ibtikar: creative lab manager, added: “We want people to come forward with their media and entertainment ideas. We are looking for passion and originality and there is no such thing as a bad idea. This is an opportunity for young Arabs to unleash their inner creativity and have a go at turning vision into reality – coming to us means never having to look back and wonder what you could have been.”

twofour54 ibtikar: creative lab expands twofour54 ibtikar’s funding portfolio, which also includes ibtikar ventures, an investment fund that focuses on start-up and early stage media and entertainment initiatives.

Talasim One Of Six Winners At Seedcamp Week 2009

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SeedcampSeedcamp has announced the six winners of this year’s edition of Seedcamp Week, after an intense week of mentoring in London by a diverse mentor, investor and entrepreneur network.

TalasimAmong the six winners is Jordanian startup Talasim, an online social network and photo sharing service for comedy/funny content, which was founded by Zeid Koudsi and Sabri Hakim, and is one of the projects leading Arab UGC portal Jeeran invested in and incubated.

Each of the six winning teams will be receiving a €50k investment from Seedcamp and active support over the next three months to help develop their products and companies. In return Seedcamp should be taking a stake worth between 5-10% of each company.

These next three months will be spent in London, with the winning teams working with the Seedcamp team on building the product and company together, and with the teams provided access to services worth 2-3 times the invested €50K, with the goal of helping grow and nurture the teams, and putting in-depth focus on developing the product and business.

During the course of these three months, the groups will also have an opportunity to take advantage of the same group of experts that participated in the Seedcamp week through weekly dinners, topical lunches, conferences, and continued mentorship on various issues. They’ll also get to demo their products to other groups from Seedcamp as well as potential investors in two events along the way.

The other 5 winners are: Boxed Ice (UK), Brainient (Romania), Codility (Poland), Erply (Estonia) and Patients Know Best (UK).

What major obstacle did you face while looking to fund your project? [Poll]

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A new poll has gone live on StartUpArabia, you can find it on the sidebar on the right or vote straight from this post.

This poll is more targeted at startups and entrepreneurs who have sought funding for their project/business at one point or another, and tries to determine what kinds of obstacles they faced while doing that.

What major obstacle did you face while looking to fund your project?

Feel free to further expand on your response in the comments section of this post.