ArabNet The Quarterly Issue 6 | Fall 2015

Issue no 6. Fall 2015

Insights on Arab Ecommerce Industry The Most Important Stats You Need to Know

How Brands Can Best Use Snapchat Tactics for an Effective Marketing Strategy

Impact of Circular 331

Ecosystem Developments 2 Years Later

letter from the editor

Bringing Order Out of Chaos I never thought my life would one day become the epitome of chaos. My friends who had already joined motherhood tried to give me a heads up, but at that time, my translation of "Your life would change completely," was "You will have a new team member in your household." What they should have said is, "You will no longer recognize yourself." So, I set forth to prepare for the new member's arrival: I prepared the working environment (a.k.a. the nursery), planned the budget, bought the manual (Guide to Your Baby's First Year), and delegated some chores to the people around me to free myself up for the baby. I considered myself fully prepared.

Lara Chaaya Managing Editor

@ChaayaLara lara@arabnet.me

For those of you who already have kids, it should come as no surprise that two weeks after my daughter was born, I was already cracked up under pressure and was crying my eyes out of desperation for not being able to do everything on my to-do list. I wanted to spend every waking minute with my baby. I also wanted my house to be spotless, my fridge to be filled up with healthy meals, the laundry to be done, my marital relationship not to suffer, and my career to continue to matter. I read over two dozen articles searching for a magic formula that would help me manage all this.

One day, I was home alone with my baby girl when I remembered I had to make a conference call. I needed to find something to preoccupy my then-one-month old daughter. A quick search on the Apple Store yielded an interesting app that provides visual stimulation for newborn babies. I read the reviews. They were mostly positive.

Sold. I didn't even care that the app was $7.88 USD. The baby was simply fascinated by the black-and-white moving shapes, and I was able to make the conference call with no drama. However, I lost track of time and couldn't remember the exact hour I last fed her or changed her diapers. Back to the Apple Store. I downloaded Baby Feed and began jotting down her daily routine. It was brilliant. Now I have fewer things to memorize. The app does it for me. It also gives me accurate answers to the pediatrician's questions—which reminds me, I need to pass by the store on my way to the doctor.

I downloaded the best shopping list app I could find. In fact, in less than three days, I downloaded more apps than I did the whole year. My smartphone, the apps on it, and my realization that perfection is a myth in motherhood turned out to be my magic formula for bringing order out of chaos. Apparently, I joined the 42% of the MENA population with that many apps on their phone. Yes, my apps are all international, and so is the case with 38% of people in my country—not because I am biased, but because I don’t find what I need among Arabic apps.

These statistics are just a few of the many interesting insights you will read in this issue's feature. With apps becoming critical to our digitized daily lives, ArabNet and OnDevice joined forces to come up with a new research on the MENA app business. Flip to page 12 for the full report. This issue also touches on many hot digital topics relevant to Arab brands. Learn more about native advertising, how to use Snapchat as a marketing vehicle, what technology is best for developing mobile games, and much more.

Enjoy the Fall 2015 issue!

CONTENT issue 6 Apps for Transportation Useful A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA Industry stories

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Industry News

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Ecommerce Trends in MENA Interesting Insights You Need to Know

40 Top App Trends Dominating MENA in 2015

New Research on the App Business in MENA, by ArabNet and On Device Research

A Review of the Apple Watch

Fashion Accessory or Communication Device?

32 How HTML5 Can Be a

Winning Technology for Mobile Gaming

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TECHNOLOGY

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BUSINESS

The QuarteRly Fall 2015

How Do You Motivate Your Employees?

We Ask the Executives

HAT

D APP FOR SSES

DIGITAL MEDIA

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

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manItani

58 What Arab Brands Need to Know about Snapchat Creating Engaging Content and Successful Marketing Strategies on Snapchat

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Understanding Native Advertising

The Opportunities for Brands, Advertisers, and Content Publishers

Impact of Circular 331

How Circular 331 Issued by the Central Bank of Lebanon Uplifted the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

Integrated Approaches for MENA Governments to Boost Startup Growth Focus on the Kuwait National Fund for SME Development

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP

New Middle East Startups that Should Be on Your Radar

54 A Journey Through the Customer Experience

How to Make Customers Happy

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Industry stories

Useful Apps for Transportation

Industry News

A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

Applications Open for Speed@BDD Beirut’s New Accelerator Speed@BDD, the much-anticipated Beirut-based startup accelerator and investment fund, kicked off its first round of acceleration on September 15, 2015. Leading this initiative is CEO Sami Abou Saab, a Berkeley MBA graduate and former Product Manager for Skype at Microsoft (Seattle – US).

So far, the Lebanese startup scene had seen a shortage of fully-dedicated accelerators after a few short-lived initiatives like Seeqnce, which produced only one round of acceleration. Until recently, incubators like Berytech and co-working spaces like AltCity were trying to fill the gap. Speed@ BDD starts off strong in the Beirut Digital District (BDD). It combines the resources and knowhow of veterans like the Berytech Fund II, the IM Capital fund, the Impact fund by Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), the Bader Young Entrepreneurs Program, and Lebanon for Entrepreneurs (LFE). It fits within Lebanon’s rising entrepreneurial landscape incentivized by the Central Bank’s Circular #331. The acceleration program will run for 3 months and is open to any software, digital, or web/mobile MENA startup team at the idea or MVP stage, provided they can relocate to Lebanon. Each participating startup could receive up to $30,000, and will also benefit from free working space, product development and business development workshops, accounting services, legal services, and mentorship, in exchange for 10% equity. Speed@BDD aims to run 2 investment cycles (of 10 teams each) per year. The top 2 teams in each batch will benefit from follow-on acceleration in Silicon Valley (US).

Hyundai Competition Targets Lebanese Innovative Startups For the first time in Lebanon, Hyundai has launched the Startup Competition, organized in collaboration with ArabNet. Applying startups should be based in Lebanon and have a minimum viable product or working prototype. The deadline for application is September 28. 20 finalists will be selected to attend 6 workshops in October-November 2015, including one-on-one consultations, monetization, communication, accounting and finance, and investment. The final pitches will take place on November 12, 2015, at the Hyundai main showroom. The top 3 startups will be selected by a jury of 12 experts including veteran entrepreneurs (Anghami, Wamda), as well as representatives of local accelerators and incubators (UK Lebanon Tech Hub, AltCity, Flat6Labs), VC firms (MEVP), and other organizations supporting the startup community like Kafalat. These startups will win cash endorsements from Hyundai worth $15,000, $10,000, and $5,000 respectively.

Meet InspireU, Saudi Arabia’s First Incubator-Accelerator Saudi Telecom Company (STC) has launched Saudi Arabia’s first corporate digital incubator-accelerator: InspireU. Saudi Arabia is already home to accelerators like Flat6Labs Jeddah and initiatives by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) like “New Ventures”. The latest among those, InspireU, targets early stage digital and ICT startups. The 6-month program will run twice a year in Riyadh, and is open to applications globally, with a focus on Saudi Arabia. Each cycle will select 10 candidates to relocate to Riyadh and benefit from the program.

Candidates can receive up to $20,000 in seed funding, as well as a full range of services, for a total value of around $100,000, including: office space, access to STC’s infrastructure, mentorship, hands-on trainings, an international exchange program, networking with regional and international partners, and privileged access to MENA markets. Finally, InspireU will choose 4 candidates and help them develop their businesses through promotion and exposure to additional investment opportunities.

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Industry stories

Useful Apps for Transportation Jusoor Bootcamp Graduates 10 Promising Startups from Syria

Avatech Accelerates

A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA 10 New Startups in Iran

10 Syrian startups graduated from the first Entrepreneurship Bootcamp held in the Beirut Digital District by the Jusoor community, in partnership with Oasis500, and sponsored by the Londonbased Asfari foundation.The Bootcamp comprised 3 weeks of intensive sessions by Oasis500 trainers, designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs develop their ideas and startup experiences. According to Rania Succar, co-founder and Board Member at Jusoor, an essential part of the program was sharing the experiences of successful pioneering Syrian entrepreneurs. These inspiring models included: Adnan Tarabishy, the CEO at Professional Development Institute and co-founder of Second Step; Majid Lababidi, co-founder and Managing Director at Fi Technologies; and Lojain Jibawi, founder of the Votek Arabic speech recognition engine.

In parallel, participants were introduced to a broad range of resources such as the Zoomal crowdfunding platform and the AltCity co-working space. Swell Marketing Solutions, a Syrian startup in Beirut served as both an example of a successful startup, and a potential partner for emerging entrepreneurs. The 10 entrepreneurs were selected based on their pitch during the Entrepreneurship Competition, part of the Jusoor Entrepreneurship Program.

Their ideas ranged from innovative educational platforms, transportation solutions, and healthcare mobile applications to upcycled building materials and design items.

Kuwait’s Brilliant Lab Competition Winners Go International Kuwaiti startup accelerator Brilliant Lab has announced the 3 winners of its 5th startup competition. The winners will be showcased at the South Summit in Madrid (Spain) from October 7 to 10, 2015 (sponsored by Google for Entrepreneurs). The summit is Europe’s largest gathering for startups, and it will give participants a chance to network with over 3,500 entrepreneurs and 450 investment bodies from around the world. Brilliant Lab had received over 20 applications from early-stage startup, and chose 3 winners: Boxit, an innovative physical storage space idea based on a pay-per-use model with an online catalog; Bookr, a handpicked directory and booking platform for the best wellness providers in Kuwait; and Bubble Rumble, an action game with a freemium model available on Google Play. 3 other Kuwaiti startups will be showcased at the summit: 965 Flowers, an online marketplace for customizing and ordering flowers, chocolates, and gifts; Aiywa, a mobile app developer; and Myu, a mobile bulletin and messaging app for schools and students. At the South Summit, the startups will be mentored by top experts, and will be exposed to investment opportunities worldwide, with the opportunity to pitch their ideas. The Brilliant Lab competition is held twice a year and is open to tech startups based in Kuwait with an emphasis on software, mobile apps, and web services.

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Avatech has selected 10 new startups for its second cycle. The program will stretch over 4 months and will offer the startups mentorship, a working space, and $8,000 in seed funding in exchange for up to 15% equity. Here is the rundown on the 10 new startups: Dimana (a cloud-based management solution for real estate agencies); Smartbeen (a smart climate control solution for greenhouses); Bitvam (a P2P platform for friends and relatives to borrow money from each other); Nikprint (an online print and design platform with free delivery); SportUp (a sports platform with a directory, fitness blog, and merchant space); Cortado (an integrated café management solution with loyalty program); Rayan Afzar Kabir (a game studio); Parvaneh (an online marketplace for artisans to sell their crafts and connect); Rangitar (an online marketplace for photography services); and Namlik (a publisher of audio content). Last May Avatech’s first batch of 10 startups, achieved impressive results, with 6 of them raising $1.3 million from institutional and angel investors.

Mobile Connect: A Global API for Developers and Operators At the Arabnet Digital Summit 2015 in Dubai, GSMA revealed Mobile Connect, a secure universal log-in solution for smartphone users that will unify and simplify mobile digital content development and access, as well as enable more mobile payments. Current obstacles to the growth of the digital economy include concerns over personal data management, as well as the inconvenience of having too many usernames and passwords. According to the EU Consumer Research Report (2014), 68% of users are more likely to return to a site that remembers them without a password. The “Mobile Connect Login” option enables identification via a mobile device itself – with the user’s consent. This increases security and reduces the risk of fraud, while removing the need for multiple or repeat logins. This solution is extremely cost effective to implement: operators make the service available, then developers build apps/services that incorporate Mobile Connect authentication. Several regional operators are already committed to launching Mobile Connect, including Etisalat, STC, Vodafone, and Zain. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, GSMA promised that Mobile Connect will be available to over 1 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by February 2016, ushering in exponential growth in the region’s app economy. The service’s “operator-agnostic” unified platform is built on a single global API (GSMA’s API Exchange) for all operators worldwide (around 6 billion SIMs and 4 billion unique users). The implementation of this consistent, predictable platform will enable developers and operators to speak the same language and will increase adoption. Second, the service’s privacy and security protocols will open the door for payment and location APIs, introducing a wide range of possible applications for Mobile Connect in e-Health, m-Commerce, m-Government, etc. “It’s scale from day 1,” explained Peter Lyons, Director of Middle East and North Africa, GSMA.

Ubisoft’s ‘CSI: Hidden Crimes’ Named Best Tablet Game - 2015

Payfort Acquires White Payments, Begins Courting Startups

Ubisoft Emirates game development studio won the 2015 Tabby Award for Best Tablet Game with the first game developed by its new team, CSI: Hidden Crimes. Launched in May 2014, this free mystery adventure game based on the popular CBS TV series (CSI: Las Vegas) has crossed the bar of 28 million users, according to Yannick Theler, Managing Director at Ubisoft Emirates. Although the game is based on a US series, it marks Ubisoft Emirates’ first game developed in-house in the MENA. In addition to the team’s efforts, the studio benefited from the input of Jack Gutowitz, a writer for CSI: Las Vegas who worked on making the storylines and dialogue authentic and true to the original TV show. “We are releasing new content, a new episode, and new features every two weeks, and we have done this since the launch of the game over a year ago,” said Theler. The Abu Dhabi studio hopes to become one of the most successful satellite studios to release mobile games. “We are aiming to double the size of the studio within three to five years,” said Theler.

The online payment gateway Payfort has acquired White Payments, a UAE-based online payment service for startups and small businesses, for an undisclosed amount. Yazin Alirhayim, founder and former CEO at White Payments, first met Omar Soudodi, CEO of Payfort, at the ArabNet Digital Summit in Dubai in June 2014. White Payments had developed a process (flow and technology) that allows it any retailer (SME or startup) to overcome online retail obstacles and easily integrate payment functionalities into their websites. As a result, it only takes 5 minutes for a business to become a live online merchant! “That’s insane, when you consider that the typical go-live time for a merchant is approximately 45 days,” said Alirhayim, “Imagine the possibilities with the reach and influence of a company like Payfort.” Payfort’s strong connections with some of the largest banks in the region, combined with White Payments’ experience with startups, will help more MENA entrepreneurs meet their payment needs faster. The acquisition represents an important milestone for Payfort as it steps into the entrepreneurship ecosystem. The company currently offers credit and debit card payment solutions tailored to online buying habits in the Arab world.

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Industry stories

Useful Apps for Transportation Fetchr Secures $11M for GPS-Based Shipping Solution

A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

The Dubai-based pickup and delivery company Fetchr has closed a Series A funding round led by the US-based New Enterprise Associates, and secured $11 million to expand in the region. Fetchr’s revolutionary new app combines its easy shipping and delivery model with GPS localization to make up for the absence of postal addresses.

The app proposes an ultra-simple and engaging UX. If you have to ship something, you simply take a picture of the item. The company picks it up at your location and even packs it for you on site before taking it to delivery (like the US-based Shyp). If you order something online, the Fetchr service drops it off wherever and whenever you tell it to (like Parcel). Users simply pinpoint their location via GPS on their mobile phone, and the company handles deliveries and pickups from there. Idriss Al Rifai, founder and CEO, said they will be present in Saudi Arabia in the next month, and the company is scheduled to enter the Qatari and Kuwaiti markets in September. He said they plan to be able to ship to any country in the region in the next few months.

iMENA Invests in UAE-Based Properties Platforms JRD Group, the Dubai-based tech enterprise behind leading property portals in Qatar and the UAE, received an undisclosed investment from the iMENA venture capital fund to expand its offerings in the region and abroad. Co-founded by Alex Nicholas and Siddharth Singh in 2008, JRD Group manages the UAE portals JustProperty.com and JustRentals. com (UAE), and has notably developed PropSpace, a proprietary cloud-based real estate software. It also operates JustProperty.qa in Qatar. JRD aims to redefine the property search experience through developing pioneering technology for end-users, investors, agencies, and brokerages in the commercial and residential real estate market. The group will maintain control over their operations and software. Competition by already established portals like PropertyFinder in the region does not seem to pose a problem as JRD Group is looking to build a base from which to expand to US and UK markets. iMENA believes online marketplaces will be a major disruptive force across different industries, and will attract up to $1 billion starting this year. The company revealed it is looking to invest $25 million in the sector over the next couple of years.

Wuzzuf Get $1.7M Investment in Egypt’s Largest Series A Round BasharSoft, the parent company of the jobs site Wuzzuf received a $1.7 million investment from Sweden’s Vostok New Ventures and the UK-based Piton Capital, both first-time investors in Egypt. This marked the largest Series A round in the country to date. Around half a dozen other Egyptian companies are expected to close Series A deals soon. Launched last year, the price comparison site, Yaoota, is in the final stages of talks with a UAE-based VC. The events site, Eventtus, is in negotiations with a foreign investor, and Instabug is also expecting to close a Series A by year end. Kngine, a question-and-answer search engine developer is reportedly planning a second round with old and new investors set around the $3 million mark by end-2015. In December 2014, Jobzella sold a 51% stake to the Saudi Arabian company Alkhaleej for Training and Education. In July this year, the payment solutions provider Fawry sold close to a 25% stake in its shares to BSI Netherlands BV.

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Investment from Arzan VC Gives Tamatem an Upgrade Arzan VC, the venture capital arm of Arzan Financial Group, has invested an undisclosed amount in Jordan’s Tamatem Games. This recent investment follows a first round of $450,000 in September 2013 from Mena Venture Investments and 500 Startups. With 11 million downloads to date and 1.4 million monthly active users, the game development and publishing company is on a mission to dominate Arabic game stores. According to Tamatem CEO, Hussam Hammo, “more and more users are coming every day. The adoption rate is crazy high and the purchasing power is increasing.”

Tamatem’s income currently comes from in-app purchases and advertising. Hammo said they are currently working on a freemium model for new games. Among Tamatem Games’ most popular titles is Malik Al Tawsil (Delivery King), a pizza delivery game that is especially popular during Ramadan. The drifting game Share3 El Mawt (street of death) and the quiz game Alsou2al Al Qawi (the hardest question) also totaled over one million downloads each.

Industry stories

Useful Apps for Transportation Arab Bank and Telr Sign E-Commerce Payment Facilitator Agreement

A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

Telr and Arab Bank, have announced today a landmark agreement that will serve the growing e-commerce market in the UAE and the MENA region. Telr will be responsible for onboarding e-merchants, after due diligence, full integration, and managing risks during ongoing transactions between buyers and sellers. In a bid to encourage more companies and entrepreneurs to build their online businesses, merchants participating in this program will be eligible for a number of benefits including a competitive pricing structure, a streamlined onboarding process, and transactions to Arab Bank accounts in local currencies. This will open up opportunities for e-merchants and entrepreneurs that aspire to sell their services and products to other countries in Middle East.

Souq.com Rewards Users with Affiliates Program - Digital Summit 2015 Souq.com recently announced its new Affiliates Program at the ArabNet Digital Summit 2015 in Dubai. The program enables any individual or business to earn a commission (up to 10%) from all sales on Souq.com which were derived from their web and mobile traffic – not just sales of advertised products. Even referrals from personal social media pages such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube would earn their owners money.

Earlier, Souq.com had launched the “Developer Program”, which allows any business to white label the Souq.com platform in order to launch its own e-commerce site. Business owners can take advantage of the Souq.com API to set up their own website with a built-in end-to-end e-commerce process, powered entirely by Souq.com. These 2 services complement Souq.com’s original “Sell on Souq” integrated approach to e-commerce (from listing to payment, shipping, and marketing).

Hardware News from the MENA Palestine’s First Tech Hardware Improves Smartphone Charging BOLD Gadgets, a hardware startup from Palestine, recently launched the Knot, the country’s first tech product. The Knot is a wearable USB charging cable that powers iOS and Android smartphones at double the speed of commercial chargers. Additionally, once the phone is fully charged, the Knot starts charging a concealed internal battery that can then act as an emergency power source with up to 3 hours of autonomy. Finally, the Knot doubles as a fashionable wearable accessary. In November 2014, BOLD won second place at the Best Startup competition during Global Entrepreneur Week (GEW) in Palestine for its vision, business model, and product. The startup was then selected by the Estonia-based Buildit Hardware Accelerator to benefit from a €10,000 (around $11,000) investment and mentorship (for a 6% equity share). Co-founders Lama Mansour and Ismat Tuffaha relocated to Estonia where they were able to work freely on electronics, PCBs, manufacturing, and logistics. BOLD Gadgets raised almost 5 times its initial $15,000 crowdfunding goal on Indiegogo for manufacturing the first batch of Knots. Mansour said they are preparing to raise a round of investment of around €250,000 (around $275,000) to scale faster and be ready to introduce a new product to the market next year.

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Stay Connected, Tanned, and Cool with the “Smart Sunbed” 23-year-old architecture student and entrepreneur, Antoine Sayah, has created Beachill, a smart and portable sunbed equipped with a photovoltaic panel that allows users to recharge their mobile or device virtually anywhere, so they can stay connected. During his product design studies in Milan, Sayah made sure the mattress pillow is ergonomic to guarantee maximum comfort. The mattress is also foldable, making it easy to carry and transport anywhere. In addition to recharging devices, Beachill includes an insulated chamber to keep drinks cool, as well as a waterproof pocket to protect books or other objects. Beachill is fully hand-sewn in Lebanon. It is available in regular or waterproof fabrics. Customers can also customize their own sunbed with different fabrics, colors, and sizes. Sayah still handles orders personally over the phone or via his Facebook page, and delivers the sunbeds himself. Since it was launched last June, orders have been coming in faster than they can be handled. “We now have a team of tailors able to produce 10 sunbeds a day, and it is still not enough to satisfy growing demand,” said Sayah. Eventually, he would be interested in finding a distributor, whether locally or internationally, to handle sales and marketing. He is aware, of course, that this would mean increasing production, and that would require capital.

Lebanon Builds the MENA’s Biggest 3D Printer Big Voxel is the first 3D printer designed and manufactured in the Middle East, occupying the full space of a small standalone store in Beirut (wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling). The printer was developed by architect Guillaume Crédoz and engineer Nareg Karaoghlanian, primarily to build large furniture pieces or machine components. It uses an additive manufacturing process that relies on Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). It deposits a layer of softened or melted materials (like thermoplastics) made from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a resistant material commonly used in many consumer products (phones, TV back covers) and readily recuperated/available locally. Big Voxel was built with the support of small investors and private funds.

The Investment Development Authority of Lebanon (IDAL) also provided support by reducing taxes on imported parts. The first machine will be a working prototype and will be used to test further improvements. It can currently print complex, solid objects of 2.1 x 1.9 x 1.2 m. Big Voxel will also benefit from the Insure & Match Capital fund (IM Capital) through Kafalat.

Starting 2016, Crédoz and Karaoghlanian will look for funding to make Big Voxel commercially available (at around $40,000 per unit) for enterprises, with potential clients and investors already lined up. The pair is also developing an app (Voxel World) to allow users to design 3D models by tapping and dragging their fingers on their screen, then convert these design into 3D data ready for printing.

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TECHNOLOGY

Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

The MENA region is a fertile ground for mobile app investors, developers, publishers, and agencies alike. However, it is mandatory for them to equip themselves with in-depth knowledge of the app landscape, requirements, and trends before planting the first seeds and taking on new territories.

This report has presented new and confirmed previously highlighted trends and insights into the MENA mobile app economy.

Its key findings are: DISCOVERY, DOWNLOAD & USE • There appears to be a considerable demand for mobile apps in the MENA. 42% of the sample respondents are ‘frequent downloaders’ who download more than 5 apps per month.

United Arab Emirates (39%), which may be attributed to the higher percentage of westerners living there.

• Market opportunities exist for developers to create new,

improved and relevant Arabic apps in the underserved categories that users are looking for - in particular eSports, Photograph & Video, Education, Health & Fitness, and Lifestyle category apps.

• Males and females have the same trends across the study.

However, some differences are observed when it comes to their most popular app categories. The Sports category is mostly dominated by males. Females show a slightly higher interest in Music, Health & Fitness, and Shopping apps.

• The UAE (dominated by Arab expats and westerners) has the

SPENDING & PAYMENT • MENA users spend more on apps as their household income increases. Saudi Arabian users pay most for both app and in-apps, followed by users from the UAE and Lebanon, with Egypt, and Jordan lagging behind.

• Lower income categories download more apps in general than

• Across all surveyed countries, the most frequently paid

most downloaded apps, followed by Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. higher income ones.

• They are also loyal, repetitive users. A quarter of respondents

said they use all the apps on their smartphone on a daily basis, and another quarter said they use their favorites every day and the rest once a week.

• Developers should focus on generating positive word-of-

mouth, a buzz, and good reviews for their apps. If the app has its place on users’ favorites list, it will be used on a daily basis.

Moreover, if the app hits the bestseller or featured list on the App store, it is more likely to be discovered by users. Friends’ recommendations also play an important role in influencing what users choose to download.

CATEGORIES OF INTEREST • Developers should look beyond the top 3 app categories (Games, Social Media and Music) which are dominated by the highly competitive global players. Sports, Photography & Video, and Education apps are hot among the younger age groups, while Utilities and Finance apps are trending among the older generations.

• 62% of respondents said they download Arabic mobile apps,

with the highest concentration of downloads being in Saudi Arabia. The least amount of Arabic app downloads was in the

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amount to purchase a mobile app is between $1 to $2.99 and $1-$4.99 for in-app purchases.

• A real opportunity exists for app developers and publishers to

create higher-value, higher-priced apps that cater to highincome earners as the study shows that they are willing to pay more than $7 to purchase an app.

• The leading reason for not spending more on apps and in-app purchases is users not finding interesting apps to buy or the apps they are looking for.

• While a large proportion of survey respondents would rather not pay anything at all, when they do pay they prefer to do so one time, up-front, with no further in-app purchase invitations or advertising.

• The most cited reasons behind paying for in-app purchases are: getting additional content and avoiding ads.

• App stores and device manufacturers should do more to protect users’ personal and financial information.

• Publishers should leverage their apps’ positive reviews and

feedback ratings in order to build users’ trust in mobile apps and payments.

TECHNOLOGY

Useful Apps for Transportation

The Apple Watch

A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

A Cure for Nomophobia or Just a Fancy Accessory?

By Fawzi Rahal | @FawziRahal

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T

he Apple Watch launch in April created a hype that is typical of the Cupertino giant but with doubtful lasting effects. Since the launch, search queries for the Apple Watch have dropped by 60% in most countries, signaling a decline of interest.

In terms of sales, early Apple Watch sales beat the original iPhone and iPad. How this will translate in future sales is related to what applications, features, and functionalities will be launched with the new software update this fall. At the moment of writing this article, the Apple Watch is running on WatchOS 1, which has severe restrictions on what third-party apps can do, including microphone access and running apps natively on the Watch, in addition to complications (we’ll get to that). WatchOS 2 will provide developers access to all of the above, thus allowing for further functionalities that are currently not possible.

The Purchase Experience Compares More to Buying a Suit than a Technology Piece The true Apple Watch experience begins at the Apple Store.

Unlike any of their other product launches, Apple opted against the familiar long-queues and created an online reservation system with same-day appointments available across Apple Stores.

I arrived at the Apple store at Grand Central Station in New York five minutes early to my appointment. An Apple Genius greeted me and was happy to spend 30 minutes to take me through the available wristband options for the model I was interested in. Through it all, I was being walked through the intricacies of the wristbands, the materials, the process, and the fashion. The Watch feels light and, for someone who has tried various wearables, it feels just right. My first smartwatch was an I’mWatch: A bulky and pricey 2011 Android device that never managed to pick up because of how buggy, clunky and, if I may, useless it was. I used the UP and UP 24 health trackers. Both were quite comfortable to wear all day were easy to charge and maintain, but both broke in less than six months. Android Wear is the closest match to Apple Watch, but has as more wristbands than apps available. Because of all the third party apps, the Apple Watch has more types of notification, but Android Wear’s notifications for text and phone calls are just as good as Apple’s.

Nothing I’ve tried before felt so light and yet so functional; and the watch connects to the phone seamlessly, in contrast to any other wearable that still requires you to fiddle with Bluetooth every now and then.

I chose my model: The Apple Watch with a bright blue leather loop. The Sport does not offer a Sapphire crystal screen and silicon bands are more designed for exercising than for daily use, while the loop wristband allows for constant adjustment for the Watch during the day. Overall, it felt more like buying a suit than a piece of hardware. That’s because all the Apple Watch models have the same internal hardware; thus how the Watch feels becomes as important as what it does.

It’s a Personal Device that Takes a While to Get Used To The $549 Apple Watch and the $17,000 Apple Watch Edition are essentially the same device. However, the Apple Watch might just be the most personal device I have yet to use. Far more personal than the iPhone, the Watch is customizable, personal, and slightly counter-intuitive.

Within 20 minutes from unboxing, the Watch was powered on around my wrist and had all the supported apps loaded on to it from my iPhone. Almost every watch face is customizable in numerous ways: layout, color, detail, visuals and complications.

Within allocated complication spaces, you can choose to see another timezone, your next meeting, the position of the moon, or the current temperature (Figure 1).

In many ways, it’s the most un-Apple interface for a device that only Apple could do. While Apple hardware and software are usually the least customizable in comparison to Android and others, the Watch in my opinion has far too many customization options that are yet the easiest to use.

Figure 1: Complications and watchface

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Useful Apps for Transportation There are dozens of tiny details that could be individually identified as gimmicks, but when put together, create the experience that Apple is famous for. These minute details somehow only work on a device that is so close to you. Watch face options are exponentially growing with OS2 and will include third-party feeds, live photos and apps allowing you to turn on your Philips Hue lamp or close the garage door.

Privacy and security are covered from the get-go. When a notification arrives, a gentle tap on your wrist alerts you. Take a glance, and your Watch screen lights up showing you what’s going on. Turning your wrist away from you turns the display off without worrying about snoopers taking a peek. Take off your Watch and it will automatically lock itself. The watch unlocks with a passcode or by simply unlocking your phone with a passcode or TouchID. A long press on the side button allows you to lock it at any time.

The digital crown is best compared to the blackberry wheel.

It is so practical and accurate you could easily spend a minute or two spinning it to browse Twitter or Instagram feeds. The side button is currently dedicated for favorites, and should evolve into a customizable shortcut.

And there’s Force Touch: pressing hard on your watch to load up additional options and customizations for lack of visual real estate. Force Touch feels strange at first and is quite different from pressing and holding. The response to the physical pressure is immediate and does not require the few seconds you would spend pressing and holding. The haptic feedback lets you know that your Force Touch options have loaded up while your finger covers the screen.

There are also shortcuts to switch to the last used app, and you could even force-quit apps and take screenshots. You can’t easily tell if anything is going to happen if you force touch, so it’s a matter of trial and error. Try to Force Touch on the ‘find my iphone’ button and nothing happens. Press and hold on that button and your phone’s flashlight starts blinking.

With Force Touch, the digital crown, and a loose set of standards comparable to the original iPhone, the Watch experience is a trial-and-error discovery process. Some apps support force touch, others rely on scrolling down and a few, like the native weather app alternate information with a simple tap.

Similar to the original iPhone, the Watch needs some getting used to and a lot of unity in the user interface.

iOS devices and boasts a new look that is being adapted into

iOS9. Handoff works some applications, allowing you to A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in for MENA

Apple’s Native Watch Apps Lack Some Basic Functionalities Using Apple’s native apps, it’s easy to answer a call, make a new one, or send an iMessage. Siri is somehow smarter than it is on

“The Watch does not replace your phone, but it certainly enhances the experience.”

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quickly jump to an email or message from your watch to your phone. Passbook allows you to quickly pull up your boarding pass and check out your flight schedule.

With Apple’s native apps, you’ll soon discover that some things are unintuitive. The Apple Mail app is limited, allowing you to only read a preview of your email with no option to reply (coming in OS2). The photos app takes a while to load up photos (like a Google map that is in the process of loading) but allows you to zoom in on any particular photo enough to show off the screen quality and the digital crown zoom. You can read any IM text from iMessages, but a photo does not show (Figure 2) – unless you dismiss the notification, go to your iMessages app and open that particular conversation. Using the digital crown to zoom in on an incoming photo does not work. When a phone call arrives, it’s impossible to tell that you can scroll down to reject via message or set a reminder. All this will get better as Apple and its developers are only beginning to discover the potential of the Watch and its interface.

Third Party Apps Will Get Better with Watch OS2 Third party apps are hit-or-miss at the moment, with some apps allowing for some functionality and others not existing on the Watch platform for now. Instagram, Twitter, Flipboard, The New York Times and NPR One are great on the Apple Watch, allowing you to save content for later, share them with friends and discover content. Facebook, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are currently not present, so while you do get the notifications, you cannot view your feed, message history or access a Watch app. OS2, third party apps will run natively on the Watch, allowing for faster response time and access to Watch hardware features not possible in OS1 such as the microphone, speakers, sensors and Digital Crown.

Microsoft Outlook on the Watch offers a lot more functionality than the native Mail app, allowing for replies to email and the ability to read an entire email. Accuweather highlights more relevant information than the native Weather app. Calcbot is a great calculator alternative to the currently inexistent native calculator app. Pacemaker allows you to be a DJ on the move with far more transitions and music recommendations than Apple’s Music app.

Touch, Lebanon’s Zain-managed telco, has already launched their watch app, although it could use some interface cleanup – the logo in the middle needs to go.

In terms of controlling Internet of Things and smart home devices, the Watch has apps from Philips Hue, BMW, and other major names. It also has third-party app support for the likes of Sonos, Plex, XBMC, and Nest.

Some games work well Figure 2: Message notification with the Watch, such as

FirstLetter and WatchQuest. Other games could feel clumsy and slow, such as Letterpad and Where’s my geek. In terms of performance, games should be better with WatchOS 2. In WatchOS 1, apps actually run on the iPhone.

The difference in introduction of apps running natively on the WatchOS 2 is already a major step, empowering healthcare professionals to remotely check on their patient’s vitals and a plethora of features that appear in the near future.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f )

Figure 3: Examples of third party apps include (a) Instagram, (b) NYTimes, (c) NPR One, (d) Facebook, (e) Touch, and (f ) WatchQuest.

Press. Tap. Spin. Repeat.

The Watch is a two-handed device. Try answering the phone on your watch while you’re carrying bags and you’ll find yourself awkwardly trying to aim your nose at the green button. The same goes for scrolling through your Twitter feed while brushing your teeth. This necessitates the introduction of some basic wrist twist gesture that allows you to dismiss or accept particular notifications. Unfortunately, WristTwist (or whatever Apple will call it) is not coming in OS2.

Since I’ve had the Watch, I’ve worn it daily through commuting, driving, and traveling. This experience will only get better with OS2, allowing more apps to be used directly on the watch without the need for my phone to be in the same room (or pocket). One thing is certain though: the Watch today does not replace my phone, but it certainly enhances the experience: you’re as connected as you were on your phone, but in some instances, more aware of the notifications as they come in. Using the watch, apart from being a conversation starter and politer than checking your phone all the time, makes people perceive that you have somewhere else to go. Rude or late, pick your poison.

Similar to the original iPhone, the Apple Watch has a long way to go. The potential of amalgamation of the hardware, sensors and connectivity between the iPhone and the Watch is just not quite there yet.

The true differentiating benefit of using the Apple Watch is that you never miss anything, and you can spend some quality time at dinner, with friend and family and even while commuting and get over your nomophobia (no mobile phone phobia). You’re still going to use your phone to make a phone call, write an email or post your latest selfie to Instagram. With the Watch you’re more disconnected by being connected all the time.n

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.

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Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

I

n September 2012, Mark Zuckerberg stated that HTML5 was Facebook’s biggest mistake so far. This statement arguably slammed the reputation of HTML5. A lot of companies started to realize it was too early to bet entirely on this technology, because of bad performance and user experience. The world has changed a lot since then.

HTML5 now dominates the web, hardware performance has increased significantly, HTML5 browser support has been standardized and the native app ecosystems have become very competitive.

And yet, mobile games are generally developed as native apps. HTML5 is an often overlooked opportunity for smaller game developers, especially in emerging markets.

Zuckerberg’s statement referred to running an HTML5 web application as a

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native app. Strictly speaking, HTML5 is just the newest version of HTML, which is the markup language to construct web pages. Practically, however, the term is commonly used to describe the entire set of technologies used for building an interactive web application. The great thing about HTML5 is that it is one technology that works on all devices, like mobile phones, tablets, smart TVs and desktops.

Native apps require different programming languages and ecosystems for different devices, which makes it more costly to develop an app for multiple platforms.

Why Facebook Had It Wrong?

What Facebook did is run an HTML5 website in a small piece of native code that wraps the website as full screen native app. This is quite inefficient, because this wrapped application

generally does not get the same hardware resources as a native app would get.

The wrapper uses iOS’ or Android’s built-in browser to load the HTML5 app, which is usually a relatively old version of WebKit. A wrapped app is significantly slower than a native app and lacks features compared to the device’s real browser. Zuckerberg was right; this setup cannot compete with native apps. It does not, however, tell us anything about HTML5 itself.

Today, every well-known website uses HTML5. YouTube and Facebook use HTML5 as their primary video player technology. Furthermore, cross-device mobile development platforms, based on HTML5, like Apache Cordova (previously known as PhoneGap) and Appcelator, have gained a lot of traction in the development world. HTML5 is here to stay.

Mobile games are currently generally built either as native apps or using the Unity game engine. Games require hardware acceleration and generally utilize a lot of a device’s hardware capabilities, like the accelerometer. Therefore, native always seemed like the way to go, because HTML5 seemed to be lagging behind.

Due to hardware improvements and browser support, HTML5 can now also smoothly run 3D games and access hardware components, making it very capable of running many games. A famous and very successful HTML5 game is Cut the Ropes from Zeptolab.

Dependency on App Stores ‘Going native’ leads to one strong dependency: app stores. In order to be installed on devices, native apps have to be published in the App Store and Google Play. Apps depend on Apple and Google’s app listings, search algorithms and payment methods. In short, native apps depend on the app store ecosystems.

Developing native apps for the app stores requires developing two different applications with different programming languages, and possibly a third to support mobile web. Developers need to build the app twice and maintain two platforms.

Hence, native app programming is very costly in terms of time and money.

Considering the fact that mobile developers have a hard time making their games profitable, it would be a lot more efficient to only build the game once, for all devices. HTML5 solves this problem.

App store ecosystems seem like a great platform for developers, since these ecosystems provide all necessary tools for monetization and distribution.

However, this is in contrast to the actual numbers. In July 2014, Forbes published an article concluding that 81% of the top grossing mobile games originate from just fifty companies. One of the important reasons for this is that the established game companies have budget to push smaller games out of the top lists of the app stores. The top lists are based on the number of downloads and popularity.

The number of downloads is strongly influenced by user acquisition, which heavily depends on budget. King (Candy Crush) and Supercell (Clash of Clans) spend over $1M per day on marketing

Erik Duindam, Co-founder and CTO, Cloud Games Erik is a tech entrepreneur specialized in scaling platforms to huge proportions. Erik is co-founder and CTO of Cloud Games, a casual gaming company founded in 2013 with around a million Arabic-speaking visitors per month. He has led the development of the payment platform for Spil Games, reaching 170 million unique monthly users, and vakantieveilingen.nl, which became the #1 Facebook brand in the Netherlands. He has advised the Dutch Cyber Security Center on cyber security matters and sold his development company in 2014 to focus on new startups. and user acquisition. Other big gaming companies spend similar amounts. It is hard to compete with them. In 2012, Gartner already reported that less than 1% of all apps were financially successful.

It’s questionable how much this has improved over the years.

Payment Challenges Mobile payments are the biggest driver of mobile game revenue. According to App Annie, an app analytics provider, over 90% of mobile app revenue comes from apps using a freemium model. The other 10% primarily consists of paid app revenue. Around half of the freemium revenue comes from in-app purchases.

To conclude, a very large portion of all revenue comes from payments.

The availability of mobile payment methods in the app stores is a big problem in some emerging markets.

Recently, Cloud Games ran two tests in Egypt and Iraq to test mobile payments.

First, we launched an app with Google Play’s payment methods integrated. We

led around 100,000 users to our app via user acquisition via Chartboost, Google and Facebook. We got 0% conversion.

Subsequently, we ran a test with mobile sms payments integrated via payment provider Fortumo. We reached a solid 4% conversion in both Egypt and Iraq, but were taken out of Google Play for violating the terms and conditions. We did not actually violate the terms, since we provided an identical web experience, which is an exception in Google’s terms.

Unfortunately, Google didn’t accept our appeal without providing explanation.

Our conclusion is that people in Egypt and Iraq are willing to pay, but unable to. Furthermore, it is not profitable for a game developer to launch a freemium app in these regions, even though freemium is the best model to use for mobile games.

The Case of HTML5 Let’s look at publishing HTML5 games on the web. A developer has to build only one app for all devices. He can integrate any payment method or advertising platform. Using game publishers, a game can be published on a large amount of existing websites to get lots of users without doing user acquisition or spending any money on marketing.

To grow organically, any typical SEO strategy can be used. Web search engines, primarily Google, use algorithms that are based on organic popularity and are not based on budget. It’s an open and free world where everyone can win.

To conclude, HTML5 is now widely supported on all devices. Hardware and software have been improved, making HTML5 strong enough to run complex 3D games. Developers are familiar with it and the World Wide Web has already accepted it. Being financially profitable in the app stores is hard for smaller game developers, due to the strong presence of established gaming companies. Developing for HTML5 is less costly and opens up a different channel for publishing and promoting apps. Game publishers can help developers publish their games and making them successful on HTML5.

In emerging markets, developers can use carrier billing and other alternative payment and publishing methods.

HTML5 should be a strong consideration for any smaller game developer.n

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BUSINESS

Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

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BUSINESS

Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

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BUSINESS

Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

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Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

By Racha Ghamlouch | @__racha

Khaled Tash, Chief Marketing Officer, Beverages – AMS Baeshen

Jérôme Mouthon, Founder and Chairman – BUZZEFF MEA

In today’s world, nothing drives people more than a meaningful “purpose.” We recently defined our organization’s purpose and articulated it, and now we are trying our best to bring it to life in our daily actions. We continuously share relevant content that inspires the team members to bring that purpose to life in their own way. Gone are the days when people would settle for working in organizations just for the sake of work. Companies without a well-defined, beautifully articulated purpose and where leaders are not walking the talk are going to lose talent. Customers are equally embracing this in their choices, giving brands that “make the world a better place” their well-deserved share of heart, mind, and wallet. We should thank the Millennials for this transformation into a world where purpose drives the culture at work and the choices in the market. So let’s thank them by motivating them through “purpose”!

Keeping the team motivated is a daily challenge I handle at three levels. First is the strategic level upon which I act mainly by sharing information, by engaging the team being inclusive when it comes to any business strategy discussion, and by providing guidance so they can focus on priorities. The second level is more being the coach who does things with the team instead of directing only, delegates, and provides feedback in order to help improve the team’s skills. Another key point that the team values the most is being readily available in any circumstance. The third level deals more with the work environment where I try to ensure that the team enjoys coming to work, celebrate with the team success or birthdays, hang out with the employees for lunch or a drink, reward over-performance with gifts, etc.

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Bahaa Galal, Co-founder and CTO – Crowd Analyzer

Mashhoor Dubayan, CEO – Saudi Gamer

I think the best tactic we have followed so far in order to keep our employees motivated is to have self-improvement as one of the core values we live by in the company. Every team member has to assess himself the day he joins Crowd Analyzer, then he got to do things that feel uncomfortable and challenging to help improve both his mental skills and body. The tasks they choose and the daily routine they adapt to should consciously introduce new good habits in their life. By focusing our efforts inside the company to help everyone improves both on the personal and professional level, employees get motivated to wake up in the morning and come to work.

To motivate our team, we do our best to keep them updated on what we are trying to achieve—our next big goal—and how achieving our goal will add value to people’s lives. We also make sure they are aware what we are currently doing to achieve that and how everyone is contributing to that journey.

It’s also really important to give every team member some space to experiment and explore their own ideas, which increases their sense of ownership and helps them stay motivated.

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Useful Apps for Transportation A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

Vince Ghossoub, CEO – Falafel Games

Muhannad Ebwini, Co-founder and CEO – GatePlay/ HyperPay

Let the team see and touch the results of their individual and collective contributions to a clearly articulated strategy and a plan that is progressing.

The simple answer is: involvement. All of the Gate2Play / HyperPay team are involved in everything in the company, and they know all the small details about the company and its activities. Usually the whole team participates in the board meeting. In addition, we recognize personal achievements directly and I often send emails to thank the whole team. We also have quarterly best employees’ achievement celebrations

Iyad Kamal, COO - Aramex

Ahmed Abbas, Founder and CEO – DigiSay

One of the most important and effective ways to keep our people motivated is by engaging and involving them in the ongoing development and progress of the business. This gives them a high level of confidence in the business and offers them the opportunity to innovate and share ideas that have a positive effect on the success of the company. We follow a comprehensive and well-designed approach to keep all our staff motivated. We provide all the necessary tools for them to perform and achieve the most and show them the growth opportunities within the organization which are supported with real examples. This comes from our belief that if you set challenging goals and show examples, your team will work hard to accomplish them. It is amazing what people can accomplish when they are given the opportunity to perform and they see appreciation.

Motivating people in a world where you have companies like Google and Facebook is extremely challenging. At DigiSay we try to work towards a common goal that is tied to the personal goals for everyone. These personal goals are career related and quantified by numbers. So everyone on the teams knows why she/he is doing a certain project or a task. The results are usually very good because the relationship is not employer vs. employee anymore; it is a partnership where both parties can relate to the common goal and treat the task or project with a high sense of ownership. Working in a company where you feel it is just another job is something we want to avoid and don’t think we have achieved that yet fully, but we are working on it and hope that in not so many years from now we will have partners not employees.

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E

merginchise.n

Amr Awadallah, CEO – Cloudera

Tuba Terekli, CEO – Qotuf AlRiyadah Development Company

1. Align their economic gain with the company’s success: In Silicon Valley, companies give employees shares (equity). As the company starts to do well, the share price goes up, and the employees get motivated to work harder. The downside of equity is that sometimes the company would be doing well, but the share price drops due to market conditions. That is why companies also augment shares with bonuses as a function of achieving company results.

2. Show them how their work contributes to the company’s mission: Employees want to know that they are making an impact; that is why it is important to show them how their work contributes to the company’s mission. They obviously need to believe in the company’s mission.

3. Show them a career path to grow to their fullest potential: Employees want to grow, or “level up” in gaming lingo. That is why it is important to invest in their education/mentorship and show them how they can continue to advance their career.

1. Recruit people you can motivate and have commitment and a sense of ownership that fits your culture.

2. Build them a space that they can thrive in and innovate. Before bringing the team onboard, I made sure I hand-designed the work space to accommodate the great team of Qotufians.

3. Hear them out and let them speak out, trust their guidance and make sure you give them the right information they need to get their job done right. To keep our core team motivated, I remain active as much if not more than the team to ensure that they understand I am there for any need they may have, direction seeking or approvals, but at the same time, I am as distant as can be from the authority in their hands to do their own tasks. I rely on their judgment and hold regular team meetings to ensure their voices are heard. We use internal voting systems such as SpeakUp, and easy and quick reporting such as iDoneThis to ensure we don’t kill valuable time in paperwork.

4. Put them in the forefront of the industry and work on each member to make them as known leaders/experts. Give them lots of room to grow. I often send the team to global and regional conferences to represent the company. It is one way to show them appreciation.

5. Support them during their tough times, for instance, by giving them flexible hours during family issues.

6. Compensate them fairly for all the hardwork and pay them above market rate if you can, as our profession mostly has no limited work hours.

7. Don’t punish failure and don’t put blame, but rather make case studies that they share with the other team members.

8. Give them sensible workload remembering their various characteristics. Multi-tasking is not for everyone. Recognize the introverts, vs. extroverts, the hustlers vs. the geek designers.

With that said, it is just as important to avoid demotivating employees. A manager’s job is to enable employees to be productive not to boss them around. Treat them respectfully as key members of a high performing team, as opposed to people that “work for you”. Acknowledge their hard work publicly and don’t take credit for it. Last, but not least, never criticize them in public, only praise them in public, and do the criticism privately in a constructive way.

Trusting them, giving them room to thrive in their league of entrepreneurship, watching them develop into sensible experts motivates me to do more for them. I learn more from my team then I do from anyone else.

DIGITAL MEDIA

Useful Apps for Transportation

SNAPCHAT

A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

THE PROMISED APP FOR BUSINESSES

By Ayman Itani | @AymanItani

A

n article on Telegraph posted last May explained how in less than a decade, we humans lost almost a third of our attention span, from 12 seconds alertness in the year 2000 to barely 8 seconds today; and that by the way is 1 second shorter than our closest competitor, the goldfish. The shortage of attention among people is reinforced by an increase in the thumb activity of users scrolling and flipping pages and photos on digital platforms, showcasing communication restlessness.

Snapchat’s creators were quick to build upon the shortage of attention among people and applied a timeconstrained photo and video shares policy to all the content uploaded by its users.

Young people, tired of working on the perfect post by either taking two dozen neck pain inducing selfies to choose just one or stammering a hundred times while trying to record the flawless video, found the ideal platform to alleviate their irritation while still maintaining the social communication they seek. On Snapchat, people live in the present. The 700 million photos and videos shared every single day on the application don’t last more than 24 hours, but contrary to what many believe, they have a powerful impact on both the lives of its users and on the prospects of the businesses using

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it as a promotional platform. Snapchat has created a new form of media that is ideal for modern users, which explains why huge international corporations such as CNN, BBC, McDonald’s, and General Electric, to name a few, have shifted from traditional posting techniques to producing challenging content on Snapchat to reach a new, young, and very large base of audiences.

Arab Brands’ Current Approach to Snapchat – and How It Can Go Wrong In their turn, numerous Middle Eastern enterprises have perceived the emerging importance of Snapchat. If you’re interested in exploring what local and Arab brands are producing on Snapchat and have a glimpse of their stories, add Zain Jordan, Al Hilal Bank, Layalina Magazine.

Despite their interest in Snapchat, a great majority of Arab brands have adopted either one of two approaches: 1) They remained in their comfort zone and took on a wait-and-see approach to monitor the growth of Snapchat in the region and take action once the results are clear—which can be described as a typical practice by local brands after they followed the same strategy before getting on Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms; 2) They

actually joined Snapchat and made big announcements, both online and offline, to let people know of their audacious step, but sufficed with making a buzz only, without elbowing their way into this very promising land with planned content, which eventually led to withered accounts and an unimpressed Snapchat audience.

These brands failed to make campaigns on Snapchat, partly because of a misunderstanding of the medium, and partly due to a wrong assumption that the community manager or social media officer alone can create effective content just like on the other platforms.

On Snapchat, things differ from other channels, and success requires commitment and a clear and thorough plan from the company management.

What It Takes to Hit a Home Run Snapchat developers have purposefully created a very simple and minimalistic application for its users, but that’s only on the surface, because deep within the settings, the application uncovers tons of tools that can be exploited for good marketing results. For instance, the app has a plethora of tools that enhance the creation of photos and videos on its platform: from the drawing tool to geofilters, to zooming during filming, and much more. Many of these tools are not

Ayman Itani is a digital strategist, media professor, and public speaker. He formulates customized and goal-driven digital business strategies that include catalyzing activities such as lead generation, communication, product development, and customer support.

He lectures and gives workshops on communication, media, and the social web.

He helps build, restructure, and transform companies to reap the rewards that social media has to offer. obvious on the main screen of the app, and the user needs to explore them within the corners of the app.

Companies also need to grasp the meaning of Snapchat and instruct their social media specialists to adopt an easy-to-understand language full of fun, casualness, and behind the scenes exposures. This approach breaks the barriers on the level of the companyaudience relationship and makes the brand more approachable and the audience more involved.

“Story” and “Live” are two aspects of Snapchat that can be used by the company, and more precisely by its much involved employees. The “story” feature on Snapchat makes the content available for 24 hours only, and as the name suggests, content must be created in a story format to be more informative, attractive, and entertaining. The “live” feature allows brands to showcase a full event, concert, forum or seminar with the minimal amount of time and content possible.

Team members should be encouraged to share content from inside the offices, warehouses, and working areas to inject a personal touch with every snap and get people to connect with a more humanized brand.

The most important feature on Snapchat is the business metrics it offers,

which allows marketers to use the app as a marketing channel and justify the invested time. With these metrics, brands can know exactly the number of followers who viewed their postings, determine the exact number of screenshots taken of their snaps, and know how much time their followers spend watching their content.

Five Tactics to Create Content on Snapchat The strategy adopted for a powerful and efficient content can consist of one or all of the five tactics below: 1. Behind-the-scenes: Fun and creativity should always be integrated into Snapchat’s posts to keep the content easy to digest, especially that it won’t last long and needs to grasp the attention of the followers. This is why every enterprise must give its audience a sneak-peak at what happens behind the scenes of the company to let followers be more involved and give the brand a more personal approach.

2. Promotional: Offer your followers a set of promotional content where they can benefit from a set of offers or discounts. For example, you can ask them to screenshot any of your snaps to get a discount on a selected item or event.

3. Stories: Snapchat stories are a very fun way to highlight an event, promote a product, or engage your audience with an offer. Businesses can create attractive stories that contain triggers to catch the attention of their users, and one of the most effective stories that businesses can use are the ones that give the customers a glimpse from behind the scenes.

4. Screenshot trigger: One way to invite your followers to actively interact with your brand is by giving them screenshot triggers. For example, ask them what kind of animal/plant/color are you, and send them a video containing super-fast successive photos. Once they screenshot the snap, the video will stop and they will get a still picture revealing the answer.

5. Customer support: A lot of companies use Whatsapp to complement their business operations, but they can use Snapchat as an additional video layer, where they can record a short video of a particular product and show followers its distinctive features, how it really works, the real material it’s made of, and so on.

In this way, Snapchat acts as a customer support tool to facilitate marketing techniques and offer audiences insight in real-time feed.n

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DIGITAL MEDIA

C

M

How Arab Brands Can Win with

Snapchat

5 Tips to Successfully Market Your Brand and Engage Customers

By Jennifer Kanaan | @trendsnutrition

S

napchat is growing fast worldwide and even faster in the Arab world. In 2014, Snapchat was the fastest growing social media app, achieving a growth rate of 56% between the first and the third quarter of the year, with 81% of its users aged between 13 and 24 years old. The fascination with Snapchat continues as the platform is said to be nearing 200 million active users.

Snapchat’s Popularity Offers Exciting Opportunities Regionally, Saudi Arabia was ranked second globally and first among Arab countries in terms of Snapchat use, with the majority of users aged between 16 and 20 years old. The UAE came in sixth. According to Ispos MENA, 12% of smartphone users in the UAE used

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Snapchat in December 2014 alone, showing a much faster growth rate than Twitter, which is still at around 17% penetration. In Qatar, Ipsos MENA also noted that 14% of Qataris use Snapchat regularly.

In Snapchat’s live stories, we have witnessed a rise in the number of Arab cities being featured at key moments and calendar events. Examples include Mecca during the Hajj pilgrimage, Bahrain during the Grand Prix and other festivals, and Kuwait and the UAE during different exhibitions and festivals. The purpose of these live stories is for people living in these cities to share their Snaps directly with the rest of the world.

Every second, 8,796 photos are shared on Snapchat. It would take you 10 years to view all the photos shared in the last

hour only. By the time you view those, another 880,000 years’ worth of photos would have been shared. In a way, it’s a good thing then that all content uploaded on Snapchat has a limited lifetime of 24 hours maximum. And while this may seem counter-intuitive for brands, marketers have quickly grasped the app’s possibilities, especially with the huge growing popularity it is enjoying.

5 Tips to Succeed in Snapchat Marketing In light of all of this, it is becoming increasingly important for Arab brands to take advantage of Snapchat and its young users. The current trend in social media marketing is storytelling. Since it launched Snapchat Stories last year, Snapchat has become an ideal platform

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Useful Apps for Transportation they called “foodles”. Every Monday,

fans would submit challenges and the A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

marketers would answer to their challenge with illustrations made from fries and onion rings. The concept was simple and it opened the door for followers to participate in generating stories. Fans started looking forward to the Monday foodles and Burger King Lebanon started receiving an increasing number of interesting challenges. With similar stories and engaging content, the brand gathered a base of fans who looked forward to viewing these stories and responded either by using the chat feature or by sending snaps of themselves.

Jennifer Kanaan is the senior social media manager at Eastline Marketing where her addiction to social media and her obsessive compulsive disorder are seen as a normal behavior and are encouraged. She believes in the power of social communities and insists on the fact that if you are not online, you don’t exist.

She is also known for her ever changing and eccentric hair color. In her spare time, Jennifer blogs about nutritional psychology, holistic health & wellness, and nutritional myths. for this trend, allowing brands to create narratives simply by adding snaps.

This presents marketers with a huge opportunity to approach customers in an interactive way.

Here are 5 tips from Eastline Marketing that marketers can use to successfully market their brand and engage customers: 1. Use characters and other storytelling techniques Characters with a personality and a voice make stories more engaging and entertaining to fans and allow room for creative storytelling. Burger King Lebanon introduced the “Whopper King,” who demanded respect but showed a lot of generosity in his appearance on Labor Day. He was also a great father figure to “Whopper Junior,” constantly giving him advice about education, family, and life in general.

You can also make use of special occasions, such as Mother’s Day and the beginning of summer, to introduce a more human aspect to your stories, using the

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characters to deliver your brand’s message.

Emojis are also a great way to add variety to the content and achieve the needed context.

2. Promote stories on other social platforms Make use of other social media platforms, such as Facebook, to tease your fans on the stories you are publishing on Snapchat. This tactic helps redirect your fan base to your Snapchat account and paves the way for more revelations in the upcoming story. Promoting your Snapchat presence on other platforms is essential to build your follower-base and momentum.

This is the most efficient way as people need to follow you using your handle or by scanning your unique Snapchat logo.

3. Introduce gamification features to engage users Games are also very successful on Snapchat. Build stories around games such as spin the bottle, hangman, and XO, which engage the audience immensely.

Burger King Lebanon launched a game

4. Engage in cross-promotion Cross-promotion is a recommended practice that works well with Snapchat.

The key is to find relevant accounts – such as brands or celebrities – who have a similar target audience as your brand.

These accounts can then promote your brand’s content, products, or simply your presence on the platform.

5. Keep a steady supply of fresh content Uploading stories on Snapchat requires taking photos and videos live, knowing that stories only have a 24-hour window before disappearing completely. This poses the challenge of keeping the content fresh and updating it regularly while also allocating enough time and resources to create these stories and execute them.

To overcome this challenge, you need to plan your content well in advance, split the content into pieces, and publish each piece over several days or weeks.

This helps keep a steady flow of fresh content that is well planned, coherent, and engaging.

Snapchat has all it takes to become a vital platform for brands in general and Arab brands in particular. From a digital marketing perspective, the platform’s most significant downside is that it fails to generate insights that go beyond the number of fans and the number of story views. As marketers, we don’t have access to data such as age, gender, location or any other variables that would help us cater and adapt to our fans. We thus have to measure our success according to the number of story views only.n

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MENA Advertising Is Going Native A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

Premium Content Publishers Welcome the Next Evolution of Advertising

By Alexis Baghdadi | @GuerrillaWriter

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I

n the digital age, native advertising is becoming a key growth area alongside content and programmatic advertising.

Brands that adopt native advertising strategies rely on content to tell their stories and relate with people. According to Business Insider Intelligence (BI Intelligence), spending on native advertising in the US is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35% between 2013 and 2018 and could reach $21 billion by that time.

In the MENA, native advertising is also making its entrance. George Head, Sales Director Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Polar, was present at the recent ArabNet Digital Summit 2015 in Dubai to talk about native advertising and illustrate the many possibilities it presents.

So What Is Native Advertising?

The main difference between traditional display advertising and native advertising is the nature of the relationship between the advertiser/brand and the publisher, according to Head. “We aim for synergy when we bring brands and publishers together for something deeper than just a banner advertisement deal,” he said.

Put in the simplest terms, native advertising does not obviously feel or look like advertising. Whereas users tend to consider display web banners and pop-up ads as unwanted “spam”, native advertisements blend in seamlessly with the surrounding regular content on a page. True native experience, said Head, engages with users who consume content and does not disrupt their experience.

Native ads feel organic and natural.

“Good native advertising adds value to a publisher’s site and earns the attention of users,” he said.

Native advertising could either be implemented as an ad that matches the same form and function of the platform on which it appears, or as editorial content that is coherent with other media on the platform. With both types of native advertising, it is not immediately evident to the user that he or she is looking at an ad.

At the summit, dubizzle announced it had implemented a new native ad initiative called “Brand the Stories”.

As one of the largest classifieds portals in the UAE and the region, it made

sense for the Dubai-based platform to be among the first to enable this type of advertising on its pages, said Sonel Ajayi, Head of Advertising Operations at dubizzle. On dubizzle’s UAE website, ads are placed seamlessly among the other listings, and follow their form and function: They contain a thumbnail image, headline, content snippet, and brand logo. By clicking/tapping a link to get more details, users are redirected to the advertiser’s branded content page, hosted on dubizzle’s new blog site. This advertorial content can consist of short or long blog posts, infographics, research, or sponsored articles with integrated video and photography.

Digital Media Services (DMS) also launched their native advertising product, “Kameleon,” to supplement its value proposition. The native ad placement solution adopted by both dubbizzle and DMS was developed using the MediaVoice platform, created by the tech startup, Polar. With offices in Toronto and New York City, Polar provides platforms to help publishers make the most of the opportunities in native advertising.

The Recipe for Successful Native Advertising

Native ads essentially follow a usercentric ad format and experience. The four criteria of successful native advertising are as follows: 1. Users should genuinely want to engage with an advertiser With native advertising, publishers should select brands or advertisers that work with their context, and should go after them with story ideas. “Don’t try to shoehorn inappropriate advertisers into the native experience,” said Head. For instance, a piece of content on real estate would not have its place on a tech and digital news site –although a more traditional web banner would fit in there.

2. Users should genuinely want to engage with a certain type of content “Native advertising is not an opportunity to push press releases; it is the chance to create new content or work with existing assets,” said Head. The brand and its target audience determine the right content in right context. For example,

he mentioned that infographics are a great format in markets where users are not very inclined to read, and this type of content is highly shareable, attractive, and easy to brand. In markets like the MENA, video is a very popular format.

In the B2B sector, the preferred format would be e-books or public Slideshare presentations and white papers.

3. Everything should be shareable from a social angle The greater the ad’s shareability, the higher the possibilities of it going viral and reaching whole new audiences. In general, because native ads are about content, they are more likely to be shared.

“The best branded content is when you do not realize it is branded content,” said Head. One famous example he cited was the “Red Bull Stratos” space jump. The jump was viewed live by over 9.5 million users, setting a record for the live stream with the most concurrent views ever on YouTube and was extensively shared.

4. Content should be platform-agnostic and mobile-ready “Native advertising is non-intrusive, in-feed, and mobile-ready,” said Head.

The shift to mobile played a major role in popularizing native advertising.

Already the big social giants have been dominating the mobile spend space recently, and this constitutes an ideal playground for native ads. More than 50% of the Huffington Post’s native ads (offered through HuffPost Partner Studio) runs on mobile. Polar found that the click-through-rate (CTR) for native ads was higher on mobile. According to Head, users are more willing to engage with content on mobile, such as watching long-form videos or reading articles.

During the pilot period of its native ad solution dubizzle saw average CTRs of 0.78%, and the average time spent on a page was 2 minutes. These encouraging results predict that users will welcome fresh, informative branded content presented to them at the right moment.

Should Your Brand Consider Native Advertising?

It’s really up to what your business requires—to build your brand or acquire new clients, for instance—and

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Useful Apps for Transportation it depends on how you define your communication strategy; whether it is content-driven, or performance-driven.

“Native advertising is about brand building; it is not a lead generation or acquisition exercise,” said Head.

A fundamental point of difference for native advertising is that it makes more high-quality content available to users – something less associated with display advertising. With native advertising, brands get the opportunity to create content alongside publishers who may have one of the largest social followings inside the region, and can tell a story using their voice. It is not – as some might consider it – a “cheap option” for a brand, Head explained, but rather an “invitation to a publisher’s exclusive party”. This is a far cry from advertorial content that immediately stands out from other content on a publisher’s site. This ceases to be an issue with good native advertising, and publishers no longer feel the need to “hide” such advertorial content. The synergy between brands and publishers creates value for users who have been “primed” by the publisher’s great editorial content. In other words, advertisers talk to users in the voice of the publisher, and users are therefore more willing to listen and absorb. In turn, these users are more likely to amplify native advertising content, which helps brands achieve the coveted viral effect.

In a sense therefore, native advertising allows brands to “lead with content”.

Most native advertising services are expected to provide some measure of tracking for the content they produce.

DMS’s Kameleon also delivers a unified reporting dashboard to brands’ advertisers, which enables them to measure the reach, impact, and shareability of content across all hosting platforms. Of course native advertising does not automatically cancel the need for display ads. “Native and display advertising should work in harmony,” said Head. For example, The Telegraph’s homepage once hosted a display ad for the Subaru Outback, with the Scottish highlands featured in the page’s background, and – more importantly – a video review of the Outback by “The Stig”, a popular character on the Top Gear motor show.

The Telegraph’s unique selling proposition

to Subaru was in fact the video review.

extremely significant because it means

Outback in the Scottish highlands, the newspaper not only produced a valuable piece of content, but also a native ad for Subaru, which led to the car manufacturer’s “homepage takeover” of the newspaper.

experiences at a far more effective yield Users benefit from high-quality content – whether it is created by advertisers or by publishers – which, in turn, adds value to the publisher’s site.

This translates into a higher frequency of returning visitors, and a longer “time on page” with content. Forbes has almost the same number of page views for branded content as for its editorial content. “It’s a win-win-win,” said Head.

He explained that there is no need to invest heavily in content creators. Content can be created either by a publisher’s content team or content partners, or by the advertiser’s creative agency. Smaller publishing websites can curate content created by users instead (e.g. featuring customer reviews of spa venues and products on a lifestyles website).

Finally, publishers can also make their content selective and choose which customers to target with native ads. The Telegraph newspaper in the UK, runs up to 90 live content campaigns at any one time, which is a great operational achievement. In order to achieve this, it relies on Polar’s data management platform to optimize and distribute content campaigns to the right customers based on custom segments. DMS’s Kameleon will also be able to offer similar solutions to publishers.n

By hiring “The Stig” test-drive the the publisher is able to sell the content A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps fortoResidents in MENA

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The Benefits for Publishers

In addition to creating points of difference, publishers can also generate revenue from native advertising. “In 3 to 5 years, 50% of digital ad revenue will come from content programs, depending on the region and the vertical” said Head.

Native advertising already accounts for 50% of revenues at Forbes, one of the market leaders in native advertising and branded content. In this particular case, the publisher has established enough trust with its advertisers that they can publish content themselves via its native brand offering, Brandvoice.

There is also a huge scaling potential with the type of native advertising that uses an ad blended within the platform. For example, Slate magazine (through Slate Custom) serves more than 100,000,000 native ads per month! This number is so much higher than that of display ads, that the magazine is now confident enough to start considering shutting down its display offering. This is

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Mapping happiness

A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

a journey through the customer experience

By Paul Papadimitrou | @papadimitriou

T

he clouds are always beautiful from that aircraft window—they seem in sync with that blissful song playing through your headphones.

You opted for the rice —after all, it’s the one thing that made you fly today.

You let your thoughts wander to trace back how a bag of rice made you end up on the plane: You were in that huge supermarket. You saw that instant microwave rice. Your mother would object to that processed food, but why not? It’s an on-demand world nowadays after all. You turned the package to glance at the “best before” date. April 2016. Sold.

Later that night, you were cooking with the radio on. What’s that song?

Shazam tells you. There it is on YouTube.

Ripped. It’s in your pocket library.

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The Shift in Transactions An airplane, a pack of rice, and a song.

They tell one story—how we undergo the process of buying. Specifically, they’re representative of the way we feel about transacting goods and services.

We value what we see more than what we don’t. The “best before” date is the replacement of the link with the local farmer.

We value what we touch more than what we can’t. Give two identical resume to a recruiter, each printed on two different grades of paper. The heaviest will seem more credible.

We value what we own more than what we don’t. Sell your long plays neatly sorted on your shelf, and, invariably, you attribute them a higher value than the buyer does—negotiation tactics

notwithstanding. Ownership was the foundation of transactions.

The Devaluation of Ownership The world of always-on digital marketplaces has brought a paradox— everything is closer, instant, and at our fingertips, while being dematerialized at the same time. Ownership is being replaced by access. Will you want to listen to that song one more time? Will you keep buying that pack of rice? Our sense of value is shifting. Now we transact for experiences. The shift to digital reframed how we transact trust. No trust, no experiences. No sales, you’re dead.

A Journey into Inception Points You’re not dead, though. You’re in a plane marveling at those clouds. Your mind

there’s a reason you were there: the idea had been incepted to you by association.

Maybe you remembered that a friend had visited China and you asked him on Facebook. Maybe it was an ad years ago. Could it be that documentary?

Did you Google it then? Advertising, content marketing, monitoring, call them whatever you want—they are part of a journey, of a story, of a brand.

The brand isn’t a logo; it is what a company and its people represent and what we associate them with. They become the story, randomly at first, but that might one day intersect with you.

A brand becomes the inception point of that map to the rice terraces in China.

You’re at one starting point of the trust timeline. You appear on the map.

keeps wandering, as it had been that day you bought that pack of rice. You imagined those incredible rice terraces.

Where are they located again? “Guangxi Fields” by DJ Lee, Shazam told you.

Longji, China. That’s where I’ll go. I’ve got to see that scenery once in my lifetime.

The phrase “customer journey” is thrown left and right nowadays, to the point of it meaning everything and nothing. The world map is simpler to understand. The London Tube map isn’t London, just like a map is never the territory. It is just a representative path to discovery. Every company should have maps. Imaginary ones, basic ones, even wrong ones. Story-boarding the path of discovery to a brand or product is tantamount—or, at the very least, an

extremely valuable exercise in assessing the essence of a business. Why did you go for that pack of rice? How did you link it with imagery of China? Why did you end up transacting for that airline experience?

It’s all in the journey, all in the map.

You’re in that airport; you’re about to board… Stop. Rewind.

Inception — The Discovery Stage The journey didn’t start when you got into the plane. It never started at the onboarding stage. It’s not even at that moment in that supermarket, nor when you heard that song. When you were on your smartphone looking for the best flight deal to Shenzhen, the closest airport to your dream destination, you already knew where to look. Whether you were on Emirates’ app or on Google Flights,

The Planning — The Search Stage The disintermediation of the purchase process is not something new. The customer experience did rarely, if ever, belong to one single business. You were booking that plane ticket with an online travel agent.

A map is never only about private property. The customer journey needs to be worked in context. There are painpoints that need to be known and paths that need engineering, whether for lowcost carrier or the luxury upper-deck with showers. It shouldn’t be coincidence that you will end up in that plane.

But you haven’t bought a ticket yet, let alone seen the product—the aircraft you’ll spend hours in. You are trying to book your ticket online. This is a makeor-break situation. You see that huge pop-up that reminds you that your coach seat isn’t worth it (do you really want to forego the possibility of checking-in a piece of luggage)? There are only 2 seats left, we promise?

Rafat Ali, Founder of Skift, found the perfect term for those tactics: “hateselling”. A customer journey shouldn’t just be an exercise in conversion models and marketing techniques. You haven’t been in the plane yet and you’re already being talked to condescendingly; you’re being up-sold useless add-ons down the throat.

This isn’t the map you’re looking for.

This map was created by growth hacking lunatics. A customer journey should be

Fall 2015 The QuarteRly

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Useful Apps for Transportation The attendants are going the extra

first and foremost simple. A seamless path to what you want or desire. An exercise of creating delight.

mile. They know you’ve used their airline A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA

The Airport — The Funnel You might be a frequent flier or just an occasional one. You might be traveling for business (Shenzhen is your destination after all) or simply to have a break.

You might want reminders—or you find them useless. You might want your hand to be taken along, or be left alone. You don’t want to be taken for granted. You want to be understood.

Understanding the customer should be a top priority. After all, the customer is the purpose of every map.

The customer journey map should minimize shortcomings, maximize potential, and find coping strategies— from collaboration with the infrastructure owners to supplementing support channels.

You are at the airport. You see the airline logo from afar. You immediately understand which lane you should get into. Security lines are untenable though.

Will you ever get to that plane?! You’re starting to be really unhappy. You’re practically a locked-in customer, though.

Why should the airline bother? You’ve paid your trip and you’re going to fly.

What if you got informed about security waiting times in real-time?

What if you were given way-finding indications? Security lines are like the payment processing stage. Non-mobile friendly, stupid bank authorizations, uncertain processing times. The brand can supplement the experience or at least set the expectations right.

You reach the gate. Bland seats.

When is your flight going to take-off exactly? Shipment is another pain-point a brand rarely has control upon. It is still its role to work things out with the carrier.

The customer doesn’t care. The customer is buying a flight, not the gate area. The customer doesn’t care whose fault it is. If the experience is bad, alleviate it.

The Flight — The Product Experience Boarding a plane nowadays could be renamed the war for overhead bins—what a pain. But the airline had made it easy so far though, so you’re relaxed and just smile at the discomfort. You’re about to embark

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many times before. They come to your seat, at the very back of the plane, to say “hi.” They even have a surprise for you— that refreshment you loved last time; they remembered. It had been mapped.

The timeline of the returning customer filled with extra gestures of appreciation: a hand-written note by the CEO, or a set of stickers.

Taking off might seem very processdriven, and it is for a simple reason: safety comes first. But you’re flying Emirates today. There comes the announcement of all the languages spoken by the crew— what a nice touch, you’re thinking. You remember in disgust that moment when, belted on your seat, that other airline bombarded you with credit cards offers.

The captain welcomes you via the PA system and switches the fasten seat belt sign himself—that little ding is so nice to hear. You’re in good hands—professional hands. You know you’re important to them.

The clouds are always beautiful from that aircraft window—they seem in sync with that blissful song playing through your headphones. Your flight might have been utilitarian—you simply want to get to Longji, but you will fly this airline again. They’re thoughtful. The experience is neat.

Paul Papadimitriou is the founder of Intelligencr, the distributed innovation bureau. He most recently helped launch Ubuntu Phone worldwide — mapping it all. Organizations like Microsoft, Bell Labs, Fujitsu, Canonical, SABMiller, Criteo, Siemens, eBay, the European Union or the ITU have trusted him to challenge them. He has given keynote speeches on four continents and appeared in various media from The Economist to the Japan Times.

Paul produces and hosts Layovers, the future of flying podcast. in what, for you, represents the product journey. It should be transformative. It should be a wow moment, like unboxing a parcel or firing up a new app.

The Future — The Lasting Effect The rice is eaten, the package is discarded, that song effect might wear out, and the flight will eventually land with the remaining bits of the journey: the landing, the destination airport, immigration, and all. Hopefully they’d have been mapped for, too.

We value what we see more than what we don’t. We value what we touch more than what we can’t. We value what we own more than what we don’t. But we’ve always valued more the taste of the rice, the sound of the song, and what travel meant. It was always about the memories of the experiences. The disintermediation of society simply forces us to get back to this essence.

Maps might not be the territory, but, in the age of access to experiences, they beget happiness. They’re an imperative.

This is why you’re on that plane today.

Bon voyage n

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Useful Apps for Transportation Integrated Approaches for MENA Governments to Boost Startup Growth Focus on the Kuwait National Fund for SME Development

By Alexis Baghdadi | @GuerrillaWriter

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I

nvestments in MENA startups are growing steadily across the region, with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and the UAE recording the highest growths.

Investments increased by over 200% in these countries from 2010 to 2012 according to a report by Wamda Research Lab (WRL).

Recognizing the role of entrepreneurship in the emerging digital economy, MENA countries are sponsoring programs and policies to support it. Ever since it issued Circular #331 two years ago, the Central Bank of Lebanon has invested more than $280 million, approved 6 funds with volumes ranging between $30 million and $75 million, and ticket sizes between $300,000 and $5 million.

In the region, the number of early-stage investment and VC firms has almost tripled since 2008, according to WRL. New supporting players are also steadily enriching the startup community: accelerators like Speed@BDD in Lebanon (launched this summer); angel networks; and crowdfunding or P2P lending platforms like the Jordan-based liwwa (launched in 2013). Saudi Arabia is catching up by supporting incubators and accelerators like Afkar.me and InspireU, and initiatives by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) like “New Ventures”.

As a relative newcomer on the scene, Kuwait stole headlines when it launched a $7 billion fund to support entrepreneurship this year. Abdulaziz Al Loughani, Vice Chairman and Executive Director of the Kuwait National Fund for SME Development and the former owner of the food delivery platform Talabat. com (recently acquired for a record $170 million), said they are currently finalizing their supporting infrastructure, and a website is under development.

The community is keeping close tabs on the fund’s progress and is anticipating the announcement of its first results by end-2015.

The Kuwait National Fund focuses on smart capital, education, legal framework, and mindset. Most companies in the region usually have access to only one round of funding, even though follow-on funding is critical to startup growth. Smart capital involves providing technical and

strategic guidance for entrepreneurs by facilitating access to multiple rounds of funding as well as to markets, talent, land, and services. As the largest procurer of the fund, the State of Kuwait will play a significant role in that aspect. For example, the fund has committed to secure licenses on behalf of entrepreneurs within 30 days – failing which it could be sued.

In terms of education, learning know how to run a business is traditionally hard-earned by slowly climbing the corporate ladder. But the fast-moving entrepreneurial ecosystem requires a solid and diverse set of skills at the onset. The Kuwait National Fund seeks to fill that gap and engage with students early on by supplementing extracurricular and curricular activities in their program.

On the legal side, the entrepreneurial ecosystem requires a venture-friendly framework to prosper.

This requires changing the mindsets of policymakers, entrepreneurs, and investors, which can be the most challenging task. Al Loughani said the local mindset is still stuck in the “buy low and sell high” cycle: “They need to understand that a merchant in our day and age also tackles problems in the community and makes people’s lives more efficient.”

Creating a National Vision for Startup Growth For Al Loughani, a reactive stance that simply satisfies public demand and meets the current needs of the market is not enough. Governments need to have a forward-looking vision to build a fully integrated entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Before launching the fund, Kuwait fully inventoried and evaluated its resources (university graduates, skills, subsidies, etc.) and found that by focusing on technology, light industries, media, and design, the country would have the best chances of competing regionally. “We reviewed all the regional initiatives that support entrepreneurship, and were inspired by many parts of their efforts,” said Al Loughani. Additionally, whereas, many countries in the region allow a lot of strategic autonomy for governmental or semi-governmental bodies supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Kuwait

actually consolidated all these bodies into one centralized governmental agency for that purpose.

Careful planning is needed before mapping a strategy to ensure government-sponsored support programs succeed. First, governments should leverage local and regional academics and research, as well as the inputs of practitioners. These can have a significant impact in determining the success of a circular or program.

Adopting international standards and best practices saves time in reinventing the wheel. Successful programs already exist worldwide and can be adapted to local contexts. Kuwait recently signed an agreement with the World Bank to establish appropriate mechanisms for the creation and growth of SMEs. “It’s important that we don’t complicate the design […] Over-engineering often kills an initiative,” said Al Loughani.

Of course, ultimately, gauging a program’s impact is the true measure of its success. As Al Loughani puts it: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Macro KPIs to identify the progress and success of the program include the number of companies funded and supported, the number of jobs created by these companies (Kuwaiti nationals vs. expats), and the revenues, including the net value added to the economy, even if it is minimal with relation to the GDP.

Partnering with the Private Sector to Design an Integrated Approach The main concern for entrepreneurs is the bureaucratic hassle associated with government-sponsored programs. Kuwait was particularly notorious for its red tape, which affected the ease of doing business.

One of the key challenges for foreign entrepreneurs is a law that requires a local partner; as for Kuwaitis, they have to endure endless procedures, high fees, and a business atmosphere not conducive to competition. None of this is compatible with a dynamic startup ecosystem. Al Loughani referred to a saying common in both Lebanon and Kuwait: “trust the baker with baking your bread.” In other words, let experts do their jobs.

Accordingly, the private sector would play a role in implementing a governmentsponsored SME strategy in the most

Abdulaziz Al Loughani at ArabNet Beirut Conference in March 2015

efficient and time sensitive manner. “This will reduce bureaucratic procedures and eliminate any negative connotations usually associated with governmental procedures,” said Al Loughani.

Taking It Regional: The Role of Governments Alongside countries’ individual efforts, cross-country collaboration is possible through streamlining government initiatives. Aligning policy frameworks throughout the region would facilitate exchanges. For example, updated and efficient policies related to cross-border trading or preferred procurement are necessary for e-commerce. The Kuwait National Fund will set up an information center and create community events around its target verticals to facilitate information flow and talent exchange between countries. “These are low-lying fruit we should take advantage of for better collaboration within the region,” said Loughani.

Governments in the region should act as catalysts for startups over the next five to ten years, until enough depth is created in private markets. Without initiatives like Circular #331 or Kuwait’s National Fund, many private sector efforts would never happen, Loughani said. These initiatives have clear beneficial spillovers into the technologydriven digital economy. With funds becoming readily available, investors are more confident about venturing in the ICT and digital sectors, which translates as startup growth.n

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By Wael Nabbout | @FulMtlColumnist

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e have compiled a list of 10 startups from our region that you should keep an eye on. This includes locals working abroad and foreigners that have opted to invest their dreams and careers in the region. Without much ado, here they are...

Conceived in Chicago by brothers Ehab and Rooshdi Ali and officially launched in 2015, WebMenu is a platform, store, and launcher that helps people discover and access web apps and other online service such as content sites and, soon, social media. The service has been inspired by the recent trend of migrating of software to the web: think chromebooks, Apple, and MS web app stores, and to some extent the local service Maqtoob. But whereas these companies have opted close off their ecosystems, WebMenu by contrast works across all operating systems offering 1200+ apps for desktop, tablets, and mobile phones. WebMenu hasn’t received any outside investment yet; so far all the money has been generated either through sponsorships or from developers or companies that want to promote their apps.

Country of origin: Chicago Date of launch: 2015 Category: App discovery platform

MedsConnect is a Dubai-based company that offers a mobile social network that connects patients that suffer from chronic diseases with their support group: family members, friends, and caregivers. The soon to launch app—currently being fine-tuned and undergoing final touches—is completely

free of charge. The company hopes to generate revenues through deals with various stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem—pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, clinics, and so on. There is no shortage of health apps in the Middle East. Dabadoc, Altibbi, eTobb, Dr.Bridge, and WebTeb, just to name a few, all sport some form of patient physician communication tool, but not all have opted to charge money for it.

All, however, intend on monetizing their wealth of data. It will be interesting to see which of these services prevail, falter, joins forces, or fall.

Country of origin: Dubai Date of launch: expected in 2015 Category: Medical social network

Saily was founded by 18-year-old Jihad Kawas and officially began operations by mid-2014 from an office in Beirut, despite the fact that its market is exclusively in the US. A garage sale app, Saily is a location-sensitive marketplace for buying and selling amongst friends and people nearby—call it your neighborly craigslist for second-hand items, or similarly Dubizzle for the US. Once a purchase is agreed, the app is able to suggest an exchange point using the Foursquare API: a public space midway between buyer and seller. The founder recently became a Thiel Fellow and earned the hundred thousand dollars that come along with it, in addition to micro cash injections from Will Bunker, the founder of match. com, and Philippe Dagher, founder of CashUnited.

Country of origin: Beirut Date of launch: mid 2014 Category: Location-sensitive marketplace

Finerd is an automated investment management solution platform launched in April 2015. It uses automated computer algorithms to allocate, deploy and rebalance investments, like Robo advisors.

Its founders, David Martínez de Lecea and Nicolas Fotilas, chose to base it in Dubai after they had identified a need for this kind of solution among its residents.

Finerd is launching soon its Islamic version of the product, which comes in alignment with Dubai’s plan of becoming the worldwide center for Islamic Finance.

While crowd investment platforms, such as Eureeka and Zoomal, have proliferated in the region, this kind of service is new.

Globally, Finerd could be stacked against the likes of Betterment and Wealthfront.

Country of origin: Dubai Date of launch: April 2015 Category: Fintech

Another company making headway in a crowded market is Loolia, a female-focused online lifestyle network. With older, wellentrenched competitors—think Yasmina. com and artizara.com—Loolia is upping its game by being the first among its competitors to bring video appointments to the Middle East. The service, which was inspired by the now defunct Google Helpouts, offers authentic premium content from vloggers and experts, some of which are produced and published exclusively for the site. The idea had been fermenting for slightly over a year. The YouTube channel launched in August of last year, but the website took off later in February. Recently, the company secured a seed and an early round of investment from IMAGIC Group. While the offices and studios are currently based in Lebanon, the plan is to expand in the region and to open digital studios in Dubai and KSA. Country of origin: Lebanon Date of launch: February 2015 Category: Lifestyle

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Useful Apps for Transportation any direct competitors in the region,

Administration. Its Lebanese founder,

one of the hottest markets, with research companies, such as SolidEnergy, Leyden Energy, and Native Union looking to improve battery technology.

Country of origin: Palestine Date of launch: 2015 Category: Hardware

to a heart attack, was recently selected as Endeavour entrepreneur. The San Francisco-based company produces LifeSense, a wearable heart rate monitor that is able to alert hospitals or physicians if it detects abnormalities in patients’ heart rate. The integrated GPS tracking system allows it to lead medical teams to the patient directly.

The product and its associated services are available in Lebanon and the US. Country of origin: Lebanon/US Date of launch: 2011 Category: Medical Technology.

thoughApps globally, for BOLDResidents is looking at Ziad Sankari, who had lost his father A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking in MENA

Another Dubai-based startup on our list is Fetchr, a pickup and delivery company that is set to revolutionize delivery services in emerging markets where postal addresses do not exist, making use of GPS to make up for the absence of postal addresses. While pick-up and delivery services are available in the Middle East, Fetchr gains advantage on traditional services by its extremely easy to use app. All you have to do is snap a picture of the item you want to ship and Fetchr will come to pick it up, similar to how the US-based Shyp operates.

Alternatively, if you shop online, Fetchr does offer delivery just like Parcel. The company recently closed a Series A funding round led by the US-based New Enterprise Associates and secured $11M to expand in the region.

Country of origin: Dubai Date of launch: 2015 Category: Logistics – pickup and delivery

It’s unusual to see startups venture into hardware; it’s also uncommon to witness them rise up in Palestine due to the dire economic and political situation. This is why BOLD gadgets’ Knot, the country’s first tech product, is all the more impressive. The Knot is a wearable USB charging cable that powers iOS and Android smartphones and charges twice as fast as commercial chargers. It was made possible through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo this summer, raising more than $77K. Its goal was $15K. The company started working little over a year ago. Later in November, it was selected by the Estonia-based Buildit Hardware Accelerator and received $11,000 as a result. There aren’t

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Ramallah-based Swipt offers a novel approach to loyalty programs. The company launched this year after its founder, Mohammed Amleh, quit his job in San Francisco and came home to launch Swipt. What’s different about Swipt is that it not only rewards purchases, but any activity that helps promote the seller as well, such as a tweet, post, or snap that mentions the seller. This idea is similar to Dubai-based Brndstr, but the latter lacks Swipt’s rewards for purchasing. Additional to its main function, Swipt will be able to provide sellers with analytics about the behavior of its fans as well.

Country of origin: Ramallah Date of launch: 2015 Category: Loyalty

While this startup is not new, CardioDiagnostics most certainly needs to be on your radar, especially after it caught the attention of the White House. It was identified among the top 5 US-led global startups that have created innovative solutions to global challenges by Barack Obama’s

iRehab is a Saudi-based web startup focused on disabled children. With hundreds of studies and videos available in its library, iRehab would allow children that suffer from delayed motor skills development and other special needs to perform necessary exercises from the comfort of their home. iRehab will soon also offer a number of other services, such as online consultations, including personal one-to-one video sessions, rehabilitation programs, and an online forum. The company recently graduated from Flat6Labs Jeddah; the website is still in the works but is expected to launch in the very near future. The market of health focused services is large, but like MedsConnect, iRehad is taking a smart approach by targeting a very niche market that has not been addressed so far.

Country of origin: Saudi Arabia Date of launch: 2015 Category: Healthcare