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CONTENT 2
The Latest Industry News
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What’s the Deal with Wearables?
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Regional Games
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30
The Future of the Agencies
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Ad Tech Terms Decoded
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Let’s Talk Font
Regional Hardware Innovation
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It’s Viral
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Disruptive Technology
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The Social Enterprise Is Here
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Useful Apps for Transportation
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Crowdfund Investing
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Bitcoin and the Rise of New Markets
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The Perfect Business Pitch
A quick run-down of the latest updates in the sector and a wrap up of the most recent ArabNet events Discover the evolution of wearable computing and how we are moving towards a wearable future
As more mobile games are developed in the region, we bring you a list of the freshest and greatest to keep you up-to-date We list 5 hardware innovations in the region that you should know We explore how 3D printing is disrupting traditional industries A round-up of taxi-booking apps being available to MENA residents A look at a few revolutionary applications of Bitcoin
A look at how creative and media agencies should adapt to a changing market
Helping you make sense out of digital advertising jargon Key Things to Consider When Designing an Arabic Font and Typeface Digital ad campaigns are on the roll. We list 7 that recently went viral Social networks are inevitable in modern enterprises. Here’s why Are you planning to raise a crowdfund campaign? Here are 8 key factors to ensure your success These tips can help anyone pitch like a pro
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Banks Go Digital
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Education Goes Digital
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Digital Marketing Startup
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Reinventing the Supermarket
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The $100,000 Mistake of Arab Entrepreneurs
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Emerging Alternative Payment Methods
An analysis of how banks are gearing up for a digitized economy A study of the impact of mobile content and commerce on the education market Will the Arab Region See More Brick-and-Mortar Supermarkets Shift Online?
An interview with Sahar Salama on the direct billing solution offered by T-Pay
GET IN TOUCH
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Regional Startups
A list of new startups launching in the region Will Ta3rifah’s loyalty program and behavior analysis monitor succeed where others have failed?
Here’s how to get investors dig deep in their pockets
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Things I Learned in London
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The Rise of the Big Fund
ArabNet’s CEO gives a first-hand account on how Europe’s tech capital is nurturing its startup ecosystem As more funds are being raised in the region, industry leaders debate their ramifications
It is with great pleasure that we present to you the second edition of The Quarterly with uplifted content and design. Whether you’re a tech guru, a business executive, a media professional, or an aspiring entrepreneur, you will find something to catch your eye. As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback, and if you wish to become a contributor writer, send me an email or contact me on Twitter. Lara Chaaya, Managing Editor
Follow me @ChaayaLara lara@arabnet.me
Industry stories
Useful Apps for Transportation
Latest News in the Industry
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Souq.com Raises $75M, Launches Marketplace University Souq.com, the biggest Arabic e-commerce platform, has received $75 million from Naspers, Africa’s largest media company, after investing $40 million dollars back in 2012. These investments make Naspers an owner of a 36% stake in the business. In related news, Souq.com revealed the launch of Egypt’s first Online Marketplace University by means of two inaugural programs: “Marketplace E-Commerce Entrepreneurship Program”, and “The Marketplace Incubator”. Souq.com Egypt will provide the essential apparatus so entrepreneurs can transform their ideas into profiting businesses, including shared office space, access to content & production, daily courier services, storage space at one of the company’s offices in Maadi, Cairo, and the advice of mentors through workshops.
MEVP Raises $50M and Invests in 6 New Startups MEVP raised a 50 Million USD fund, known as the IMPACT fund, based on the BDL circular 331 through 8 Lebanese banks and 15 co-investors. The fund will invest in startups in both the ICT and creative sectors in the region. MEVP also announced 6 new investments: $1M in Fadel Partners, $1M in Potential, $600k in Apstrata (known as Alamanta), an unrevealed amount in Instabug and Bnooki, and $500M in Lamsaworld. The 6 up-and-coming startups have guaranteed 150 new jobs so far and raised the total number of MEVP ventures to 21.
UTURN Partners Up with Yahoo Maktoob to Expand Video Platform UTURN partnered up with Yahoo Maktoob non-exclusively, as they already have a partnership with YouTube. A new UTURN featured channel is expected to launch under Yahoo Maktoob’s video platform anyday now, highlighting UTURN‘s 2014 productions; from comedy series, to exclusive content, and behind the scenes videos. This move should add 2 to 3 million viewers to the 35 million monthly viewers today, according to Kaswara Al Khatib, chairman and CEO of UTURN. The new platform will help UTURN find the reasons behind a video going viral, and offer comprehensive information about social events.
Webedia Acquires Majority stake in Diwanee
Regional Accelerator Partnerships
Dubai-based digital media company Diwanee has disclosed its majority acquisition by Webedia. There are no confirmed numbers yet, but rumors place the valuation between $20 million and $50 million, which makes this investment one of the biggest for a digital company in the Middle East. Webedia’s websites, which are mainly focused on fashion and glamour, receives over 40 million monthly unique visitors. Diwanee has over 5 million monthly unique visitors on its sites, which include fashion and beauty portal Yasmina. com, family portal 3a2ilati.com, fashion e-commerce site Mooda.com, entertainment portal Wikeez, and recipe site AtyabTabkha.com. Webedia will also inject an extra $5 million USD to help Diwanee bolster their expansion, share their big data analysis tools, and more.
Badir and Oasis 500 have launched an entrepreneurship program which includes training boot camps and investments for Saudi entrepreneurs. Moreover, Dubai SME, known as the agency of the Department for Economic Development that develops the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector in Dubai, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Oasis500 to seek out and nurture SMEs most likely to improve and ascend Dubai’s profile in expectation of the Expo 2020. The MoU will entail Dubai SME and Oasis500 to merge their resources to invest in 500 companies by 2018 with extra capital, advice and incubation until Expo 2020.
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Facebook Acquires Oculus Not long after Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, and Facebook’s stock growing larger than 150% in the last year; CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a stock-cash deal yet again to buy the up-and-coming virtual reality headgear producer Oculus. This is the third time Facebook spends more than a billion dollars to buy a company that isn’t bringing much revenue, and allowing it to conduct its business exclusively. Facebook is payimg $400 million cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook stock worth $1.6 billion. The deal also includes a $300 million earn-out in cash and stock.
New $100M Venture Fund Targeting Middle East, Asia and Silicon Valley Startups and Investors A new venture fund called the Fenox Global Fund IV is looking to invest USD $100 million in seed, Series A and pre-IPO funding throughout the USA, Asia and the Middle East in partnership with Innovation 360, a leading innovation consultancy based in Dubai, UAE. Fenox’s investment portfolio includes so far: Dream Link Entertainment (DLE) that currently carried out an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange; and Lark, a wearable technology company whose products are now sold at worldwide Apple stores. Fenox Venture Capital has already pledged USD $10 million, and is looking for additional investors that would qualify for the fund.
FunRock Enters the MENA Games Market On April 21, 2014, a Swedish online strategy games developer and publisher called FunRock declared they will build better games for the Arab world by opening an office in Dubai, UAE. The company is particularly focused on free-to-play massively multiplayer online games. Their debuting game will consist of a localized version of their popular title, Rivality, and gradually release other localized games that they’re currently working on. “Our games are particularly oriented to smartphones and tablets, with the iPad as the flagship platform,” says David Wallinder, Founder and COO of FunRock.
Naspers Acquires All Outstanding Shares of Markafoni
Naspers announced that will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Markafoni. Naspers originally acquired a majority stake of Markafoni in July 2011 in one of the biggest deals in the Turkish online industry. Now, 3 years later, Naspers decided to take full advantage of the phenomenal growth of the Turkish e-commerce market and leadership position of Markafoni.
Northstar Travel Media Acquires Web in Travel Travel Media, the prominent B2B information company in the travel and meetings industries, has acquired Web In Travel (WIT), a Singapore-based mixed media platform content provider mostly recognized for its event series on online travel distribution in the Asia-Pacific region.
Will Apple Buy Beats Electronics for $3.2B? By the time this piece was being written, Apple buying Beats was still but an unconfirmed speculation and confession by Dr. De taken advantage of by media companies, journalists, analysts, and bloggers. Some criticisms surfaced on Apple trying to be cool or reckless with their $150 billion buying power, all of which have spread over the internet like wildfire. But what would Apple want with a company like Beats? Rumors say they might wish to improve their computers’ audio technology, merge Beats Music with iTunes radio, or maybe even create smart headphones that could stream music and be commanded by voice.
June 2014 The Quartely
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Industry stories
Useful Apps for Transportation
ArabNet Riyadh 2013
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
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eld under the patronage of His Highness Prince Dr. Turki bin Mohammed Al Saud, the second version of Arabnet Riyadh explored the latest trends and opportunities in the digital sector in Saudi Arabia and the GCC. Attracting over 750 professionals on December 3-4, and with a host of over 70 speakers from across the region and world, the conference highlighted the development of digital Arabic content in the region. “70% of the Kingdom’s population are under the age of 35; therefore the public and private sectors must make new initiatives designed to promote an entrepreneurial environment, and improve the leadership position in the Kingdom.” This is how Prince Saud bin Khaled Faisal started his talk at the opening ceremony at the Four Seasons Hotel, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The talk was followed by panel discussions that emphasized the ability of the digital sector to provide job opportunities to the Kingdom’s youth. Mobile applications, rising numbers in technological investments, and unlocking the potential of e-commerce were also discussed during the course of the twoday event. Arabnet Riyadh was host to three entrepreneur competitions: the “Startup Demo” and “Ideathon” allowed startups and aspiring entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia and the MENA to pitch their ideas and connect with investors, new clients, and strategic partners. The “Battle
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of the Games” was present throughout thecv event where 8 experienced Arab developers showcased their mobile game apps, console games, online/browser games, and social games to the attendees, and in turn also connect with investors and potential partners. Occupying 500+ sqm of exhibition space, the ArabNet TechFair featured more than 40 leading companies and
promising startups from the region. In an exclusive interview, Hassan Kabbani, Chief Executive of Zain, invited emerging companies to partner with Zain in order to secure the financial support they need to kick-start their startups, while iMENA announced the launch of four new businesses, confirmed their focus on new investments and shared some key milestones for their existing businesses.
ArabNet Beirut 2014
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eld under the patronage of the Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, ArabNet Beirut Conference 2014, held at the Hilton Habtoor Grand hotel on March 4-6, was a celebration of digital creativity and entrepreneurship in the MENA region. Bringing together more than 70 speakers, 40 sponsors and partners, and 600 attendees, the conference was an excellent guide to the trending opportunities in entrepreneurial digital business in fashion, luxury, e-commerce, and e-marketing for banks and FMCG. The core value of Arabnet Beirut was its ability to bridge regional companies and leading players in the digital industry, allowing for extensive networking and fruitful collaboration at a time when digital growth has never been more facilitated in the region. The event was kicked off with Design+Code Day, a full day of workshops led by developers and designers to help build better web and mobile products. The official opening ceremony, held on Forum Day 1, was attended by leading government figures who, in the words of First ViceGovernor of Banque du Liban, Raed H. Charafeddine, expressed great pride that “Lebanon is rich in the creative energies and technical skills of its youth, who have the potential to make it a central hub for the production of Arabic digital content.� Deputy Hagop Pakradounian,
Minister of Information Ramzi Jreij and Minister of Telecommunication Boutros Harb were some of the most prominent attendees. As customary, the conference delivered its signature competitions: the Ideathon, Startup Demo and Creative Combat, which exhibited talented young creatives and aspiring entrepreneurs. One of the highlights of the event was the speed networking, introduced for
the first time at ArabNet Beirut 2014, where people at the conference held one-on-one 30-second meetings with investors, business professionals, and potential partners. After the first Forum day was wrapped on March 5, attendees gathered at the Beirut Digital District to socialize at the Taste of Beirut, a festive night that showcased more than 16 different flavors of Beirut’s best F&Bs.
June 2014 The Quartely
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TECHNOLOGY
Useful Apps for Transportation
What’s the Deal with Wearable Technology?
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Wearables Might End Up being the Next Big Thing, Just Not Yet
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t’s been an interesting decade for wearables. Microsoft released the first smartwatch in 2004, the SPOT, which was termed as “smart,” “sexy,” and “revolutionary,” only to stop its production two years later. Then, Fitbit hogged the headlines after it gave the audience at TechCrunch50 a glimpse of its fitness gadget innovation, and kept technophile geeks on their edge for almost a year until it finally launched the product in 2009. A few months later, Nike released its Sportsband, and Jawbone launched UP. By January 2012, manufacturers have become so engrossed with smart fitness gadgets that the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012 was crowded with hundreds of fitness companies displaying their wearable gadgets. But it wasn’t until Google emerged from its mysterious X Lab in April 2012 to introduce Project Glass that the tech market went berserk. And so begins, as many think, the era of wearables. Only, that is not true. The real history of wearables goes back a lot further—well before the first wristwatch, let alone the first smartwatch. The recent spur of interest in wearables came with the growth of low-power sensor technology, which made devices more affordable and the consumer proposition more appealing. Couple that with the high penetration of smartphones worldwide—the device that will power the new wave of wearables—and we are on the cusp of a new tech revolution. Here is a brief overview of the latest and the greatest in wearables. Smartwatches The most successful smartwatch so far is Pebble. It got off the launchpad after its unprecedented $10.3 million Kickstarter campaign two years ago. Pebble functions as a fitness computer, a media player,
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and of course, a watch. It also serves as the smartphone’s secondary screen by providing notifications and remote control capabilities. Pebble’s most recent version, the Pebble Steel, has an uplifted design but is still far from being called fashionable to wear. The same goes for the Samsung Galaxy Gear which, although is more user friendly with its big screen, still lacks many of the smart functions expected from a smartwatch. The I’m Watch, released in 2011, was one of the first smartwatches to be released after the industry laid dormant for a decade. Despite being in the market for more than 4 years, I’m Watch still hasn’t reached mass market appeal, probably because it is overpriced for its limited feature set. There has been much speculation that Apple is gearing up to deliver a smartwatch, the iWatch. It is probably the most anticipated smartwatch, and even though Apple hasn’t confirmed the rumors, its recent reported acquisition of LuxVue, a developer of micro-LED displays, could mean there is truth to these rumors. Smartglasses The video that caused mass media hype
The recent spur of interest in wearables came with the growth of lowpower sensor technology, which made devices more affordable and the consumer proposition more appealing.
about wearable technology was the “One Day” video released by Google, in which it unveiled Project Glass. The video did not show the device, but rather what the user sees while wearing it: from reminders to directions to instant messaging and video calling, all appearing in the wearer’s field of vision. Google admitted that the video showed a lot more than the prototypes are capable of, but strongly believes that we will see these features in the near future. A year later after the release of the video, Google announced that the high-tech Glass would be available for consumers for only 24 hours—that happened on April 15, 2014. Google is not the only company working on smartglasses. Vuzix’s M100 is an Android-based wearable computer that made its debut at CES 2013, and is now already available in the market for $1000. It has also released the M2000 AR which, at almost $6000, is designed to provide hands-free information and augmented reality in industrial usage. Over 16 other companies are expected to release smart glasses in 2014. Among them is Soulaiman Itani’s Mountain View-based Atheer Labs, which is busy working on Atheer One, a device that not only lets information float in the user’s field of vision, but also lets the user physically manipulate it. It has already launched a successful campaign on Indiegogo earlier this year, raising almost $214,000, more than twice its fundraising goal. Smart fitness gadgets Smart fitness gadgets are the most commonly available subset of wearable technology. However, being partially or entirely dependent on external devices— like the smartphone—they offer only a small percentage of the functionalities
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promised by the wearables of the future. These devices also come in less obtrusive and more fashionable designs than other wearables, and most have just the right price for their limited features, resulting in a broader consumer appeal. Take the Fitbit Zip, for example. Being water resistant and able to provide useful data and analysis about a person’s lifestyle (such as steps taken, calories burnt, etc.), the device is arguably the best fitness tracker you can buy for under $60. However, it is unable to measure sleep, a functionality covered by the Jawbone Up. Despite their consumer acceptance, smart fitness gadgets are still in the process of being fine-tuned in terms of both design and functionality. In their aim to make wearables more comfortable, Massachusetts-based mc10 has developed what it calls “conformal electronics,” which are thin, flexible, integrated circuits that can be embedded in fabric or flexible plastic. Mc10’s first flexible computing prototype is the BioStamp—a collection of sensors that can be applied on the skin like a sticker or Band-Aid. The sensors collect data such as body temperature, heart rate, sleep, and exposure to UV radiation. Smart clothing Tech manufacturers concur that the key to unlocking the full potential of wearables is to move the devices beyond accessories and onto the rest of our bodies—that is, making clothing smarter. After Microsoft’s research-designed dress that displays tweets and North Face’s jackets with inbuilt PMP controls and
The players in the wearable arena still need to master the fashion element for the technology to be widely accepted. sports apparel laden with sensors, smart clothing has considerably become a broad field of wearable tech. But with better accuracy and convenience comes higher prices. There is also the challenge of washing the tech garments. Athos, a US-based startup that launched late 2013, is among many working on embedding technology within our clothing. The wearable tech apparel they have been designing measures the activity of 14 different muscles. It also monitors heart rate and breathing and transmits the info over Bluetooth to iPhones and iPads. Athos is expected to be released by mid-2014 for a price of $298. HeapSylon’s Sensoria Sock is another smart garment; it is a pressure sensing textile sock that coaches users on their running techniques in real time. Heapsylon is also working on a new T-Shirt version which uses similar textile to monitor the wearer’s heart rate. Heapsylon partnered with developers of Google Glass app Race Yourself to bring heads-up visual feedback to runners. Towards a Wearable Future Wearables may end up being the next big thing, just not yet. The functionalities
Five of the ten all-time top funded design projects on Kickstarter are wearable devices The most expensive known wearable device is Mirama Digital Glasses, at a cost of $29,400 and the least expensive device is MOV Band, at a cost of $19 The accelerometer is the most popular component on wearable tech
offered by wearable tech are appealing to users. They want to own the data and be in better control of their lifestyle. But the players in the wearable arena still need to master the fashion element for the technology to be widely accepted and reach the same success as smartphones or tablets. In fact, even smartphones didn’t reach their current nearlyubiquitous adoption until the advent of the iPhone, a device that made aesthetic design a corporate necessity and a core competency as vital as the ability to make a stable OS or a faster chip. Wearable technology simply needs to become less intrusive and more comfortable, and provide users with valuable data in easy-to-understand ways. Apple seems to have taken the lead to address the issue of the fashion element; otherwise, why would it hire Yves Saint Laurent CEO, Paul Deneve, and allocate him to special projects under Tim Cook, and appoint Burberry’s Angela Ahrendts as Senior Vice President of retail and online stores? Putting design and fashion aside, the wearable revolution might well be on our doorstep, with sensors and chip sets being cheaper than ever, and smartphone technologies providing wearable manufacturers with dependable mobile Internet and Bluetooth services. With these “pre-baked” hardware and wireless connectivity, and huge preorders from crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, small companies might be able to put their wearable innovations on the table facing giant tech companies, compete, and possibly win. n
June 2014 The Quartely
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timeline of wearables
1200s
1600s
1762
EYEGLASSES
ABACUS RING
POCKET WATCH
People began wearing eyeglasses and sunglasses, the first wearable “augmentation.”
A silver abacus ring was created as a counting tool in ancient China
John Harrison invented the first practical marine chronometer to determine the longitude of a ship.
1975 DIGITAL CAMERA Steven Sasson creates the first digital camera at Kodak.
CALCULATOR WATCH
1973
1969
CELLPHONE
INTERNET
Martin Cooper from Motorola demonstrates the first cellphone.
The age of the internet began with the release of ARPANET
Pulsar introduced the first calculator watch.
1979
1984
1993
WALKMAN
PDA
PATHFINDER SYSTEM
Sony releases its first Walkman.
Psion introduces the first personal digital assistant (PDA).
BBN finishes the Pathfinder system, a wearable computer with GPS and radiation detection systems.
WRIST COMPUTER WATCH Seiko releases the first “wrist computer” watches, which included portable keyboards.
2013 MEMOTO Memoto gets funded on Kickstarter to drive the creation of its lifelogging camera.
2012
2011
FITNESS GADGETS
JAWBONE UP
Nike, Fitbit, 4iii, Basis and others launch wearable fitness gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Jawbone releases its first wearable fitness gadget for $99.
GOOGLE GLASS
Google reveals its wearable computing project, Glass.
Sources: http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/lizzy/timeline.html http://gizmodo.com/this-wearable-abacus-is-basically-the-worlds-oldest-sm-1545627562 http://mashable.com/2011/11/02/jawbone-up-99-wristband-rule-life/
http://wearable-technologies.com http://google.com/glass/start/ http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp01.htm
1837
1946
1907
ANALYTICAL ENGINE
WRISTWATCH
The age of the computer began when Charles Babbage devised the analytical engine, the first proposal for a general-purpose mechanical computer.
Alberto Santos-Dumon commissions the first wristwatch.
The first general-purpose electronic computer is announced.
1968
1966
1960
HEAD-MOUNTED DISPLAY
GAMBLING SHOE
TELESPHERE MASK
Ivan Sutherland creates the first computer-linked head-mounted display
Edward Thorp and Claude Shannon create the first wearable computer to predict the behavior of roulette wheels.
Morton Heilig patents the Telesphere Mask, a head-mounted television display.
1994
ENIAC
1999
1998
SMARTPHONE
PROJECT CYBORG
GPS-EQUIPPED WATCH
IBM introduces the first smartphone.
Kevin Warwick begins Project Cyborg by implanting an RFID chip in his arm.
Casio introduces the first GPS-equipped watch
HEAD-MOUNTED CAMERA Steve Mann transmits images from his head-mounted camera to the web.
2010
2009
2004
NIKE+ SPORTSBAND
FITBIT
SMARTWATCHES
Nike released its wearable tech gadget that can give details about a person’s running exercise.
Fitbit introduces a new wave of wearable, life-monitoring devices.
The first smart watches linked to Microsoft’s SPOT network are released.
http://memoto.com http://www.techradar.com/news/portable-devices/portable-media/smartwatch-or-smartglass-whichyou-will-be-wearing--1148576
http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/14/distro-issue-70-the-wearable-tech-issue/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/03/with-3m-in-new-funding-memeto-lifelogging-startuprebrands-to-narrative-to-go-global/
TECHNOLOGY
Useful Apps for Transportation
Regional A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Games Apps for Residents in MENA A Round-Up of Fresh Games from the Arab World Fairytales Gang Developers: Maysalward Country of origin: Jordan Date of release: December 2013 Available for: Android Language: English Price: Free Players need to help Santa and his buddies free the elves from an evil gang wearing paper bags on their heads. Players run through the streets and jump over fences and water canals to collect gifts and coins to ultimately free the North Pole brethren. Some weird obstacles are on the way such as a dog on a canon and nails on the ground, and players might run into Fairytale heroes like Cinderella or find themselves lost in a magical forest. Players can purchase “power gadgets” to help them complete more levels. Giddam Developers: Girnaas Country of origin: Qatar Date of release: March 2014 Available for: iOS, Android Language: English Price: Free Giddam is a side-scrolling, racing game with a unique Qatari spin. The characters are grumpy Ali, plump-and-round Um AlThahab (Bigmama), smirky Rashid, and cutie-pie Farawla (Strawberry). They race through cartoon-Qatar, passing through palm-riddle deserts and cities filled with mosques and skyscrapers. Not only are the characters inspired from local culture, but so are their weapons. Players can use Karak tea, A’qal Zanuba, or the boosting drink Eshrij to trap and get ahead of their opponents. Players can compete head-to-head against their friends and chat with other gamers. The app makes revenue from in-app purchases. Indomie Dash Developers: Pinehill Arab Foods Co., LTD. Indomie Date of release: January 2014 Available for: iOS Language: Arabic Price: Free Indomie Dash is very similar to worldrenowned Diamond Dash, though it comes fully in Arabic. Each game lasts for 60 seconds. Players collect points by placing at least three matching flavors next to each other, and with the speed of flavor placement increasing, the Indomie bar fills up, attracting bigger combos and more points. Players can exchange the coins they collected with magic powers that can help them save time or change the order of all flavors. They can also purchase coins to get more magic powers to see their scores soaring.
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Fluke HD Developers: Local Aliens LLC Country of origin: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Date of release: September 2013 Available for: iOS Language: English Price: $0.99 Fluke HD is an online multiplayer board game. It is similar to the classic game of “Chutes and Ladders”. It challenges players to get their unique 4 game pieces and finish the race. It’s a casual, simple game to play with a small party of friends or family, even though it asks for a bit of strategizing. Unexpected surprises and unimagined obstacles may sometimes come in the way of players to make the game that much exciting. Although there are many similar apps, Fluke HD is superior in its visual effects.
Charbaka Developer: Samer Hamandi Country of origin: Lebanon Date of release: December 2013 Available for: Android Language: Arabic Price: Free Charbaka is a multiplayer word game in Arabic. The players share the same grid of 16 letters and compete by trying to find as many words as they can in two minutes. Users can only play for a limited number of times each day. Unlike other similar Arabic games, such as Puzzle des Lettres Arabes and Play with Arabic Words, Charbaka targets players of all ages and not just children.
Regional Hardware A List of Innovative Hardware Devices Coming from the MENA Roadie Tuner Country of Origin: Lebanon Release Date: June 2014 Available in: USA Shipped to: Everywhere Price: $79 Roadie is an automatic tuner for any stringed instrument, such as a guitar. It uses the iPhone and a motorized accessory to tune the instrument. Roadie connects to the Roadie Application on the iPhone via low energy Bluetooth. The app receives the sound, processes it, and sends the right commands back to Roadie. Created by two Arab innovators, Roadie Tuner was incubated at Haxlr8r and will be ready to ship soon. It successfully raised $180,000 on Kickstarter, almost triple its goal, and won first place at the TechCrunch Beirut MeetUp last March, and the Audience Choice Award at the TechCrunch Disrupt NY.
1Sheeld Country of Origin: Egypt Release Date: May 2014 Available in: USA Shipped to: Almost everywhere Price: $50 1Sheeld from Integreight is a new easily configured shield for Arduino that lets you replace all other shields with your smartphone. Arduino is a popular open-source electronic board that can control just about any Do-It-Yourself hardware project. The shield acts as a wireless middle-man, piping data between Arduino and any Android smartphone via Bluetooth, thus allowing the usage of all Android smartphone’s capabilities such as LCD screen, accelerometer, GSM, Wi-Fi, GPS, etc. into your Arduino sketch. The 8-team behind 1Sheeld won the Audience Choice at Disrupt Europe. The project also went up on Kickstarter and raised $85,000, more than eight times its fundraising goal.
Pocket TV Country of Origin: Dubai Release Date: TBA Available in: USA Shipped to: Everywhere Price: $50 - $140 The Pocket TV by Infintec is a thumbsized micro-computer that connects to the HDMI port of any TV and converts it into an Android Smart TV. You can download apps from the Google Play Store to stream videos, play games, do Skype video-calls, or simply surf the web. It can also be used for doing presentations. Just plug it into a projector and see your presentation be played from the cloud or locally from the SD card. If you want a more traditional TV experience, you can buy an AirRemote which combines motion, click, and keyboard functions. The project raised $501,321 on Kickstarter, five times more than its goal.
Instabeat Country of Origin: Lebanon Release Date: Q2 2014 Price: $150 Instabeat is a head-up display unit that seamlessly monitors swimmer’s heart rate, calories, and number of laps. It mounts on the straps of any type of swimming goggles and uses LED lights to inform swimmers whether they are performing in fat burning, mid-range, or maximum zones. It also uploads stored data on a waterproof USB. Instabeat, previously known as Butterfleye, won first in the MIT Arab Business Plan Competition, and third place in the Stars of Science Competition. It raised $56,374 on Indeigogo, and secured a Series A round of investment from Wamda Capital and Jabbar Internet Group.
Mubser Country of Origin: Egypt Release Date: TBA Price: NA Mubser is a wearable belt and headset that helps visually impaired individuals avoid obstacles. The system relies on RGB imaging and infrared depth data captured by a Microsoft Kinect to recognize objects in its way, which, when detected, prompts the belt to vibrate, thus alerting the wearing of an obstacle ahead. The system also recognizes some objects and names them to the wearer through the Bluetooth connected headset. Mubser is being incubated by AUC’s Venture Lab, and has won several awards so far, including first place at the Intel Business Challenge Egypt, first place for ICT Track at the I2P Brazil, among others. It is also a finalist at the MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab Region.
June 2014 The Quartely
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TECHNOLOGY
Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
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The Quartely June 2014
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ews broke on May 8 of Yoshitomo Imura, a 27-year-old man from Japan, who got arrested for illegally printing and possessing guns. Back in April, police had found five plastic guns and a 3D printer at the suspect’s home, along with blueprints for manufacturing guns stored on his personal computer. Two of these guns were able to pierce over ten pieces of plywood, which deems them capable of killing or wounding people. The suspect, a college employee, was quoted as saying, “but, I didn’t know they were illegal.” Imura’s claim that he was unaware of a law against printing guns is very likely to be genuine. It is not common for new consumer technologies to come into conflict with the law or even require new legislation altogether. But for those that do, it is a definite sign of the magnitude of their disruptive potential. Beyond security and legal issues, what are some of the implications of 3D printing on traditional industries? Before we get into that, let’s take a quick look at some of the dazzling recent applications of 3D printing. Edible Materials At South by Southwest Interactive, global snacks company Mondelez International partnered with Twitter for the Oreo Trending Vending Machine. Event attendees were able to savor the beloved cookie in a variety of flavors styled using 3D printing machines. The flavors are based on trending topics that followed the hashtag #eatthetweet. A number of companies are already busy testing out how this technology could change the way we prepare food. Already available are food printers for chocolate, pizza, ravioli, chickpea nuggets, corn chips, and sugar candies. One of the most famous machines, the Foodini, lets users print anything they want provided it can be pureed first.
Soft Materials Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research Pittsburgh have invented a 3D printing technique for creating soft interactive objects, like plush animals. The printer uses a needle to turn layers of wool yarn into loose felt objects. The device looks like a cross between a 3D printer
and a sewing machine. It is capable of producing apparel and accessories such as scarves, hats, and even teddy bears. But more importantly, it might also be used in the near future to produce parts of so-called “soft robots”–robots designed to touch or be near people. In ‘traditional’ 3D printing, melted plastic is extruded in a thin line and laid out in a layer; subsequent layers are added to achieve the object’s desired shape, with the layers adhering to each other as the plastic cools. In this example, however, the printer’s head feeds out yarn instead of lines of melted plastic. Then, a barbed felting needle attached to the printer’s head repeatedly pierces the yarn, entangling the fibers and bonding the layers together.
quick drying concrete mixture composed of waste materials. Each bungalow cost less than five thousand dollars. The task required four huge printers measuring 32 meters in length, 10 meters in width, and 6.6 meters in height. The company hopes that one day it will be able to use the same technique to construct skyscrapers and villas. Electronics Project Ara, the modular smartphone conceived by Dave Hakkens and later picked up by Motorola and Google, is said to rely on 3D printing. 3D Systems, the company tasked with producing Ara’s tiles, recently announced that it is “creating a continuous, high-speed 3D printing production platform and 3D printer machine used to print customized oreo cookies at South by Southwest Interactive.
Food printed by the Foodini machine.
Mink is a 3D printer for makeup.
The printer doesn’t achieve the same dimensional accuracy as conventional 3D printers because the yarn is much thicker than the layers of plastic. However, like other 3D printers, this machine uses computerized designs to make 3D objects. Thus, it can be used for rapid prototyping and customizing of objects.
fulfillment system to accommodate production-level speeds and volume.”
Full-Sized Houses Chinese company Win Sun claimed that it was able to print 10 bungalows in 24 hours using giant 3D printers and a
People Miniatures iMakr.com is an online store that sells a wide range of 3D printers and materials, 3D art, and 3D scanners. iMakr also operates one of the world’s largest 3D printing stores, located in Central London. Among the popular creations of iMakr are 3D miniatures of people. The process involves having a person’s portrait digitally scanned in their 360 degree
June 2014 The Quartely
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TECHNOLOGY
Useful Apps for Transportation
scanning booth to capture the person’s likeness with amazing accuracy and detail. The printed 3D object comes in full color.
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Makeup Mink is a new 3D printer for makeup that was introduced at the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014. Fashionistas can choose any color they like on the web or in the real world and, using simple already-existing software, the little printer can print that color into a blush, and later into eye shadow, lip gloss, and any other type of makeup. Priced at less than $200 with plans to launch in 2014, Mink will allow customers to prepare their own makeup from the comfort of their home. Living Organisms A San Diego-based bio printing company called Organovo expects to unveil the world’s first printed organ next year. Similar to other types of 3D printing, bio printing layers material to form an object. In this case the layers are made up of live cells, and the object is an organ. However, the problem has been manufacturing the vascular system needed to keep the organ alive. Cells would die as soon as they leave the printing table. Organovo is said to have figured out a way to overcome the issue and was able to maintain liver tissue in a fully functional state for at least 40 days. It is important to note that the produced organs will serve for drug testing and laboratory studies. The company is yet to release any info on implantable organs. What Does This Entail for Traditional Industries? 3D printing democratizes the creation of physicals goods. Making products won’t be restricted to large manufacturers anymore. Anyone with a machine at home will be able to produce products. This is made possible with the release of more affordable 3D printers in the market. Just recently, The Micro, a $299 3D printer passed $3.5M on Kickstarter. Its goal was 50K. The Peachy Printer, another Kickstarter project, goes for as low as $100. And there are plenty more, as listed in the side feature. This will mean that the purchasing dynamic will drastically change. In some instances, buyers will pay for raw materials and
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The Quartely June 2014
3D printed teddy bears from Disney Research.
List of 10 affordable 3D printers available for consumers Modular smartphone building relies on 3D printing.
Peachy Printer – uses inexpensive liquid light-sensitive resin
$100
MakiBox – dependable 3D printer that prints only small things
$200-$300
Printrbot – comes in 4 different sizes and features and can be customized to print various 3D creations
$259-$999 Chinese company Win Sun was able to print 10 concrete houses in 1 day. Photo credit: Dailymail.co.uk
design files or software for the object they are looking to purchase. Imagine what downloading a recipe could mean then. This won’t mean that manufacturers will lose their jobs. For the foreseeable future, manufacturing will become more flexible as manufacturers will be able to establish factories much closer to points of sales. This might occur even if the cost per unit should increase for objects that traditionally benefited from scale efficiencies of large, centralized plants. The offset from reduced shipping costs and maintaining large inventories could tip the scales favorable for certain industries. This also means that goods can be more easily customized to individual buyers’ whims. Changing the design of a chair would simply entail a minor adjustment in the design file. The options are unlimited, and we only have to sit and observe how 3D technology changes our lives. Just like the Internet did, and the computer before it. n
Phoenix – allows pausing and rewinding the printing process through its unique software
$375-$500
Romscraj – a 3D printer company that sells portable and desktop 3D printers
$375-$500
Buccaneer – a Wi-Fi enabled 3D printer that comes with an iOS/Android app
$399-$999
Solidoodle – comes in two models to allow printing of small and large objects
$499-$799
RigiBot – a fully customizable 3D printer
$499-$959
RoBo – open sourced 3D printer
$599-$699
Deesmaker Bukito Mini – light and portable 3D printer that can print even if moved around or flipped
$699
TECHNOLOGY
Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
A
nyone living in a city would know what a nightmare traffic can be. Worse yet, waiting for a cab under rain or a scorching sun. Using public transportation services might seem like a good solution—that is, if your country has a reliable infrastructure. But even with good metros, buses, or even taxis, there are times when you eventually find yourself stranded, and in desperate need for a ride. Here we round up some of the best rated, free travel apps available for people in the Middle East. 16
The Quartely June 2014
UBER
Headquarters: United States Release date: June 2010 Compatible with: iOS (6.0 and later), Android (2.1 and later), BlackBerry and Windows Phone Geographic reach: 101 cities, including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, and Riyadh Language: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malayan, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, and Thai
Uber is a global on-demand car service that seamlessly connects users to private drivers. Uber doesn’t provide its own vehicles, but works with existing licensed drivers. Through the smartphone app, you can choose one of several grades of cars, send your GPS location data directly to the driver, track the car’s trajectory as it drives your way, and pay via PayPal or a credit/debit card directly from your phone. A receipt will be sent to your inbox once you arrive to your destination.
CAREEM
Headquarters: UAE Release date: February 2013 Compatible with: iOS (6.0 and later), Android (4.0 and later), Windows Phone and BlackBerry Geographic reach: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dammam Language: Arabic and English
Careem is a local, private car booking service whose value proposition competes head-to-head with Uber. Similar to its competitor, Careem only works with existing licensed drivers and cars. You can order a car online or using the mobile app. When you open the app, it automatically locates your position through its underlying GPS technology, then asks you to specify your destination. The app calculates the price of your ride, which you pay with your credit card, tracks the car in real-time, and gives you access to your receipts online. Unlike Uber, Careem also allows large corporates to sign up all their staff and pay through monthly invoices. Easy Taxi Headquarters: Brazil Release date: April 2012 Compatible with: iOS (5.0 and later), Android (2.0 and later), Windows Phone and BlackBerry Geographic reach: 158 cities, including Sharjah, Ajman, Al Ain, Riyadh, Cairo, and Alexandria Language: English Easy Taxi, acquired and managed by Rocket Internet, is the largest taxi-booking app in the world, connecting passengers with an existing network of over 80,000 taxi drivers in more than 31 countries. The app’s intelligent bidding and GPS systems prioritize taxi drivers nearest to your location and send you their information, although booking a cab is not as seamless as you would hope for in some cities. Easy Taxi also has special services for B2B clients through Easy Taxi Pro and Easy Taxi Corporate solutions. Ogra Taxi Headquarters: Egypt Release date: December 2013 Compatible with: Android Geographic reach: Cairo, soon in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Language: English Ogra Taxi, a taxi-ordering app, is Easy Taxi’s local competitor in Egypt. Through the app, you can book a taxi, get information about the driver and the car coming to pick you up, and track it as it drives towards you. You are charged using premium SMS. Some users complain that their orders either don’t get through or take more time than expected, but this is understandable, being a service that recently launched in one of the busiest, most
populated cities in the MENA region. It is currently working on versions for iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Clever Taxi
Headquarters: Romania Release date: October 2012 Compatible with: iOS (6.0 and later), Android (2.3.2 and later), Windows Phone and BlackBerry Geographic reach: database of 20,000+ taxi companies Language: English and Romania
It’s true that Clever Taxi is only functional in seven Eastern European cities, but it is in this list because it has the most comprehensive database of taxi companies from around 267 countries, covering most of the MENA region. It gives you the names of the nearest cab, as well as cabs in other cities around you, with their phone number. For people living in cities still lacking a reliable transport app, Clever Taxi will surely come in handy. Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority Headquarters: United Arab Emirates
Release date: March 2011 Compatible with: iOS (6.0 and later), Android (2.3.2 and later), Windows Phone and BlackBerry Geographic reach: Dubai Language: English
Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority has released its own smart booking app for its yellow cabs in hopes to better manage its fleet of 8,300 taxis. Besides booking a taxi, the app allows m-parking service payment, calculates fares between metro destinations, shows your NOL balance, and gives you access to marine transportation services, such as water buses, water taxis and Ferry Dubai. It also allows you to apply for car parking permissions. The app, however, is not so swift when providing you with information on the nearest metro or bus station. Dubai Taxi
Headquarters: United Arab Emirates Release date: January 2014 Compatible with: iOS (6.0 and later), Android (2.2 and later) and BlackBerry Geographic reach: Dubai Language: English
Dubai Taxi Corporation, part of RTA Dubai, has also recently released an app to enable users to access its main services, such as booking a taxi, calculating fares, tracking the car, and getting updates about DTC’s latest news. The app also has a database of major locations in the city. The app also addresses the needs of people with auditory disabilities and provides various deaf signals to facilitate their communicating with the driver. Being recently launched, it still has some bugs to fix. n
June 2014 The Quartely
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BUSINESS
Bitcoin and the Rise of New Markets A Look at a Few Revolutionary Applications of Bitcoin in the Middle East and the World
B
itcoin is a technology that has the potential to redesign our global financial landscape from the ground-up, to better serve an increasingly digital and globally connected world. Here are only 3 ways in which Bitcoin’s attributes can lead to major improvements. 1. Unlocking Billions: According to the World Bank, there is more than $500 billion that circles the globe through remittances (e.g., sending money back home to support your family). The average cost of these payments on the sender is more than 8%, and significantly higher in less developed countries–the countries that need it the most. That’s $40 billion that’s spent on fees to move the money around. And the Middle East is no stranger to these flows of money. The MENA region accounts for as much as 15% of that share. A shift towards using Bitcoin for international money transfer could potentially unlock billions of dollars for the people who need it the most. This is achieved thanks to Bitcoin’s extremely low cost of money transfer. 2. Banking the Unbanked: There are 2.5 billion people around the world today that are either unbanked or underbanked. That’s almost 50% of the planet’s adult population that is left out by our current financial system, and forced to live in a cash-based society. These individuals cannot benefit from all the financial products that contribute to their prosperity, and in return cannot contribute to growing their economy. The Middle East, unfortunately, ranks among the lowest in terms of financial inclusion (access to basic financial services). The regional average barely stands at around 20% of the adult population (with accounts at a formal financial institution). Mobile penetration, in contrast, is quite high across the world
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The Quartely June 2014
David El Achkar is the founder of Yellow, a Bitcoin payments provider for the Middle East. He also spearheads many Bitcoin advocacy efforts in the region, organizing and speaking at conferences, writing educational resources, and more.
Other Cryptocurrencies Namecoin (NMC) – not just a currency, but also a domain name. Users who purchase namecoin can purchase a “.bit” URL that operates outside of ICANN Litecoin (LTC) – considered the most valuable cyrptocurrency next to bitcoin
(90%) and especially so in the Middle East (110%; including people with multiple mobile subscriptions). The inclusiveness of the Bitcoin protocol has the potential to bring all of these individuals, regardless of their financial situation, into the digital economy! Bitcoin is a global and open network, that only requires access to a phone or an Internet connection. This means that, as more mobile-based Bitcoin services are built and made available, millions of unbanked individuals may soon have access to easy and affordable financial services. 3. Getting Rid of the Ads: Bitcoin also introduces a new category of payments that was previously impossible: micropayments; payments of less than 1 Dollar, Dinar, Dirham, Lira, etc.. Because of the high transaction costs, these micro-payments were only possible in cash (but still remained impractical). Bitcoin makes this possible and even attractive, since the transaction cost is negligible. This has the potential to reshape many industries and even create new ones. Let’s look at the world of online content monetization (e.g., articles, news, videos). It has been dominated by advertising. Any time you access content on the Internet you are forced to watch an ad placement (or pay a subscription fee). Imagine if, instead, you could pay pennies for each nugget of information you consumed, or even tip the person that has produced it. Bitcoin allows you to pay cents or even less for each article, video, news source, etc. and only when you want it. This is the pay-per-x model (pay-per-article, pay-per-video, etc.). But Still, We Have Work to Do Bitcoin is still in its early stages of development. There is no doubt that all of the above is great. But for it to become a reality soon,
Dogecoin (Doge) – started as a way to poke fun at the cryptocurrency phenomenon, but quickly gained popularity in cyber-communiteis like Reddit. Today, it has the most coins in circulation (more than 28 billion) Peercoin (PPC) – separates itself from other cryptocurrencies by not having a limit on the amount of coins that can be created, and maintains an annual inflation rate of 1% Quark – launched in late 2013, it has the most intense security measures we (Bitcoin entrepreneurs and advocates) still have work to do before Bitcoin’s full potential is reached. For example, there aren’t nearly enough products and services built to make Bitcoin as useful as described above (e.g., remittance product); it still isn’t easily accessible in most regions because of limited infrastructure (e.g., local exchanges); it remains a complex technology that needs UX (user experience) improvements before it can reach mass adoption, etc. However, none of these are insurmountable problems. And many ambitious entrepreneurs are already working on these issues in different corners of the world. I personally believe it’s a matter of when–not if–all of this happens. What’s Next for Bitcoin in the Middle East? This is only a small selection of the innovative ways in which Bitcoin can reshape industries. And for these reasons and many more, the Middle East is gearing up to join the Bitcoin economy. There have been many events popping up across the region. The Beirut Bitcoin Meetup, Jordan Bitcoin Group, and Digital Currencies Dubai (Bitcoin Dubai) are some of the groups in the region that organize events and activities for anyone interested in Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.n
June 2014 The Quartely
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BUSINESS
Useful Apps for Transportation
Banks Go Digital
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA How Are Banks Gearing Up for an Economy Going Digital?
I
n banking, digital transformation is not important; it is imperative. Globally, traditional businesses are facing disruption through the proliferation of a digital society, and banking is no different.” That’s according to David Horton, CTO at Mashreq Bank. Realizing the benefits of more efficient online/mobile banking, e-payment services and cashless transactions; leading banks in the MENA region are taking noticeable steps toward a more digitized economy. Several banks in the region inaugurated smart branches in the last few months. In Dubai, there is Mashreq
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The Quartely June 2014
Go by Mashreq, a smart branch where customers can open an account and issue a checkbook and a debit card in less than 30 minutes. It is part of the Smart Banking Initiative implemented by Mashreq “to give our customers the most rewarding banking relationship. As such, the most important aspect of our digital transformation journey is delighting the customer with an everyday bank experience,” said Horton. And according to him, “all aspects of smart banking, from our state of the art digital branches, to our mobile and online banking platforms, are equally important.” In Lebanon, Bank of Beirut opened
its first Smart Branch that recognizes customers’ photos and signatures and allows customers to open accounts, get a debit card on the spot, pay university tuition fees, and transfer funds 24/7. Almost two years ago, Bank Audi launched “Novo,” a smart kiosk for personalized banking. Saudi Investment Bank (SAIB) also introduced their new ATMs with video tellers. Most initiatives and efforts, however, are directed at mobile banking. Several banks launched new, more comprehensive banking smartphone apps. The list includes Standard Chartered UAE, with its award winning “Breeze” app; Mashreq,
with the cleverly named “Snapp, for faster and easier banking; and Fransabank. EmiratesNBD dedicated their “smartBUSINESS” iOS app to make it easier for corporates and businesses to make transactions. And while Mashreq has already partnered with MasterCard and launched “noqodi,” an e-wallet for easier online payments, the Central Bank of Jordan is planning mobile wallets in an innovative way that doesn’t require users to have bank accounts or even smartphones; feature cell phones will be enough. Eliminating the need to hold a credit card seems like the next trend in digital economy, and some banks in the region got to work on that. Credit Bank in Lebanon has recently introduced the “MasterCard Contactless Sticker,” which can turn any personal item, namely mobile phones, into a bank card. Mashreq did the same with their “Tap n Go” stickers. Bank Audi, on the other hand, set out to address the “new challenges and many external factors that are influencing the banking environment, mainly the changing demographics, consumer tastes, and technology innovations such as mobile operators and technology services companies,” as Randa Bdeir, Group Head of e-Payment Solutions and Card Services at Bank Audi, explains. That’s why they took it to a higher level with their “Tap2Pay” service, which aims at “creating a more compelling consumer experience which matches the market’s new trends and answers consumers’ every need,” according to Bdeir. The service also made Lebanon among the first countries in the region to introduce NFC based cashless payments to “turn smartphones into credit cards.” The success rate of this service is still to be known. Questions to be raised Those are but some of the initiatives created in the region. Other new relevant services are out there, and, doubtlessly, more will surface soon. The initiatives vary in importance, potential and quality; however, the level of innovation is questionable. Smart branches and NFC payments have been around for some time now in the world and mobile apps for banks should be a given, especially with the high smartphone penetration rates in
most of the region. One observation that holds true almost all across the MENA is the dialed down partnerships. Most services are offered by one bank through a limited number of partners, and mostly at a high cost, making a service more of a neat feature to have fun with than a way of digitizing economies and changing the way people do business. For these services to make sense for consumers, they must be more convenient than traditional ways at a negligible extra cost. Will these initiatives be enough to drive users toward digital economy? They probably are fine as door-openers, but definitely far from sufficient. Leaders in the industry seem to agree on that point. “Mobile and online banking in the MENA region is still lagging behind the West, and has only recently started to get more attention from banks,” said David Horton. “There are still many large banks in the region that simply use responsive web design to act as a mobile banking solution, which, today, will not be acceptable to the customer who expects native apps that allow them to leverage their smartphone functionality.” “With some of the highest mobile penetration numbers in the world, banks in the region should look to step up and lead the way with digital banking, not simply follow what is already being done in the west,” David added. The world is shifting toward a digital economy for a reason: it is easier, faster, more versatile and more profitable to do business online. Being
David Horton, CTO at Mashreq Bank.
Randa Bdeir, Group Head of e-Payment Solutions and Card Services at Bank Audi behind other parts of the world in time, quality and infrastructure of services will continue to affect businesses and local economies significantly. n
June 2014 The Quartely
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BUSINESS
Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Education Goes Digital The Impact of Mobile Content & Commerce on the Education Market
M
EF is the global community for mobile content and commerce. Among its publications is the Global Consumer Insight Series, which collects data from 13 sample markets, including Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and generates worldwide insights on attitudes, behaviours and trends in mobile content and commerce. Their third report, released in April 2014, investigates the impact of mobile content and commerce on the global education market. The study looks at how users of educational apps behave as compared to users of all apps. Rimma Perelmuter, CEO at MEF said: “Mobile-first markets are clearly driving the uptake of educational apps. This nascent sector has been quick
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The Quartely June 2014
to adopt engagement and business models from other types of app with entertainment and gamification key motivators for consumer uptake”. “A common theme across our Insight Series with reports on Mobile Money and Second Screening is the fact that early adopters are driving mobile commerce across the board. This theme continues, with educational app users who are more likely than the average mobile media user to purchase via their mobile.” Here are the key takeaways from the report: Popularity among Mobile App Users Educational apps rank 9th among all app categories in terms of downloads, with
17% of mobile app users downloading this particular type—that’s a third of the number downloading mobile games. The number has dropped from 20% last year. The decline however is in line with a general decline in app consumption which has been attributed to a ‘choosier’ smartphone consumer and the rise of ‘hero’ apps with a longer active life. Users of mobile apps show the greatest enthusiasm for educational apps. The five countries that exceed the average rate of downloads in this sector are India, South Africa, US, Kenya and Nigeria. This is attributed to the mobile-first nature of these regions where access to online resources is scarce (the US is an exception, explained below). UAE and
Mobile Purchases among Educational App Users The research reflects that 65% of the total group studied makes some form of purchases from their phones. Among educational app users, this number increases to 72%, and up to 84% for those who have purchased from an education site. Educational app users also tend to use a wider variety of purchase channels than the broader group. They are far more likely to buy from social media pages, operator stores and retailer web sites, for example. This could be because so many educational app users are located in
10%
0%
Total Sample
India
South Africa
USA
Kenya
Nigeria
UAE
Qatar
UK
Indonesia China
Mexico
Saudi Arabia
Brazil
Motivations for purchase: I had to for my school/college/university 40% 30% 20% 10%
p ap
te
io uc at
rc h
as
e
Us
e
ed
n
si n io
uc at
In
fr om
ed
Br az
il
UK
a Ch
in
A
E
US
UA
ta r
co
Qa
M
do
ex i
si
a
ia
ne
ra b
ca ri
iA
Sa
So
m
ut
ud
h
Af
Ke
di
ny a
a
ia
In
er ig N
pl e
20
13
0%
Pu
The curious case of the United States Among the five countries with the highest download rates of educational apps, only the US is considered as a mature market. Mobile app users in the US download around twice as many educational apps as their developed market counterparts. One possible explanation could be related to the iPhone’s much higher share of the local smartphone market compared to other geographies. The iPhone’s manufacturer, Apple, is known to push for education hard in an effort to disrupt the publisher stranglehold on educational books.
20%
Sa
Motivation for Purchase When asked about “motivations for purchase,” the reply “I had to for my school/college/university” mostly came from users in Nigeria, India, Kenya, and South Africa, and came least from users in UK, US, and China. A similar observation was made when studying the source of app downloads. The graph results showing who bought apps from an educational authority website and who had to use these same products as part of their education were almost identical. One possible explanation to this observation is that wide access to education reduces demand for educational apps, and vice versa. In other words, users are less likely to download products to help them with basic learning when they can tackle this at school.
Educational App Usage By Market
30%
To ta l
Qatar show download rates very close to the average of 17%. KSA falls below it.
17 per cent of global mobile app users have downloaded education apps In the past 6 months, which types of items have you purchased on your mobile phone?
84% 72% 65%
56% 48%
51%
42%
38%
35%
34%
31%
25%
26%
25%
20%
17%
13%
9% Any purchase net
Physical or Perishable
Digital products (e.g. ringtone, app, games, music)
Total Sample 2013
Physical Goods (e.g. books, CDs, clothing etc.)
Purchase from education site
Virtual Goods (e.g. in application currency, goods, prizes etc.)
Perishable goods (e.g. food and drink)
Use education app
How have you purchased items on your mobile phone in the past six months? 39%
35%
34%
23% 13%
Any card payment
29% 22%
19% 13%
23%
22% 7%
14%
Any mobile payment Using an online payment Coupons, vouchers service e.g. PayPal or offer code Total Sample 2013
7%
12%
Mobile wallet payment
Purchase from education site
19%
18% 6%
10%
Virtual currency
6%
11%
A retailer's payment service e.g. Amazon-1 Click
Use education app
June 2014 The Quartely
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BUSINESS
Useful Apps for Transportation developing markets where the app store has less of a stranglehold on app purchases
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
The Role of Edutainment, Brands, and Advertising Many users don’t perceive educational apps solely as an academic product. In fact, when asked what motivated them to buy an education app from an educational site, the top answer was ‘entertainment’. 47% of education app users chose this factor compared to 35% of consumers buying any app from anywhere. This reflects blurry line between play and learning. The importance of brands cannot be underestimated as an influencer of purchase across all types of apps. 11% of mobile app users said they downloaded apps because “it was from a brand I know and trust.” When it comes to educational app users, 29% say they bought the apps from an educational site, highlighting the significant influence of brands—in this case, educational sites—on purchase. Interestingly, advertising is also a powerful motivator. Among all users of mobile apps, 8% said they bought an app because “advertising prompted me”. That figure increases three folds (24%) among educational app users who bought from an educational site and where prompted by advertising. Whatever the motivation for downloading and purchasing, educational app users are generally more engaged with the business of mobile than most. n
Gamification of apps is driving educational market growth, with entertainment as a key motivational triggerer.
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The Quartely June 2014
43%
45% 40%
In the last 6 months, from where have you bought or downloaded something on your mobile phone?
43%
40%
37%
36%
31% 26%
36% 27%
25% 15%
26%
24%
9% An app store
In App/game purchase
On the mobile web Social media page
Total Sample 2013
Your mobile operator's site
%
For entertainment
35%
It was convenient
21%
To get something immediately/didn't want to wait
15%
Boredom/filling time
14%
It was from a brand I know and trust
11%
It’s the only way for me to purchase items online
9%
I have never bought anything on my mobile phone before and wanted to try it out
9%
Advertising prompted me
8%
Couldn't find it in store
8%
Don’t have a debit card
6%
22%
21% 15%
13%
8%
A retailers mobile Retailer mobile website storefront (app or web)
Purchase from education site
Motivation (total sample)
24% 17%
15%
7% An auction site
12% 6% A retailer's payment service
Use education app
Motivation (purchased from educational site)
%
For entertainment
47%
It was convenient
35%
To get something immediately/didn't want to wait
35%
It was from a brand I know and trust
29%
Advertising prompted me
24%
Boredom/filling time
23%
It’s the only way for me to purchase items online
22%
Couldn't find it in store
21%
My mobile phone before and wanted to try it out
14%
Don’t have a debit card
13%
BUSINESS
Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
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The Quartely June 2014
W
hile online supermarkets are still emerging in the MENA region, they have been around in developed markets for more than a decade. The idea started with mostly online-only stores that sell groceries in certain places. The failures that took place with several online grocers, such as Webvan, interrupted the growth and improvement of the service. Only innovative sellers with a solid business model and a limited area of service, such as FreshDirect, survived and grew. Today, bigger names, in both conventional and internet shopping, are more and more interested in the concept. Tesco, Walmart, and Amazon, among many others, have joined FreshDirect to sell groceries online in selected areas. The concept is regaining interest for good reasons. Other than known benefits of buying off the internet, online grocery shopping can be very convenient for customers who don’t have the time to browse aisles. It can also be a great way for shoppers to avoid impulse purchases, lowering the overall shopping cost despite the extra money paid for delivery. For people who live in New York, for example, there is no easier way to get the exact needed amount of groceries than to log on to FreshDirect; it allows customers to choose the recipe they want and deliver the ingredients of that recepie to their address—in the right quantities. Selling online could be good for businesses, too. Although processing an online order adds costs that don’t exist when selling conventionally, there is substantial money saved on stocking shelves, cashiers, carts, etc. More importantly, selling online facilitates gathering and analyzing information about buyers and their interests, leading to a deeper understanding of the market. Today, the most popular online supermarkets cover a limited geographic area, usually urban cities. For example, FreshDirect operates only in New York; Amazon Fresh operates in Southern California, San Francisco Area, and Seattle Area; Tesco operates mainly in London; and the list goes on. e-Supermarkets in the Region Baby-steps are being taken by supermarkets in MENA to shift online. Spinneys, the renowned supermarket chain, started an online shopping and delivery service in Larger Beirut area in Lebanon, with a plan to cover more areas. Strangely, the Spinneys smartphone app does not include this feature. Carrefour, the international supermarket chain, launched a similar service in Dubai. Geant also launched the first hypermarket store online in the Emirates. There are several online-only supermarkets in the region. Among many we name Sallaty.jo in Amman; Biqala.com in Cairo; and trolley.ae, Supermart.ae, and many others in Dubai. But even though more and more e-supermarkets are emerging in the region, only a very small number of the big brick-andmortar supermarkets are shifting online, although with their already established customer base and expertise in inventory and logistics, they have a higher chance of success than nascent online stores. Success stories in the West, namely in the US and UK, had shown that unless there was a high level of innovation in an online service, customers would prefer to stick to conventional supermarkets that are more familiar and credible.
Factors for Successful e-Supermarket Business Models Regional supermarkets have to consider several factors before integrating online shopping services. One is choosing the right coverage area, which is directly correlated with their ability to deliver groceries fast enough to maintain their freshness. That’s why Amazon, while delivering every other commodity across the world, provides online grocery shopping in 3 areas only, and Freshdirect.com, although has been in the market for over a decade, still operates in one city: New York. The cities that benefit from successful online supermarkets (New York, Seattle, London, etc.) have a high population and great infrastructure. Reflecting that on MENA, a successful online supermarket must operate in cities with a dense population to ensure a sustainable customer-base, a reliable transportation system for timely deliveries of fresh products, robust and fast Internet connections, and high penetration levels of credit/debit cards—although the latter is not as crucial as the other factors as COD can still be a viable payment option. Also, the lifestyle of the population should be considered. A society with dual working parents, for instance, would see a great need for online supermarkets. Taking these factors into consideration, we can safely claim that GCC cities possess the needed criteria for the successful implementation of online supermarket models; and we are most likely to see more brick-and-mortar supermarkets shift online in these cities. Dubai, which is now turning into a smart city, might be the one to take the lead.n
June 2014 The Quartely
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BUSINESS
Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA Emerging Alternative Payment Methods T-Pay Offers a Solution to Online Payment Issues in the Region
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P
ayment issues are a major obstacle for the growth of the e-commerce sector in the Arab region. With a lack of trust in online transactions, consumers revert to cash on delivery as a safer option. For merchants, this translates into high rates of return and reduced profitability. But hope is not lost for alleviating the issues of online payments. More startups, such as T-PayTM, are stepping up with alternative payment solutions. “In a region where credit card penetration is low, mobile penetration is high, and the conversion rate for buying online digital goods through a credit card is low, we saw a gap in the market. Current online payment methods are not able to fulfill the demand for e-commerce and digital goods and services,� says Sahar Salama, General Manager at T-PayTM.
What is the value that T-PayTM brings to users? T-PayTM helps businesses offering digital goods and services overcome the setbacks in their growth, mostly due to issues of payment methods or the lack of them. With T-PayTM, consumers will only have to enter their mobile number to purchase digital goods or services, and the transaction will be added to their monthly mobile telephone bill by their mobile carrier, if they have a post-paid number, or will be deducted from their existing account for those who have a pre-paid number. T-PayTM also allows merchants seeking to reach higher online payment conversion rates to reach all mobile users. With the ability offered for users to pay for their digital purchases from any desktop or mobile device through a single, click-to-buy action, using a Direct Carrier Billing system represents the ultimate convenience at zero cost. What are the challenges that are slowing down the mass adoption of alternative online payments in the region? There are three main challenges: The first one is the limited reach that e-commerce and digital vendors have on the unbanked, and this can be overcome through the telecommunications operators (telcos) who have a wide reach in their markets. This brings us to the second
Sahar Salama, General Manager at T-PayTM
to offer the best quality of services that will help achieve mass adoption of new and efficient payment methods.
challenge, which is represented by the high cost structures of billing at telcos, due to inefficiencies in operation costs and tax structure. When online payment margins are low, the high cost of billing through a telco becomes a barrier to e-commerce and digital merchants. The challenge is to find models in mobile payments that are cost effective, with a larger reach, offering efficiency in operations and competitiveness in commission charged. The last change is to educate consumers and offer them incentives to use mobile payments through telcos. What are they key factors to achieve critical mass adoption? The convergence of services and partnerships is a critical factor. Building mutually beneficial relationships with all the parties involved to find the best solutions that offer value to all the players of the value chain is the way forward in the future. The second key factor is offering added value for the various partners, from establishing relationships with customers, increasing user loyalty, enhancing brand value and expanding the reach. The third key factor is creating a real ecosystem where all players work together
How do you see online payments in the region growing this year? With the total value of mobile payments set to reach US$670 billion worldwide by 2015, the Arab region has a huge unaddressable market, primarily dominated by a young, unbanked population that has no means to conduct online payments. Currently only 22% of internet users in the Arab world use credit cards, which have a penetration rate from as low as 1.5% to 8% in most of the countries in the region. The worldwide mobile payment transaction value has surpassed US$235 billion in 2013. The Middle East’s share of this market is minimal but is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 80 per cent until 2017, when it will be worth US$27.6 billion. This growth will change with the creation of an ecosystem, value propositions from all fragmented players and optimized commission charges that are competitive in the market. I see that the only payment method that will grow in the region this year is the Direct Mobile Billing method. What is the biggest opportunity in online payments this year? The answer in my opinion is direct billing. It is expected to offer a US$13 billion revenue opportunity by 2017. It will unlock the potential of online transactions by unleashing the power of mobile monetization. n
June 2014 The Quartely
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DIGITAL MEDIA
Useful Apps for Transportation
The Future of the Agencies
F
ive years ago, it was easy to
differentiate the high-quality work A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Fawzi Rahal Reflects on the Future of Creative and Media Agencies with the Advent of Online Ads
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of creative agencies in comparison to the mediocre work that used to be done in-house by some brands. Today, more and more work is being completed by the clients that the agencies are sometimes unaware of. The days when agencies were the strategize-all, do-all are over. The functions of these agencies are slowly being replaced by smaller and more specialized agencies which the world has agreed to call third-party. And today’s brands are rushing at them because they are cheaper, more specialized and much more flexible. These third-parties have always been around to fill in gaps when agencies needed help. Before the digital age, third-party video production houses were (and still are) what agencies relied on for TVCs and content production. In the 1990s, Third-parties managed on-theground shopper marketing and retail. In the 2000s, the digital boom sparked the creation of third-parties that offered CRM platforms, hosting, and advanced web development that the agency could not develop in-house. Today, there’s practically a third-party agency for everything from mobile app development to community management. Third party agencies have always been structured to produce what the agency cannot. An average agency that produces a TVC every month cannot afford to have production staff and equipment in-house, just like they cannot conjure two community managers for a 2-week competition. Third-parties also have the flexibility to change a lot faster than agencies. They’ve expanded their strategic arms and have started servicing brands in ways that the Agency cannot afford to scale without being frowned upon by some CFO somewhere. Third-parties have turned their production houses into online content hubs, their community management teams into full-fledged social media marketing houses. Media Agencies claim to be the one-stop-shop for integrated media planning, buying and monitoring; yet you cannot expect your average media agency to propose advertising on platforms that they are not familiar with or to manage a product placement or branded content
campaign on YouTube. Creative agencies also claim to handle 360º integrated marketing, which sadly sometimes translates to a press ad turned into an EDM and a Facebook post. What has really changed is the definition of integrated. There was a time when a campaign was integrated if it was present across the five main abovethe-line (ATL) channels: TV, radio, print, cinema and outdoor. Online ads slowly crept into ATL and eventually broke the line altogether. For example, social media requires agencies to produce quantities of artwork that cannot be charged at the standard agency artwork rate, and less-costly most usually just means outsourced. The Media Agencies haven’t changed much either. While most Agencies today have basic product placement and mobile media expertise, they are also unspecialized and are slowly being removed as the middle-men in the planning/buying/booking equation with brands either relying on digital media buying houses or hiring media specialists
Fawzi Rahal is the Founder of Gamutt, a strategic digital consultancy, focusing on setting world-class web, social, mobile and content strategies for brands in the Middle East. Previously, Fawzi headed Digital at Grey MENA.
in-house. With most platforms allowing brands to book and manage ads, the media agencies are finding themselves in need of a broader scope, or otherwise suffer as a consequence of stagnation. In today’s terms, an integrated campaign cannot ignore social media, mobile, and even branded content. While agencies used to outsource this kind of production and media buying in the past, they are today realizing that this is not a sustainable business model and that such expertise must be brought in-house. The solution? Acquisition. It is far
easier for a multinational agency to acquire an app-development agency, for example, than justify the hiring and training of staff that can potentially build apps in the future. Some creative agencies are already going in this direction, but it is more the media agencies that are shopping around, probably given how dire their situation is. The status quo of the average agency is not sustainable. Investing in existing third-parties and startups is not an option anymore. It’s is the only viable choice to grow and sustain the integration. n
DIGITAL MEDIA
Ad Tech Terms Decoded Helping You Make Sense of Online Advertising Jargon
Ad Exchange is a technology platform for publishers and ad networks to provide aggregated inventory to advertisers. The platform facilitates automated auction based pricing and buying in real-time. Ad exchanges’ business models and practices may include features that are similar to those offered by ad networks. Some of the major ad exchange platforms in the world include Right Media, which was purchased by Yahoo! in 2007 for around $680 million; and DoubleClick, a Google subsidiary purchased in May 2007 for $3.1 billion. Real-Time Bidding (RTB) is the dynamic process of buying and selling impressions in real-time, in which the highest bidder “wins” the right to place a display ad. An ad buyer, through the platform of their choice, can differentially value each individual opportunity to buy an ad impression in real time. RTB helps advertisers and other buyers optimize campaigns by testing simultaneous advertising strategies, increase effectiveness of ads by changing them quickly, and increase ROI by identifying fraudulent inventory. Retargeting is an online marketing tool that ecommerce marketers use to “re-attract” users who previously visited their website but did not complete a purchase. It works by keeping track of people who visit the website and displays the retargeted ads to them as they visit other sites online. Technically all that is necessary is to place a pixel tag or other code in the website to enable a third-party to recognize particular users outside of the domain from which the activity was tracked. Private Exchange is a virtual marketplace operated by sellers to represent their high value/premium inventory, providing programmatic access to select buyers (via a demand side platform) who
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agree to transact based on pre-negotiated terms. Private exchanges offer access to inventory that is not otherwise available within the open market. Agency Trading Desk is a centralized organization within an agency that manages programmatic, bid-based digital media and audience buying, and works as the agency’s internal “center of excellence,” supporting agency teams wishing to tap into this new buying model on behalf of clients. Closing the Loop is when the sales teams report to marketing about what happened to the leads that they received, which helps marketing understand their best and worst lead sources and focus on the ones with the best conversion rate to customer. It is “closing the loop” between the sales and marketing team. Typically, this involves connecting marketing analytics software with the customer relationship management (CRM) software. GeoFencing means setting up a virtual perimeter—the “fence” around a location, such as a restaurant. When people carrying cell phones cross that perimeter, the system becomes aware that they are physically nearby and can push information to the phones. Conquesting in advertising is a means to deploy an advertisement for one’s products or services adjacent to editorial content relating to the competitor or the competitors’ products. It’s a way to “rain on the other guy’s parade.” The aim is to convert consumers from one brand to another. Dynamic creative is a customized version of a display ad that is automatically served based on targeting criteria. This can be as simple as versions by gender and geography, or as complex as including a name in the ad. n
Ad Network/ Exchange and Media Distribution Top Technologies in Ad Network, Ad Exchange, and Media Distributio 1. Google Display Network 2. Yahoo! Advertising Solutions 3. Quantcast 4. Advertising.com 5. Rubicon 6. Facebook Exchange (FBX) 7. Casale Media 8. TubeMogul 9. MediaMind 10. Taboola
Marketshare Yahoo! Quantcast 4% Advertising Solutions 4% Advertising.com 4% Google Display Network 13%
Other 75%
Fortune 500 share Quantcast 9%
Advertising.com 6%
MediaMind 6%
Taboola 12%
Source: leadledger.com
Other 67%
DIGITAL MEDIA
Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Let’s Talk Fonts
Key Things to Consider When Designing an Arabic Font and Typeface “B
ad experiences are the key to finding solutions.” With this statement, Huda Abi Fares, Founder at Khtt Foundation, began her workshop on Arabic typography for mobile apps, alongside Fawzi Rahal—one of her former students—during ArabNet Beirut 2014 Design+Code day. The workshop highlighted key principles every designer should take into consideration when designing an Arabic typeface.
1. Legibility: The first thing to think about when designing a typeface is its legibility, especially when designing for the smaller screens of mobile devices. To achieve that, there are a few things to keep in mind, starting with the fact that people read best what they’re used to reading. Using an ultra-modern typeface that doesn’t resemble anything people are used to read could alienate users and make it more difficult for them to read text. That, however, depends on your target audience. The right typeface differs between an app directed at newspapers readers and another aimed at TV watchers. Secondly, a balanced degree of thickness is needed for a good font. A very thick font could confuse readers by losing distinctions between letters, while an extremely thin or light font could be illegible. A good font is void of unnecessary details. Fonts that are too calligraphic, with too many details, might look good on paper or on a poster, but not on screen. Reading off screens should be spontaneous and easily done; simple looking letters are ideal as they are easy and fast to read. Fonts should also be compact horizontally and vertically. When designing for smaller screens, you have a limited visual
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Arabic fonts from the mobile app Anghami.
space, and comfortable reading means less scrolling; therefore, letters should be as compact, vertically and horizontally, as possible without losing distinctions. Though screen fonts should contain as little detail as possible, some detail, such as dots and vocalizations, are mandatory. Modulating stroke thickness could be very useful to preserve these details. Remember to keep counters definable and evenly spaced. In typography, a counter (or aperture) is the area of the typeface anatomy that is entirely or partially enclosed by the form of the letter. Small or tight counters may deform letters and make
Arabic fonts from the mobile app Arabic Alphabet (left) and Charbaka (right).
reading a difficult experience. It’s always a good idea to design for the worst-case scenario. If you’re a designer, you probably have a good screen to test your work on. Users, on the other hand, may not. Keep that in mind and design fonts that would be legible on low-res or poorly-lit screens. Contrast is one of the most important factors in legibility. Use different colors for the background and the typeface. However, when using white typeface over dark backgrounds, such as black, text tends to glow; lighter typeface could reduce the glowing.
2. Using Color as a Tool: Color can be a powerful tool when designing a fonts, especially in Arabic. Arabic web fonts do not have proper italics. The Arabic language does not contain options like separate letters, capital letters, small capital letters, etc. Aside from the obvious use of color as a legibility tool, you can use it for better information architecture. Applying different colors for different information is a good way of clearing your information hierarchy. That, of course, depends on the subject, nature and targeted audience of your design. Sometimes, information hierarchy is better illustrated using sizes, weights or even typefaces to separate headings from body text, or comments from quotes, etc. In many cases, however, using a different color for a heading, or for an important quote, can be a more powerful way of sorting the information your design is about. The aesthetic value of colors, with the right harmony and the right contrast, cannot be neglected, or even understated. To keep your aesthetics attractive, don’t go overboard with using colors. Too much colors tend to be distracting, especially in text. Usually, two carefully picked colors would be enough if used well. 3. Adding Your Personal Touch: Every design project has specifics. A good designer understands what his/ her project is about and finds the most beautiful way to convey information clearly. The human factor cannot be understated when designing typeface, or anything else for that matter. Always build your work on what you’re designing and who you’re designing it for. Huda’s final advice was to remember that “as a general rule, less is definitely more!” n
June 2014 The Quartely
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DIGITAL MEDIA
Useful Apps for Transportation
It’s Viral Ad Campaigns
by JOHNSON’S® Baby A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Recent Apps forDigital Residents in MENA
1. The Grandparents Frame
that Went Viral in the MENA As the number of Arab immigrants grows to 16 million, many lose touch with their elderly parents who often feel left behind on special family occasions. In light of this, Johnson & Johnson produced the Grandparents Frame, a family-oriented app that enables parents to instantly send pictures of special moments to the grandparents’ home. Johnson & Johnson decided to market the app and its corresponding digital frame through a heart-felt ad that went viral across the region with over 2 million views since it was released on March 2014. Produced in Dubai by Impact BBDO, the commercial was based on real-life testimonials of grandparents who opened up in front of the camera. “We raise them to be independent and start their own family,” says a grandmother in the ad. “But it’s hard to let them go.” 2. Mobilizing the 12th Man
For security reasons, the Tunisian Government decided that no fans were allowed to go to Tunisian stadiums anymore. With average results throughout the season and with the most important game approaching, Historical Football team C.S Hammam-Lif needed the support of their fans. The team got together with Memac Ogilvy Label and developed an app that connects every fan to 40 giant speakers inside the stadium. A simple tap on sound icons in the app is instantly relayed as cheering, clapping, or drumming sounds in the stadium.
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The more fans press on the icons, the louder the sound in the stadium. The app reconnected 93,100 fans to their team, helping C.S. Hammam-Lif win the game and secure its position in the First League. “Fans are 50% of our motivation,” says one of the team members in the video ad. 3. London Calling Series by Mark and Spencer
Battal Al Rowagan (Cool Hero). From car pranks to Christmas carols and pizza jokes, the nominees were tested on how much they maintained their coolness no matter how irritating and annoying Bader Saleh could be. Videos were posted each week on the campaign website and voting was highly encouraged through YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms. Each video prank received more than 100,000 views. “We have launched this new campaign to spread laughter and fun among the public,” said Talal El-Khalil, MEA SVP, GM, GCC Beverages BU. “We encourage the participants to stay cool and refresh themselves with 7UP.” 5. Sprite Zero Refresher
Last autumn, Marks & Spencer launched a new fashion campaign translated into a two-season social web series that tackles the day to day issues of two young girls in the MENA region. The script is humorous, light, and personal, which explains the 800,000+ views that it has garnered in total to this day. Produced by Lebanon-based Olive Tree productions, the web series revolves around Hala, who, “Dreaming of independence and an alternative life, packs her dreams and heads off to London,” and Shireen, a new mom who tries to get over her baby blues and cope with her new lifestyle with advice from Hala. In each episode, we see how M&S plays a part in the two girls’ daily life. The series casts a number of actors from the region, including Lebanese actress Remonde Azar. 4. 7UP series cool hero
7UP Arabia has been working secretly with its newly found comedian star Bader Saleh for filming several undercover pranks on the public to see how they would react. Saudi guys who maintained their cool were nominated for the title
Summer is well on its way and one brand that decided to promote beach re-freshness using integrated marketing was Sprite Zero. Ogilvy & Mather introduced Sprite Refresher on the beaches of Turkey to help beachgoers overcome the heat. The brand first developed an app that used GPS technology and promoted it via a poster on the beach. Once people started downloading the app, the mini Sprite airplane flew across the beach and sprayed “freshness” on them. “Spring and summer in Turkey can be very unbearable,” the ad said. “This is the perfect way to show how refreshing Sprite Zero is. But in a way that no one expects.” The campaign announced that it will probably be expanding to other countries in the region. Upon launch in May 2014, the ad has recorded over 37,000 views in less than a week. 6. Land Rover MENA – The Rub’ al Khali Challenge New Range Rover, the sixth product of giant luxury vehicle manufacturer Land Rover, wanted to prove to its Arab audience its powerful engine capacities
and muscular on-road dynamics by crossing, for the first time, the world’s largest desert—Rub’ al Khali—in 24 hours. The company employed an accomplished Dakar-Rally racing champion to take on the challenge. “I’ve raced the Dakar Rally 10 times before,” says the player in what appeared to be an ominous VO tone. “I’ve had some very serious accidents. I also know people who died during the race, but this is completely different. The empty quarter is completely unknown.” After racing through miles of scorching sand dust and rocky formation, the 650,000 square kilometers were crossed in a just less than 11 hours. The video went viral on YouTube, with over 350,000 views. 7. Buzz - Khali el Jaw Wel3an Series
The fact that Lebanese people like to party is no secret, and one party ad campaign series that went exceptionally viral between the Lebanese youth, with 14 ads to its record so far, is the Buzz campaign with its “Khali el Jaw Welan” slogan (Keep the good times rolling). The series gained popularity with nowfamous leading man Fouad Yammine, but the lead actor does not appear in the latest series, which was critically acclaimed for the bold way it relayed its main message: “It doesn’t matter how you party; keep the good times rolling with Buzz.” The most viewed episode in the latest series, called “Toufic Mistajneb” has so far 21,600 views, followed by the episode “Habib Bye7keh w Byef3al” with 10,145 views. n
June 2014 The Quartely
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DIGITAL MEDIA
Useful Apps for Transportation The A Round-Up ‘Social’ of Taxi-Booking Enterprise Apps for Residents Is Here in MENA
Zeid Nasser Sees Social Networks Inevitable in Modern Enterprises
T
oday, we are witnessing the maturing field of social-style interaction incorporated into enterprise software to create what is being considered a ‘Social Business’, or ‘Enterprise 2.0’. Basically, it is an additional layer of communication and sharing capabilities that is added to already existing online software which enables employees, customers and suppliers to collaborate and organize information, using web and mobile platforms. Software as a Service (SaaS) has been a prevalent model in modern organizations for a few years now. Every major software vendor now enables company staff to work from anywhere by incorporating core business functions of the organization into an interface accessible from any device. What was missing, though, was the adoption of some of the best ideas and functions available through social media from the consumer side. Chatting and messaging, posting on forums or user groups and collaborating on shared content are all clear examples of what can be adopted by the organization to capitalize on the changing nature of the typical employee. People want the same communication experience they enjoy in their personal lives to be available in their professional life; to share data with co-workers, and seamlessly communicate through messaging instead of just using email. If this increases their productivity and happiness, companies should realize its impact on the bottom line. With the entrance of millennials into the work place, it has become imperative to adopt such communication and
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collaboration abilities to retain younger employees. That’s why the biggest players in enterprise software are getting in on the act. In 2012, Microsoft acquired Yammer, a private social network, which puts people, conversations, content, and business data on one platform. At the time, more than 200,000 companies worldwide were already using Yammer to collaborate with employees. It was an example of businesses seeking out a solution, even from a small vendor, if the bigger software companies weren’t providing it. So, Microsoft jumped at this opportunity demonstrating that social media in the enterprise is much more than a fad. Yammer is now part of Microsoft’s Office division, and is major part of its Office 365 strategy, within the SharePoint Online service. Oracle, another major player in enterprise software, has recently purchased Involver, to create what it calls ‘a cloud-based social platform across marketing, sales and service touch-points’. Oracle is now presenting an expanded social platform using Involver’s SML (Social Markup Language). The result will be a more comprehensive, and consumerized, experience. The enterprise software specialist SAP has also launched “Jam” which is a secure, social collaboration solution that extends across SAP’s entire technology landscape to give social capabilities. IBM already has a Social Business division, and its aims in this field are well articulated. IBM says it wants to “connect employees and customers to share their best ideas and new processes’. It would appear that the customer is now increasingly in control. Enterprises will also reap the benefits of enhanced feedback for the purposes of product and service development. This is an ‘open’ age of information. So, enterprises are going to have to open up too. There are, of course, software security challenges involved. But that’s part of this evolution, whereby the benefits truly outweigh the potential concerns, which can be tackled. Empowering employees and communicating better with consumers must be every company’s goal. Positive experiences create satisfied customers, and more revenues. That’s the optimal goal that corporate IT departments aim to achieve. n Zeid Nasser is a tech and media writer and commentator since the 1990s. He is also the founder of various local and regional media projects.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Useful Apps for Transportation
Crowdfund Investing Jason Best Reveals the 8 Keys for Successful Crowdfunding Investing
R
aising money for a project or a business is never an easy endeavor. I’ve raised money via crowdfunding myself and also advised a number of firms on strategies to support their success. There are now many successful campaigns that have been completed in the region and people who have raised money from
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the crowd are usually willing to share their lessons learned. Here are 8 things that I have learned about raising money via the crowd and I hope they are useful to you. 1. Plan, plan, and plan to succeed: If you think that successful
campaigns just happen, you are mistaken. Talk with any successful crowdfunder and you will discover that it is not easy to be successful, but if you work hard, you can raise the capital you need. How will you start your campaign? How will you communicate with contributors each week of the campaign so that the communication is fresh and interesting? What sorts of rewards or thank you’s will you provide? How will you manufacture and deliver your products to those that have pre-purchased them? Answering these types of questions is important in your planning. 2. Measure your social network: How much money do you need to raise? How many people are in your social network? What is the average amount of money per person do you need to raise if 25% of your social network
Jason Best is Co-Founder of Crowdfund Capital Advisors. He is one of the 3 entrepreneurs who wrote the original crowdfunding regulatory framework that became the crowdfunding language in the JOBS Act. His firm now provides advisory services to investors, governments, NGOs and entrepreneurs on crowdfunding strategy and implementation.
for their help in raising funds. Let them know that any amount they contribute is deeply appreciated and that you really need them to contribute in the 48 hours prior to your public launch. Research has shown that campaigns that reach at least 30% of their funding targets have an 80% chance of reaching their end goal. The faster you can get to 30% the better. If you talk with your family and close friends in advance, hopefully by the time you begin to send communications to the rest of your social network, you are already at 25-30% of your campaign goal. contributes to your campaign? Thinking through the numbers is important so you know where else you need to grow your network…not only in numbers, but also in influence. 3. Build your social network: The social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk says that you must give to your network 10 times before you ask for something once. Demonstrate you are an engaged member of the online communities you are in (Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, real world organizations, etc.) before you ask them for contributions/investments. 4. Pre-raise your early contributions: Before you publically launch your campaign online, talk with your family and very close friends. Ask them personally and directly
5. Notify your social network in waves: Think of it in concentric circles; start with your famil, then move to communicating with you close friends…then your friends…. then you business colleagues…then your acquaintances…then the wider world. The more success and momentum you can gain, the more likely that those outside of your close circle of friends are to contribute to your campaign. People like to invest in winners. 6. Two words to repeat constantly, “Thank You”: When you go down the path of crowdfunding there will be many people who come out to help. Make sure to thank them along the way. When investors contribute to your campaign, make sure to thank them. Be grateful for every investment pledge you receive, no matter the size. The best way to engage your crowd and build good
will is to thank them! 7. Silence is NOT golden: communicate with your investors and contributors: Investors never like to be left in the dark. They understand that you are working diligently on their behalf but they also expect you to communicate what you are doing to them. Come up with a communication plan and leverage the investor/contributor relations tools that your funding portal offers to make sure that you are properly engaging with your investors on a timely basis. Here’s the good news: if you aren’t, they’ll let you know. 8. Engage your investors: Don’t have all the answers? That’s one of the best parts of crowdfund investing. Your crowd comes not only with money but with knowledge, experience and a vast Rolodex. Use it! Your investors have a vested interest in your success and you should form an informal board of advisors and establish subgroups for sales, marketing, public relations, graphics, design, operations, and finance. Ask your investors to join a group and engage them. Also, look for one or two mentors among your investors to guide you. Confused as to where to keep all their valuable information? Use Dropbox or Google Drive to store shared information. Use social media to keep your investors informed. To streamline communication, create an email inbox for questions from your investors. n
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ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Useful AppsBusiness for Transportation The Perfect Pitch Rabih El Khodr Shares Tips that can Help You Pitch like a Pro
P
itching is an inevitable rite of passage for any entrepreneur. The practice, made famous by the nerveracking seconds spent in an elevator, can help land a golden opportunity for any new business… or it can help create a lasting first impression of unprofessional amateurism. With such high stakes, no wonder your body becomes burdened with worry and your throat get wrenched with fear. But it shouldn’t be this way. To pitch is to have a wonderful opportunity to impress, to wow; to convince others of not only investing in you, but to believe in your vision - and make it happen. This is where public speaking skills come into play. And
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anyone can be a great public speaker. But before you get started as a pitcher, there are several key things you need to remember.
Public speaking is an act of listening
Speakers are listeners, too. If someone sneezes loudly in the audience during your pitch, you might stop, turn towards them, and say “bless you” with a genuine smile. Now you might not even notice the sneeze if you’re dying of stress during your presentation. People listen to people they like. And a simple “bless you” can help build rapport with that single person, and with the entire crowd at the same time.
Public speaking is a performance
Public speaking should be a fun experience. And it should be an equally fun experience for the audience! Treat your pitch as an opportunity to inform, inspire, or simply entertain, by sharing your story with passion.
The Steps towards a Great Pitch
No matter how revolutionary your idea is, how strong your business case is, or how awesome your team is, if you can’t sell your business properly, your competitors will. And the key for remarkable selling lies in your on-stage performance. So
here are the basic steps to delivering a pitch that will paint a picture about your business acumen; your entrepreneurial drive; and your X factor. 1. Come Prepared You need to go into your pitch with a game plan. Research the history of the competition that you are participating in. Review the pitches delivered in past editions. Know more about the jury members of this year’s edition. Be surgically clear about what is it that you want to say in your pitch. Write it down. Make sure that the whole thing flows. 2. Have Structure In order for your pitch to leave a mark, you need to deliver it in a clearly structured way. Think of yourself as the conductor of a train. You need to take your passengers from a departure station to an arrival one, while having successive stops along the way. Take your audience on a similarly sequential ride - one where you’re enjoying the stops. 3. Be Alive Audiences want to get to know the *real* you: the one that jokes around with friends; the one that is passionate about an idea; the one that wants to change the world with that idea. So stir up your audience’s emotions by talking with your heart on your palm. Show us who you really are. 4. Control your body Your body language speaks volumes about your confidence levels; so even if you’re welled up with anxiety and your only desire is to run away and take the first plane to Brazil, you cannot allow your audience to “sense” your fear. Make sure to consciously control your body. Always remember that you are in control. Not the audience. Not the voice inside your head. 5. Project your voice The microphone won’t do its job properly if you whisper into it. Make sure to project your voice into the microphone so that the entire hall hears your voice and listens to you speak with confidence. If you’re saying “I’m so excited to be here” in a non-exciting way, we’ll believe your tone of voice and body language, not the words
you’ve said. Just don’t get too excited though… a sudden screech or speaking too loud for an extended period of time can lead to a really annoyed audience. 6. Use the stage So many entrepreneurs fail to seize the golden opportunity of making full use of the venue given to them, only to settle for half a square meter of space. A business pitch is like any other public speech: a performance. So get inspired from the theater arts to take control of that stage. Impose yourself and claim that space to be yours. Try not to hide behind a podium. Get close to your audience. Interact with them. Use the space to create memorable drama (not the Turkish-soap-opera type). Just don’t keep pacing left and right across the stage… you might induce motion sickness in your audience! On a final note, remember to treat the opportunity of getting on stage as your million-dollar lottery ticket. Don’t leave that stage before having given your absolute best. Even if you don’t win the million bucks, you’ll come out of the experience more energized, more confident, and ready to take on t he world. n
Rabih El Khodr is an independent communication trainer and consultant with close to a decade of professional experience. He is the founder of a public speaking consultancy called STANDUP! with a presence in both Lebanon and the UAE.
June 2014 The Quartely
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Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Regional Startups
10 Regional Startups You Might Have Missed W
e have summed up 10 of the most recent up-and-coming digital startups that have seen the light of day during the past year.
Country of origin: Egypt Founder(s): Ahmed Saad, Bahaa Galal, Rooda AlNeama, and Mustafa Othman Sector: Digital media Launch date: December 2013 Crowd Analyzer is an Arabic social web monitoring tool that helps companies
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measure people’s acceptance towards their brand and product by “listening to what they’re talking” on social media. The platform differentiates between different Arabic dialects and conducts sentiment analysis accordingly. The mapper-distinguished tool, which can scan all the tweets and posts happening in a specific location, won the 2nd place in Doha Venture Day, for which around 80 early-stage applicants were selected. The prize of $8,000 was added to $32,000 that the start-up managed to secure from Turn8business accelerator. Crowd Analyzer also won first place at the ArabNet Beirut Startup Demo Competition. “Sentiment analysis
technologies are widely available for other languages, but are very underdeveloped when it comes to Arabic, although the Arabic language is the fastest growing language on the web,” said Saad. “We tailored the dashboard for different business purposes in the region.”
Country of origin: Morocco Founder(s): Zeineb Yacoubi Sector: e-health Launch date: September 2013
DabaDoc helps patients in Morocco find the right doctor and book an appointment online. Clients can look up doctors based on their specialization, location, and years of experience. So far, DabadDoc has more than 500 physicians listed on its platform, each hand-validated by Yacoubi. Almost 15 appointments are booked daily. One of DabaDoc’s approaches to becoming profitable is to establish partnerships with international pharmaceutical companies. DabaDoc’s competitor in Morroco, rdvmedecin.ma, has been down for several months, helping DabaDoc build further momentum. “We are primarily focused on the users who have access to the internet, but in the long term, we would also want to attract people who are not accustomed to go on the web to search for a doctor”, explains Zeineb.
Country of origin: Jordan Founder(s): Evelyn Zoubi Sector: Fashion Launch date: April, 2014 Glanse is an app that fuses fashion and digital technology to alert users of the latest items on sale. The app is an interactive, user-friendly service that allows the user to create a wishlist and follow other users’ choices, as well as give and receive advice on fashion choices. Launched under the mentorship of Silicon Valley’s Plug and Play in the US, the online fashion platform has garnered more than 8000 users, becoming one of the premium fashion apps of the region. The startup has incorporated more than 500 brands in its service, and aims to triple the number to 1500 brands. “It made me think further on how I shopped,” says Zoubi. Usually I love checking out items on sale at my favorite brands. I check them one by one, put aside the ones that I don’t like, and take the ones I like to the fitting room. So, a feed of items on sale was the direction that we have decided on taking.”
Country of origin: UAE Founder(s): Dinesh Lalvani Sector: Education Launch date: January 2013 When Dinesh Lalvani, previous owner of Flip Media company, was trying to teach his son Hindi, he couldn’t find any convenient app to facilitate the process. This got him thinking of creating his own app. Growl Media, the parent company of Appy kids, was founded eight months ago and has now 5 edutainment apps in its portfolio targeting children aged 1 to 6. The apps introduce a non-western cultural concept through entertaining jungle adventures and animal interaction. The educational content company managed to raise $500,000 in seed funding to launch its first app, Appy Animals. “We realised there’s very little in the market that can really entertain kids and speak to their culture, and this is a frustration shared by parents from all backgrounds,” says Lalvani. “ I felt that there was a need for stories that had more cultural markers in them and the characters of Alfie and Haathi were born out of that.”
Country of origin: Egypt Founder(s): Basil Fateen Sector: Mobile app Launch date: March, 2014 Kablaow is a “people”app with a mission to make contact exchanging and organization as easy as a business cardswap, only with a phone in your hand. The program sorts every new contact added to the user’s list according to the time and place of meeting them (through an integrated GPS system and time caliber). “We’re always meeting new people in our social and professional life,” said Basel Fateen, “and each person has so many addresses to begin with: phone, sms, email, fb, twitter linkedin… they cause so many headaches that we tried to find a solution to include all these things.” The startup was self-funded with a capital of $80,000 and made it to the runner-up list at Arabnet Beirut’s Startup Demo
competition. They have currently received an undisclosed seed round, and they plan on launching an iOS version.
Country of origin: UAE Founder(s): Ashraf Alkiswani Sector: Ecommerce Launch date: July 2013 Karaz is an online educational and e-commerce platform that aims to build bridges across gaps that separate a married couple by improving their intimate life, which will lead to happier marriages and less infidelity. Launched with $110,000 of funding, Karaz.me allows only married adults to access the website. The platform gained popularity for its careful tackling of a sensitive issue in the Middle East where it only addresses Halal relationships. The website also publishes the latest studies about sexual relationships and provides direct sexual consultations with specialists, all in the strictest confidence. “The amount of information about the intimate life of couples in the Middle East is very limited due to the fact that it is misconstrued as taboo,” says Alkiswani. “We here aim to reduce domestic violence, infidelity, divorce, and suppressed emotions in the region.”
Country of origin: KSA Founder(s): Otba Mushaweh Sector: Web services Launch date: December, 2013 TypeStage is a platform dedicated to providing high quality Arabic web fonts at a time when the Arabic web service is the fastest growing in the region. It won 3rd place at Arabnet Riyadh Ideathon 2012 with its mission to overhaul Arabic content on the web. “There are nearly 500 Arabic fonts around, and more than 90% of the fonts are unsuitable for use on the web, either for aesthetic or for technical reasons,” said Mushaweh, an experienced graphic designer and also the owner of
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Logos Guide, a private creative studio founded in 2006. “Arabic content is still just 3% of internet content. The Arabic users are obliged to read all of their content in one default font,” continues Mushaweh. Typestage is currently negotiating with investors to address the highlighted issues and expand its userbase.
Country of origin: Egypt Founder(s): Adel Boseli, Carmen ElSaadi, Shehab Marzban Sector: Business and Investment Launch date: November 2013 Shekra is a specialized crowd funding platform in Egypt dedicated to connecting entrepreneurs and investors; hence the fusion of two Arabic terms, “sharek” and “fekra”. It differentiates itself from other crowd funding and crowd equity platforms in the region, such as Yomken, Zoomal, and Eureeca, by only allowing a closed network of investors to fund projects. Since launch, it has successfully funded three projects. “15% of Arab youth have a strong desire to start their own projects, as compared to 4% in the West,” the cofounders stated at the Global Islamic Economy Summit in Dubai, where they received the Islamic Economy Award as best SME Development provider.“There’s also a significant percentage of wealthy Arabs, both in the region and the diaspora, who want to invest in startups for a variety of reasons ranging from helping to creating success stories to assuming social responsibility towards their societies.” The recent startup also received the Ethical Finance Initiative Award 2013 which offered $50,000 for the founders.
Country of origin: Lebanon Founders: Amer Homaissi, Mowaffak Allaham, and Salim Mougharbel Sector: Language services
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Launch date: November 22, 2013 Shakkel is an Arabic Diacritization Software that takes an undiacritized Arabic text, and returns it diacritized, (“mshakkal”( )مشكلor “m7arrak”())محرك, facilitating the learning of Arabic language. Following the new wave of Arabic font and language enhancement on the web, the startup pitched its idea last November at Startup Weekend 2013 and snagged the first prize of $4,000. The project was created by the three techies from the Lebanese American University who observed what made the Arabic language on the web difficult to read and learn and tried to solve the issue. Shakkel is intended to help people better learn the Arabic language using computers. It also targets news agencies to help make their news more readable and understandable.
Country of origin: Lebanon Founders: Elias Ghanem Sector: Online payment Launch date: March 2014 Telr is a multicurrency and multilingual payment gateway for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets launched in Arabnet Beirut 2014 by former managing director of PayPal MENA Elias Ghanem. The service intends to revolutionize the dominant COD (cash-on-delivery) method in MENA, used in over 80% of transactions in the Middle East, by instantly enabling businesses to accept and manage online payments via web and mobile. With its logistics solutions, as well as loans to merchants that meet certain criteria for sales volume, Telr aims to build a platform that makes it easy to transact in local currencies. “We want to put together the right APIs so that companies have easy integration,” Ghanem said on a panel on payments at Arabnet Beirut 2014, stressing that quick setup time will set Telr apart from regional competitors. Telr is accepting 130 different currencies worldwide. n
Top 4 Investments Announced in Q1 2014
1 Souq.com got an investment from Naspers, Africa’s largest media company, for $75 million, after getting $40 million dollars also back in 2012; which makes Naspers an owner of a 36% stake in the largest e-commerce portal in the Middle East and North Africa.
2 Dubai-based comparison site of financial products SouqalMal; which reviews loans, schools, insurance, credit cards, cars, and broadband, has secured $1.2 million from Hummingbird Ventures, the Antwerp-based venture capital, and previous investor in MarkaVIP, CicekSepeti, and Peak Games.
3 Qordoba, the Dubai-based product localizer, which makes use of editors, translators, and subject matter experts, raised $1.5 million for its Series A round from MENA Venture Investments and Silicon Oasis Ventures. This round adds to its $500,000 in seed funding, and will help it continue to develop the business.
4 MEVP invested $1 million in Potential, a business consultancy company with offices in Dubai and Beirut that targets online business learning platforms and massive open online courses (MOOCs) for entrepreneurs and employees.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Digital Marketing Startup Will Ta3rifah Succeed Where Others Have Failed in Loyalty Programs and Behavior Analysis Monitoring?
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a3rifah is a mobile loyalty platform that gives business owners tools to identify, monitor, and analyze purchasing behavior and communicate with customers instantly. Operating in beta for nearly one month and expecting to officially launch on the 7th of June, the Dubai-based startup aims to fill in the gap between customer demand and brand delivery by providing new assessment and communication methods. The startup’s solid business plan and well-designed concept have landed it in the final stage of 6 regional startup competitions: TwoFour54 CreativeLab
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Top Arab Startups, E-Payment Summit and E-Innovate Conference, Congress and Expo, Arab Mobile Challenge Competition, ArabNet Startup Demo, Samsung Launching People (Winners), and Seedstars Dubai Finalists. After completing a 4-month incubation program, Ta3rifah joined Inu5 in Dubai where the team met “plenty of mentors with wide experience in loyalty programs and online payment systems,” explains Ismail Issa, CEO and founder of Ta3rifah. They are currently building their board of advisors and are mid-way
in discussion with “three of the biggest investors in the region to raise the first seed round of $400,000 USD,” says Issa. The startup is also going live on Eureeca right after their launch. They already have several businesses on board using the app, but they decided not to disclose more information on the matter. How is Ta3rifah different from other loyalty platforms? Besides the fact that loyalty points can be collected via mobile (instead of traditional cards and vouchers) our system has benefits for both customers and
Ismail Issa, Founder and CEO of Ta3rifah the word out about our campaign; and 3) preparing a mega-launching event for our solution and inviting and one big-name guest speaker to increase the number of attendees
businesses alike. We give the customer higher value for what they are already paying through voucher and pointcollecting method. We also track their preferences and notify them when they are geographically close to a preferred brand or item. For example, if a registered user is known to have a preference for coffee shops, he/she might receive SMS notifications about nearby coffee shops as soon as they walk into a mall. As for registered businesses, they will be able to profile and identify each customer’s behavior with much detail, such as gender, age range, maximum and minimum number of visits per week, etc.. This saves SMEs a lot of money that would have instead gone for web monitoring. Finally, Ta3rifah allows the sharing and trading of rewards. This allows customers to try out new brands, and it directly helps in growing a business. This is very good, because customer acquisition in the region is very high. Is the customer demographic analysis exclusive only to your application? Yes, it is. Some customers are demanding
that we widen the behavior analytics service, but the current version is limited only to our subscribers. What are the things that you learned from your first and current incubation programs? In the first program, we met a great number of different mentors who shared with us their wide expertise. The program was also rich in its structured trainings on how to start a business, like business modeling, sales, marketing & advertising. As for the second accelerator, they helped us become operative and connected us to investors and business leader from the community. What steps are you taking to ensure that your fundraising campaign on Eureeca would be successful? We’re splitting the activities into 3 different pillars: 1) preparing our hit-list of first-level connections who would like to invest a small amount in a business they believe in; 2) using the buzz from winning Samsung’s Launching People competition, as well as a initiating dedicated social media campaigns to get
What were the challenges you faced? One of the biggest challenges we face is the interaction with business firms in the region. The environment here is extremely competitive. When firms are approached by services similar to the ones they have, especially if its technology related, they are resistant to change and difficult to convince. But we were lucky to sign two big names recently and 4 medium sized companies. We have three or more names coming. What is the strategy you use for convincing business to use your platform? We map their sales to certain segments of the population. They can then identify who are the advocates and the people who have a negative attitude towards their service. After they locate and identify the source of their failures, they can devise new marketing campaigns and promotions targeted to a specific gender or age group. This saves businesses a lot of money that would have been spent on data mining and integration and analytics. Ta3reefah also allows customers to directly message the business about their dissatisfaction, so that direct correspondence and compensation (like a free meal maybe) can take place. n
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The $100,000 Mistake of Arab Entrepreneurs Nima Adelkhani Gives Advice to Entrepreneurs on How to Really Get Investors on Board
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here seems to be a pattern brewing in MENA when it comes to raising an angel round. Instead of seeing more investors believing in the market and the opportunity it holds and investing in great entrepreneurs to build great companies, we see companies actually sabotaging themselves by thinking smaller and smaller and trying to raise less and less. Is this out of desperation or because of a lack of confidence in their idea? Or is it just that investors think they are in charge? I have observed something strange over the past few trips to places like Dubai, Cairo, Amman, Istanbul, and many of the new ecosystems of the Middle East. We in the valley [Silicon Valley] keep saying: “Think bigger.” And instead, companies are thinking “smaller.” What is going on? This is an ongoing theme that I keep seeing…over and over. A company gets on stage, tries to explain what they do (not very well), with no passion and no story, and 9 out of 10 times, it ends with: “If there are any investors in the room, we would love to talk with you. We are raising $100,000. Thanks!” The second you say, “We would love to meet some investors,” you have officially become the girl who doesn’t have a date to homecoming the night before the dance. You might as well start applying for a job, because if you are a startup and you are saying this, you are as good as dead!
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Over the past two weeks, I have heard over 100 companies from all over the region pitch (their not-so-sexy company) and ask for $100,000. Results? None! And after asking dozens of investors, none of them were really excited about a single one of the companies, for several reasons. First of all, they have not thought their idea all the way through and are just trying to buy time to fluff some more to then waste a bunch more time to raise another round, which is 100 times harder and not readily available (especially in MENA). Fundraising is a distraction, and most CEOs are not good at it—at least not until they have done it a few times and they realize it’s about packaging and positioning. The truth is, there is not much packaging or positioning you can do with $100,000. So why even bother if you are going to have to do it again in a few months. It is just painful! It will take twice as long and cost three times as much. Here is the real deal: if you are asking for $100,000, your idea is too small and will run out of money before you start generating revenue or raise an A round— which might as well be called a K Round
“It will take twice as long and cost three times as much.”
Nima Adelkhani is the founder of PITME. In his former role, he was head of business development for the Founder Institute, a global accelerator with operations in over 30 cities. He also helped to manage TheFunded. com and Founder Showcase. During his tenure, Nima helped launch over 300 startups.
because it is nowhere to be seen, like Kasper the friendly ghost. How many startups actually raise a solid A round in MENA? One out of 1000, maybe less. So, if you are going to try, then take your vision and multiply it by 5 or at the very minimum three. Three hundred thousand dollars should allow you to mess up once, pivot once, and hire a few people that you didn’t even know you needed. A good friend of mine always used to say: “It will take twice as long and cost three times as much,” or the other way around (in this case, it’s the same). Point is, if you are going to waste time to raise money, instead of focusing on product and business development, do it the right way and give yourself at least 16-18 months. If your burn rate is $10,000 a month, then by the time you actually build 20% of the rest of your product it will be $15,000 a month, which equals roughly $300k. Add in a cushion of $100k and there you go: you have created a runway of 18 months to actually show that you were serious. In the US, this number is at least double, maybe triple! A CEO—a good CEO—is a visionary who can get an investor excited about the vision, make the investor believe that he/she is crazy enough to
actually execute on this vision, and get the investor on board to help execute with his experience, network, and money—in that order! The investor doesn’t want you to have to waste more time in 4, 5, or 6 months to go on another road show and sell a new vision. Good investors find good deals and then they are all in (based on the resources and value they can bring); which means that an investor who asks for a board seat for $30K-$100k is not aligned with you and the vision! Personally, I think it should be illegal to ask for $100,000. Maybe it is already “illegal” in the sense that it doesn’t work. Moreover, no investor wants to hear you say that 40% of the money is going to ads to acquire users. If they wanted to invest in Facebook or Google, they would buy (probably have) shares in them. As a startup that is bootstrapping, you should figure out how to acquire users for free or organically; anyone can run ads.
“If you are asking for $100,000, your idea is too small and will run out of money before you start generating revenue or raise an A round.”
As someone who has heard over 2000 pitches over the past 5 years, I would not invest in anyone of the 100 companies that I have met in the past 12 days, not because they are bad opportunities; quite the contrary, I loved many of them, but I am not confident that the entrepreneurs have a grasp on what it takes to build a company and that it is a 5- to 10-year-
commitment; it’s not a cool project and not as fun or glamorous as it seems. Understand that angel investing is very risky and it doesn’t make money. So someone willing to put in money as an angel (at least the good ones) is not doing it because they are going to make money; otherwise, the angels would be called loan agents or insurance brokers; these people make money. What you need to do is get on stage, talk about your team, and explain why it should be you, your vision and your accomplishments that the investor should be interested it. If someone is interested or impressed they will come to you. There is no need to talk about the $30 billion global market and that you only need to get 1% to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. And as a good friend of mine once told me, “the more you ask for, the more they respect you.” Keep that in mind the next time you get on stage. n
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Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Things I Learned in London A First-Hand Account on How Europe’s Tech Capital Is Nurturing Its Startup Ecosystem, by Omar Christidis
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n early April, a few members of the ArabNet team made a trip to London to help build bridges between the Middle East and the UK tech market, which is rapidly emerging as the key tech hub of Europe. The trip was a whirlwind of meetings with investors and digital executives, visits to coworking spaces and accelerators, as well as great talks and networking events. Beyond the connections that we built, I came away with a few insights about the trends in entrepreneurship that I believe will be coming to our region in the near future.
district, offers startups direct access to the banking industry, so they can test and then sell their products. We also visited Startup Bootcamp, who were just setting up the office for their financetech accelerator, and met with Barclay’s, who commissioned TechStars to run their finance-focused accelerator. Beyond finance tech, we also visited The Bakery, an advertising accelerator designed to connect brands with startups and innovators to solve marketing problems; and Emerge Education, an accelerator for startups in the education space, based out of Google Campus.
1. Sector-Specific Accelerators Are on the Rise We visited more than a dozen accelerators and co-working spaces in London, and one of the interesting things we noticed is the presence of many sector-specific accelerators. The hottest sector by far was Fintech - Financial technology - with three active accelerators focused on this industry. Level39, so named because it is located on the 39th floor of a skyscraper in the heart of the London banking
2. Brands Are Looking for Innovation The second insight that emerged from these same meetings is the heavy involvement of the big corporations / brands in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. The Bakery, for instance, works directly with brands to solve their marketing problems; each cycle is sponsored by a brand, who puts forward a brief for the startups to work on. They pitch their ideas, the brand shortlists their favorites, and each of those receives 50,000GBP
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to develop their product. At the end of the cycle, the entrepreneurs demo their final products to the brands, and the best products may be implemented into commercial use by the brand. Barclay’s is another example: the company is a key sponsor of Central Working coworking space, and is running its own accelerator program to harness the next wave of innovation to grow its business. Finally, Tesco, the world’s second-largest retailer by revenues, is the main sponsor of Rainmaking Loft coworking space, and they come in to meet startups on a monthly basis to keep their finger on the pulse of innovation. 3. The Pace of Growth Is Increasing Every coworking space we visited seemed to be filled to the brim, yet all of them were less than two years old. Google Campus, a 5-floor building in the heart of London’s TechCity, celebrated its two year anniversary during our trip. The Campus has free working space and tech events. We attended a talk by the Head of Europe at BuzzFeed and the Founder of Jawbone two nights in a row
- both of which were packed. Level39 was 13 months old when we visited, and Rainmaking loft was just 7 months old and yet were turning applicants away and looking at expanding their space to accommodate more startups. We visited Warner Yard, an 11-month coworking space where TechStars is located, but which more importantly has a coworking space dedicated for angel investors, where they can share and discuss deals and co-investments. So while the ecosystem is already further along than MENA’s, it hasn’t reached anywhere near its maturity or capacity; I expect that MENA will experience this same exponential rate of growth in tech entrepreneurship as well. I believe we’re on the cusp of tremendous growth for the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the Middle East. With the major corporations, brands, agencies, government and investors all eyeing this sector, we’re going to see an influx of money, power and relationships that are critical for the emergence of success stories. In the meanwhile, to the startups that are struggling to grow in our nascent ecosystem today, I’ll leave you with you the quote that most struck me from our trip: Alexander Asseily, the LebaneseBritish Founder of Jawbone insightfully told us: “The value of a company is the sum of all the challenges it has overcome.” n
Omar Christidis is the Founder and CEO at ArabNet. He is a frequent speaker on digital technology and was selected by Gulf News Magazine as one of its “30 under 30.”
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Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
The Rise of the Big Fund With More Funds Being Raised in the Region, Industry Leaders Debate the Ramifications
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n August 2013, the Central Bank of Lebanon (BDL) surprised the whole entrepreneurship ecosystem, in Lebanon and beyond, with its release of a radical official circular that allocates an unprecedented $400 million to de-risk equity investment in Lebanese incorporated startups. A few months after this announcement, news came out of several funds being raised in the region. Silicon Badia expects to close the Badia Impact Fund of $30 million by the end of this year. Fadi Ghandour, Founder of Aramex and Executive Chairman at Wamda, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying that he has launched a new VC fund that aims to close with $75 million, although when we recently asked about the size of the fund, Wamda
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declined to answer. Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP) announced the launch of their latest fund, the Impact Fund, of $50 million. Berytech Fund is planning to launch its second fund with a target size of $30 million. iMENA Holdings has $30 million ready to be deployed, with a goal to raise that number even higher. And London Mayor Boris Johnson unveiled plans for a $166 million fund to encourage entrepreneurs in the Middle East to go global with their business “Two or three years ago, none of these funds would have thought of raising this amount of money,” says Omar Sati, Managing Director at DASH Ventures. “Even though there hasn’t been any exists, like for example Maktoub, I believe the reason they are raising this amount of
money today is because they have proved that they know how to deploy this money efficiently. And there are opportunities out there for capital to be placed. There are companies that are doing very well, hiring lots of people, generating healthy revenues, building real products and solving real problems. That is why I believe the big players want to go out to LPs (limited partners) and others and say: we are the right people to raise this money and manage this fund for you,” added Sati. Khaldoon Tabaza, Founder & Managing Director at iMENA Holdings, agrees that the market has potential and “can even support up to $500 million,” but thinks the real problem is deployment.
Omar Sati, Managing Director at DASH Ventures
Dany Farha, CEO at BECO Capital
“I believe the reason they are raising this amount of money today is because they have proved that they know how to deploy this money efficiently.”
Raising Funds versus Deploying Money “Deploying money according to deal flow generated by startups in the market, in my view, doesn’t work well in the MENA region as it does in developed markets such as the US,” says Tabaza. “There might not be that much deal flow that warrants large amounts of capital. In iMENA’s particular case, we are not limited by deal flow that comes to us from the market, but we’re rather proactive, so we build our companies and engage into partnerships and make investments.” “So many funds have been announced recently,” continues Tabaza, “but it’ll take a significant amount of time for these funds to be deployed.” Sara Chemmaa from MBC Group
concurs with Tabaza. “We believe this money will be used for larger ticket size investments, predominantly on Series B for startups that have proven their business model and were able to show traction. We don’t see many of these stories in the region so far, and we think that it might be challenging for [VCs] to deploy the money.” Dany Farha, CEO at BECO Capital, dismisses any concerns regarding deployment issues. “We are now making larger investments of more than $3 million per ticket for follow-on rounds for our portfolio’s companies, as well as new investments in Series A stage, which wasn’t the case two years ago,” he says. Other industry leaders agree with Farha. Walid Hanna, Managing Partner at MEVP, confirms that they are witnessing deal flows of much higher quality than previous years, and Habib Haddad, Founding CEO and General Partner at Wamda, sees the market “maturing, and so is the level of entrepreneurs.” Omar Sati voices their optimism saying: “There’s sufficient deal flow in the region today, and with new funds and capital, more deal flow will spur in the region.” He explains that the lack of deal flow in the past was triggered by the lack of funds, which led many promising entrepreneurs to just turn away and not bother. Now, the story is
different. “Instead of talking to 5 potential investors, we can now talk to 10 or 15 investors,” states Sati. Many people believe there is a deficiency in deal flow because there is a big gap in the evolution of the fund, according to Sati. So far, startups in the region were able to get money at different stages in their lifecycle, up until they need $2 million or $5 million to scale and grow further. “There is absolutely no fund to date in the region that can provide them with this sort of funding,” explains Sati. “This is where the big funds come in to meet this demand,” he adds, and Haddad agrees. They think the real problem was on the supply side (money), and what we are seeing today is simply the supply following the demand. The Effect of Competitive Funds on Co-Investment With more funds readily available in the market to meet a limited demand, one might wonder how this will affect the relationship between “suppliers.” Most industry leaders believe that raising bigger funds will have no effect on coinvestment. In fact, Farha believes we will see more collaboration and coopetition. “As the deals become larger, they need syndication across trusted partners. Fund sizes are still too small to take on the larger rounds alone,” says Farha. “We think co-investing is always
June 2014 The Quartely
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Useful Apps for Transportation
needed to reduce risk,” says Chemmaa. “We see that each investor brings a different value proposition to the startup, which is by far much more valuable than pure money, and we believe that this will remain.” Hanna agrees. “Co-invesments will not increase or decrease as these are usually caused by VCs looking at the same transaction and willing to share the risk and double the added value,” he says. Tabaza joins him saying that more co-investment will happen in the future “because of specific added value that those investors are bringing to the table, be it geographic or industry specific, not because of lack of supply or need to add more investors to the round.” On the contrary, Sati believes co-investment will actually decrease. “These are structured funds with specific criteria, and most important of this criteria is the returns. Many of these funds have to deliver returns for their LPs, and delivering these returns means when you see an opportunity, you will want to optimize your investment. So, rather than co-investing and sharing, you will want to maximize returns instead,” explains Sati. “Now that funds have all this money, there’s going to be no need for them to diversify their financial risks,” he continues. “The number of really attractive startups that pop up a year can be counted on your hand. Funds are going to fight for these opportunities. You’ll still have co-investments; the region is small and there’s a lot of mentality of helping each other, but it will decrease, and funds will become more competitive,” claims Sati.
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Will Valuations Be Pressured by Inflation? Industry leaders seem to have controversial opinion about the effects of bigger funds on inflation. According to Sara Chemmaa, valuations already started to be inflated, but she believes that things will eventually get corrected, and Habib Hadad shares her same view. Walid Hanna sees no escape from inflation, saying: “Increased funds means increased competition, and this will directly drive the valuations upward.” Omar Sati thinks inflation in valuation is only natural because of
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Khaldoon Tabaza, Founder & Managing Director at iMENA Holdings
Sara Chemmaa, from MBC Group
Habib Haddad, Founding CEO and General Partner at Wamda
Walid Hanna, Managing Partner at MEVP
the competitiveness of the funds. He expects investors to be willing to pay little bit of a premium to win a deal, but is concerned that inflation might result in “greedy entrepreneurs.” “When you start competing and valuations inflate,” explains Sati, “that’s when I believe entrepreneurs might start asking for much higher valuations than they deserve. When this happens, deals don’t get closed, and the ecosystem gets hurt.” On the other hand, Dany Farha and Khaldoon Tabaza see no inflationary pressures. “Inflations happen in more mature markets, and I don’t see the driver that would lead to inflation in valuations,” says Tabaza. What Does All This Mean for the Region? All players in the ecosystem acknowledge that the big numbers being raised are steps forward towards the “development of the technology economy in our region,” as Farha puts it.
“The increased availability of capital will decrease the risk of failure, since the entrepreneur is well supported financially and monitored by the investors,” says Walid Hanna, who also believes the region will see more exit opportunities and more ventures launched by experienced expats and. However, Hanna and the others are eyeing the roll out of these funds with caution. Sara Chemmaa emphasizes on the need for the money to be invested carefully at reasonable valuations. “The end aim should be growth and sustainability rather than pure exit, as this is still not an exit market,” she states. Omar Sati concludes by saying: “All the outcomes of these large funds are a natural evolution of our startup ecosystem. Good things and bad things will come out of them. The important thing is for us to learn from case studies that happened in other markets, like Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley, and make sure we don’t repeat their mistakes.” n
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