Wamda

U.A.E

Halla Walla, on a mission to represent Arab culture through emojis

It took two months of intense research for Yasmin Rasool and Eriko Varkey to bring the stories of Shaikha, Lula, Waleed and Ahmed to life....

Arabic digital content Emojis halla walla

Tunisia

How Expensya built a business on partnerships

Expensya founder Karim Jouini said his success came down to good partnerships. “The number one reason to have partners...

expensya karim jouini startup

Kuwait

Accelerating entrepreneurship in Kuwait: small yet steady steps

This article is a crosspost from Nuwait. Although entrepreneurial ecosystems are not created overnight, Kuwait is on its way to...

kuwait Nuwait vision 2030

Tunisia

Entrepreneurship and marriage don’t mix in Tunisia

“I don’t plan to get married anytime soon,” teased Mohamed Ben Abdellah, 28, founder of ceramics startup El Houch. He...

wedding tunisia entrepreneurs

Egypt

Voxera beats roaming bill and VOIP ban

Voxera cofounder Amr El Gebaly arrived home after a holiday with his wife to a menu-like list of roaming charges on his phone bill. That...

Voxera data roaming charge VOIP ban

Regional

New startups on the block: April

Startups are launching faster than we can write about them, so here’s our list of raw newbies to...

new startups IoT ecommerce

Global

Tracking skateboard tricks from UAE to LA

Rideblock talks building a product in the UAE with a market in the US It was an argument over who had pulled off a better Ollie - a...

RideBlock uae Flat6Labs

Lebanon

Lebanon’s Smarke takes a second look at MENA

After a strongly MENA-backed crowdfunding campaign, Lebanese smart lock maker Smarke is reconsidering their target market. Smarke...

smart locks smarke lebanon

Palestine

Appmahal hopes for Middle Eastern chat app hit

Palestinian startup Appmahal has launched a localized version of Whatsapp, and hopes this will provide the competitive edge it needs in a...

Siha Whatsapp WeChat

Tunisia

Tunisian startup Datavora raises $470K

Tunisian startup Datavora, a specialist in ecommerce big data, has raised just over 1 million Tunisian dinars (US$467,000) in seed...

Tunisie Data ecommerce

U.A.E

Is a marketplace enough to penetrate UAE’s laundry services?

A woman gazes at her new purchase. ‘Lucky me’, a 1959 advert for washing machines says. And indeed lucky her. Rather than...

marketplaces get laundry Washmen

U.A.E

Young Emiratis use technology to improve quality of life in Dubai

The UAE entrepreneurial ecosystem is full of expats. Not hard to believe when taking in account the country’s population is...

innovation arabia uae emiratis

U.A.E

Sending money home with ease, Now Money [Wamda TV]

Expatriates in the UAE send a lot of money home. A lot. According to the World Bank’s migration and remittances factbook for 2016,...

Fintech now money uae

Saudi Arabia

GEM report reveals Saudi’s startup status [Opinion]

Click the 'download' button to the right to access this report. Saudi Arabia has embarked on a long-promised strategy to...

GEM Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Babson Global Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership

Morocco

Biodome fights gas with gas in Morocco

Fatima Zahra Beraich works in agriculture, a sector that’s dominated by men, in rural Moroccan areas rarely accustomed to seeing...

biodome compost morocco

Egypt

People still love print, says e-book startup Kotobna

Egyptian e-book platform Kotobna is breaking the stranglehold of traditional book publishers, but they are also finding that people still...

Kotobna Publishing e-publishing

U.A.E

Lawyering up getting easier with Dubai startup

When Armenian-Ukrainian Suzanna Kalendzhian started practicing as a lawyer in the Middle East in 2011, she saw a gap in the market....

uae law lawyers

Saudi Arabia

Tapping into social media: the story of Lucidya

Arabic content, be it news or software, has become massively popular, and one Saudi startup is mining that trend in social media...

Saudi Arabia ksa big data

U.A.E

Going postal in Dubai, finally

When Mohamed Al Araimi and Bello Abubakar built a grocery delivery startup they weren’t expecting it to create the backdrop for their...

gps pointr uae

Syria

Off-the-grid communication reassures loved ones during war [Q&A]

In Syria, after a bomb goes off, phone lines go down for at least 30 minutes leaving panicked families without a means to check...

syria Freecom Abdul Rahman Alashraf

Egypt

Signed, sealed: deliveries get tech'd in Cairo

Personal transport is easily the most popular sharing economy business in Egypt, as Uber, Careem and Ousta compete hard for market share,...

Bosta Oustaman Ousta

Regional

New startups on the block: March

Startups are launching faster than we can write about them, so here’s our list of raw newbies to...

new startups blinkapp instacar

United States

3D printed hope: new limbs for Syrian refugees

When Ibrahim Mohammad started selling juice in the streets of Lebanon at the age 12 to support his family, he made $0.5 a day. Back then,...

hult prize Ibrahim Mohammad Omar Soufan

Egypt

Tinder for business: Geomingle wants to send you on a ‘date’

Londoners have embraced the dating app with such passion that an Egyptian entrepreneur has built a spin off, which he hopes will have an...

GeoMingle tinder location-based networking

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