13 Middle East startups going to Web Summit 2014
Transterra Media - Lebanon
Transterra Media is an online marketplace modeled as e-commerce platform where journalists and news entities can come together, exchanging ideas about potential stories, negotiating prices, and eventually placing and filling orders. Journalists are able to pitch stories to organizations like Transterra, who then vet and prepare them for sale. Editors at news entities can also commission very specific stories – packages for television, online video, or print – from a pool of journalists.
Careem - United Arab Emirates
Careem is a private car booking service that upgrades the way people travel around town, making arranging transportation reliable, personal, safe and convenient. Users can order a car online or using the mobile app, track their rides in real-time, pay with credit cards, and access receipts online. Careem will be participating in the START showcase at this year’s Web Summit.
eKtab – Jordan
eKtab is the first and largest Arabic electronic book marketplace and publishing company on the internet. Combining both Arabic and translated, international, political, cultural, historical, literature and poetry books, eKtab facilitates the process of finding, downloading, purchasing and reading Arabic books online. They also offer Arabic read-aloud childrens books, contributing to developing the knowledge, comprehension and critical thinking skills of children in the Arab world.
Drawdeck - United Arab Emirates
Drawdeck is an online community that connects emerging artists, companies and art-lovers, allowing them to discover, collaborate and buy and sell artwork. By creating a portfolio on Drawdeck, artists can put their work online and in front of the right audience, giving them the potential to start selling prints and original artwork straight away.
Feelit - Saudi Arabia
Feelit is a social app that allows users to share their feelings on a timeline. Users can see the trending feelings in colourful bubbles that grow and shrink based on the feelings of everyone using Feelit. Instead of giving away ‘likes’, the Feelit community exchanges ‘hugs’ with the hug button at the bottom of every post.
Kalboard360 – Jordan
Kalboard360 is a cloud-based learning management system (LMS) focused on engaging students by making the school e-learning experience simple to use, rewarding and mobile. The platform is based around a distributed learning approach where face-to-face engagement between teachers and pupils is essential, while also involving parents and school management in the learning experience. Built-in reporting tools mean that the learning experience can be analysed regularly, allowing the educational process to be further improved for each student.
Shopbuilder - Lebanon
Shopbuilder lets users build their own online store without the need for any programming or design skills. Their goal is to provide a highly simplified but efficient online tool to help small business owners create their own website to sell online, as well as making eCommerce more available across the MENA region at the most affordable price possible.
Foona Review – United Arab Emirates
Foona Review is a social network and online directory for food, bringing foodies and eateries together on a free platform where restaurants, recipes, reviews & experiences can be discovered & shared. By offering a public space Foona empowers users to establish standards and expectations for eateries to follow, while giving eateries a space to build a following. Foona also provides Kickstarter chefs a space to contribute, grow and develop a following.
Red Troops – Jordan
Red Troops describes itself as the eBay for In-App Advertising, bridging the gap between app developers and advertisers. The platform is a mobile marketing community focused on empowering app developers with a dedicated set of tools to eventually democratise mobile marketing and rid the world of excessive advertisement costs.
Guiddoo – United Arab Emirates
Guiddoo is an interactive travel app that provides virtual audio and visual tours that aim to enrich travellers’ trips though personalised tour experiences. Passionate about travel and adventure, the team’s mission is to create a personalized tour guide available to them as and when they need it. The platform aims to continuously add new attractions and services for the travel community to explore.
AwfarShi – Lebanon
AwfarShi is an offer aggregation website designed to help consumers find brick and mortar and online offers in their local market, helping users cut down on the amount of time they spend trawling the web for retail's best deals.