Startup news ticker: apps2you launches new app; Khalifa Fund organizes an SME event; new training program for women entrepreneurs
Welcome to Wamda's weekly startup news ticker, which will offer quick announcements and stories relevant to the region. If you have a quick news release to share about your startup, let us know at editor@wamda.com.
Thursday, October 10th
Building Bank of Beirut, apps2you’s newest releases
apps2you, the Lebanese app development company behind LAF Shield, is continuing its run of corporate and government apps, today releasing an app for the Bank of Beirut.
The Building Bank of Beirut app, which is available on Android and iOS, offers a variety of interactive features, including a 50 year timeline that allows users to “swipe left or right to go forward or backward in time, and even stop at interesting and important moments of the Timeline to read and watch a short video or check out some pictures,” the developers revealed.
Will the app get a smartphone crowd interesting in banking? Maybe they could launch
- RF
Khalifa Fund organizes a two-day event for SMEs
On the 8th and 9th of October 2013, Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development organized the Abu Dhabi Entrepreneurship Forum 2013, at the Abu Dhabi Exhibition Center.
As part of its goal to support young Emirati entrepreneurs, Khalifa Fund held a two-day event to give entrepreneurs the chance to discuss their challenges. The event was divided into several sessions about financing, microfinancing, e-learning for business education, youth and social inclusion. “After six years of experience at Khalifa Fund, we have developed the knowledge of what leads to the success of SMEs and the challenges that they face across different sectors, such as industries, services and retail”, Hussain Jassim El Nowais, Fund chairman, told The National.
- RF
Hadafi, a new skills training program for women entrepreneurs
Potential, an international business development company based in Dubai, has launched Hadafi, a skills training program for women entrepreneurs.
The program will be a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) designed to empower women in Saudi, which will expand to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa next year.
"We are very excited as we launch this program in Saudi Arabia to support Women in gaining essential business skills and knowledge. I would like to thank our generous partners Zain KSA and Harvey Nichols KSA that have enabled us to provide such a program for free,” Shadi Banna, Managing Partner of Potential, told the Saudi Gazette.
- RF
Rocket Internet expands real estate listing site Lamudi
Lamudi was recently launched by German startup factory Rocket Internet, and will officially start operating real estate listing services in twelve countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the coming months, consolidating its existing real estate properties under the Lamudi name.
Naturally, Rocket's focus is on speed. “Over the course of the past months, we successfully developed our real estate websites in several markets. The amount of traffic on our websites increased extremely fast which has allowed us to already sign many of the big real estate developers and agents in each of our countries,” said Erwin Sikma, the CEO of Lamudi Asia. “With the support and knowledge from Rocket Internet, we will grow Lamudi very fast.”
In the Middle East, the real estate portal will open in Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.
- RF
Taghreedat launches a new project to Arabize Foursquare
Last week, Taghreedat, a crowdsourcing initiative that seeks to Arabize digital content, announced the launch of their new project: Localizing Foursquare.
“We made a lot of efforts during the past period of time to do this partnership that we consider a great step for Arabic content,” said Taghreedat in a statement via email, “especially now that Foursquare users are over 40 million around the world, which makes it one of the most popular social network websites.”
Those interested in localizing, can start doing so by clicking on this link. For more information on the new feature, follow theire instructions here.
- RF
