LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
SLOW IS THE NEW FAST
Lara Chaaya Managing Editor
@ChaayaLara lara@arabnet.me
I remember when I got my first freelancing job as an online editor. At the time, I was still a graduate student in the faculty of sciences and thought everything should be validated by scientific reasoning. The job’s brief requested for 7 blog articles to be delivered within 4 days. Eager to make a few decent bucks—not that it was a hefty amount—I sat diligently on my desk and began with what I thought was the norm: research. Five hours later, I was barely done with the first article. Back then, I thought the problem was me; I was a novice in the area. So I called the client and told her I needed a couple of more days to deliver the articles because the research was taking time. To my surprise, the client’s response was: “Why are you wasting time on research? Just write anything that comes to your mind. People read anything on the web!” Nine years later, I am writing this letter to say just the opposite. We live in a fast-paced world where time has become a scarce and valuable resource. When people go online today, they are bombarded with all sorts of content. Now that the wonder effect of the web has worn off, people have become very selective and will only settle for content worth their time. I’m not saying that they suddenly have become interested in research papers on the latest biomedical discovery. On the contrary, they are interested in content that relates to them. In his book “Contagious: Why Things Catch On,” Jonah Berger lists six factors that make content interesting to the audience and more likely to be shared. And guess what? He used the scientific method to come up with his conclusions. For content creators to implement any combination of Jonah’s six factors, they need to invest a lot of effort on generating worthy pieces of content. They need to give that process its rightful time. The competition is high and content generators can’t afford to take a shortcut. In this issue’s cover story, leading online video creators give great insights into the amount of work needed to create good quality content and memorable characters that people emotionally connect with. It is not the work of day or two. The same can be said about the content of The Quarterly. For the past three months, we have toiled to bring you content worth your while. I hope that after reading our magazine, you would feel your time was wisely spent. And as always, I’d love to hear from you. Until next time!
CONTENT ISSUE 3 APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION USEFUL A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA INDUSTRY STORIES
4
Industry News
BUSINESS
20
Two ways video is disrupting retail banking
TECHNOLOGY
8
Recent Trends in Web and Mobile
24 26
12 14 18
Digital Transformation in Banking
Food Fight
Competition in online food ordering heats up
The Impact of Mobile on Retail
How mobile usage in stores influences purchase decisions
How to Make SEO Matter
Increasing traffic by aligning social media with SEO
Great Apps to Come Out of the Middle East
Maximizing Productivity Our 5 favorite tools for better efficiency at work
30
Why Brick-And-Mortar Retailers Should Invest in Tech
Interview with the General Manager of GS
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34
Smart Government Initiatives
How to avoid the mistakes of the 2000s
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
48
What You Need to Know About Equity Crowdfunding
DIGITAL MEDIA
36
The Business of Online Video
52
Beyond the one-hit viral video
54 56
IPO-Track Investing
The most capital efficient way to grow wealth and global leadership
A Pitch with an Impact
What lessons can we learn from Arab entrepreneurs
How Do You Maintain a Work/Life Balance? We ask the entrepreneurs
60 42
Interview with MediaCom’s CEO Nick Barron
New Middle East Startups That Should be on Your Radar
Technology may have changed, but the fundamentals of great advertising haven’t
44
The “Now” Moment
46
Digital Arabic Typography
How to implement a real-time marketing strategy on Twitter
Great Arabic web fonts on web and mobile screens
63
Why Elias Ghanem Left Paypal Hitting the reset button
November 2014 THE QUARTELY
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INDUSTRY STORIES
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION
INDUSTRY NEWS
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
MEVP Closes the Impact Fund at More than $50M and Approves 5 Investments MEVP launched the Impact Fund on December 19, 2013 and was the first venture capital firm in Lebanon to be approved by Banque Du Liban (BDL) on July 11, 2014 as compliant with BDL Intermediate Circular 331. Impact Fund is now the first fund in Lebanon to close under said circular on October the 24th, 2014, and already has investors’ commitments in excess of $50M. The Impact Fund will invest $1 to $5M per company in Lebanon’s next generation knowledge-based startups, with a focus on ICT and creative industries as primary sectors. The Impact Fund’s investment committee approved five investments in the amount of $12.5M. Four out of these investments have been closed, and one is expected to close by the end of 2014. MEVP has invested $3M in Mobinets, a Lebanese telecom software provider; $2M in Fuel Powered (previously Grantoo), a platform that helps mobile games add multiplayer functionalities instantaneously enabling gamers to compete with each other; $1.5M in Klangoo, owner of the semantic text analysis technology “Magnet”; $4M in Bookwitty, a global online book distributor and reseller with large footprint in North America and Europe; and an undisclosed amount in Fadel Partners, a Lebanese-based IP management software company.
Telr Raises Series A Round from iMENA Holdings and Hatcher Telr, the multi-currency and multilingual payment gateway for SMEs, headquartered in Dubai and Singapore, has just raised a Series A round from Singapore-based Hatcher and Middle Eastbased iMENA Holdings. This makes Telr the first online payment gateway in the region to secure investment in growth funding in the first year of operations. The round was closed almost two weeks after Telr announced its merger with Innovate Payments and officially began operations. The amount of the funding is undisclosed, but iMENA has acquired a significant amount of equity in return. This news brings the total number of iMENA’s investments to seven, placing Telr alongside Hello Food, Easy Taxi, Citra Style, Sell Any Car, Open Souq, and Reserve Out.
Wysada Secures Series A Round at $5M+ Jordan-based Wysada, the online luxury retailer of home goods and interior furnishings in the Middle East, announced that is has completed a Series A round of over $5M. This deal represents the largest Series A round raised by an early-stage e-commerce startup in the region. The round was led by Badia Impact Fund, a global group of venture capital funds based in New York City and Jordan, and strategic investors from KSA and the GCC, alongside existing investors.
WebTeb Raises $3.2M and Reaches 4M Unique Visitors Arabic health and lifestyle portal WebTeb closed a $3.2 million Series C funding round led by Sadara Ventures. Existing WebTeb investors, including the Siraj Palestine Fund, also participated in the round. The funds will be used to expand WebTeb’s mobile offering, content (especially videos), and marketing. Dr. Mahmoud Kaiyal, Founder and CEO of WebTeb explains: “Healthcare service providers and pharmaceutical companies have been increasing demand for native advertising, content and services online. We’ll see seven digit budgets for campaigns in 2015. Some of the big brands are doubling their online advertising budgets for 2015.”
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INDUSTRY STORIES
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION Feelit Secures $100K
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents from BootstrapLabs in MENA Feelit, the Saudi-based social app that allows users to communicate their emotions and moods, raised $100K from BootstrapLabs, the venture investment company in Silicon Valley, bringing the total cash invested in the startup to $300K. Feelit has also attracted the attention of several angel investors from Saudi Arabia and abroad. They raised $150K from Saudi angels and $15K from Will Bunker, a Silicon Valley angel investor who created Match.com. BootstrapLabs will work hands-on with Feelit for 12 months to relocate them to Silicon Valley.
UAE Is the First Country to Use Air Drones for Logistics Age Steel, a large steel trader in Dubai, is among the first companies in the Middle East to use drones for logistics purposes. Age Steel approached Exponent, a logistics solutions company, to make it easier to find tons of steel in their 10,000 square meter yard. RFID tags placed on each corresponding bundle of steel were read by cards placed on drones that flew above the steel to track the exact locations of every steel bundle. The general aviation authority had no objection to doing this as long as they don’t use the drones over any public areas, and limit the height of the drone to a maximum of 10 meters in altitude. The drones fly twice a day when there is no human movement in the yard. Exponent’s COO explained: “We flew the drone over 10,000 square meters as a test where we tagged 1,000 bundles, and we were able to count all of them in just 5 minutes with an accuracy of 98%. This process usually takes more than 10 people to compelte in 2 hours.”
Zomato Soon to Launch in Beirut
The First Accelerator in Iran Is Launched Avatech is a new accelerator for seed-stage digital startups launched in Iran by Mohsen Malayeri. The team behind Avatech are expecting 150 applications out of which 10 startups will be admitted to the acceleration program where they will be offered seed funding, co-working space, advice from expert European mentors, and outreach from Avatech’s partners. Some startups applying to Avatech are localized adaptations of international models like Mehr.ir, Iran’s version of YouTube.
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Zomato, the India-based online restaurant review that has raised over $50 million in funding since its launch five years ago, continues its expansion in the Middle East by entering the Lebanese market. They are currently in the data collection phase, and the platform will be fully operational in the next two months. This announcement comes after Zomato launched in UAE in early 2013. The service is currently available in 16 countries, with plans to expand across Jordan, Kuwait, KSA, and Oman.
AstroLabs Partners with Google and Looks to Expand Borders AstroLabs is launching a full-blown startup tech hub in Dubai, in partnership with Google and DMCC. The co-working space will allow organizations like AstroLabs and others to help the startups mainly with functional and marketing support. There will be room for many startups to work and enlist in training programs for various digital and business skills. Startups will also benefit through mentorship, workshops, and access to industry connections as well as investment networks. AstroLabs have helped build many success stories. Some popular ones that come to mind are Lebanon’s Anghami and Dubai’s Qordoba.
Mobily Ventures Launches and Invests in Two Big Startups Mobily is launching its investing arm “Mobily Ventures” with the goal of supporting high-growth technology startups in the MENA through their investments and synergies. Mobily Ventures are looking for startups who have already raised their first round of funding, and are now seeking Series A funding in the growth stage with an investment size of 300,000 USD to 3 million USD. They have already invested in Anghami, Easy Taxi, and Hellofood—the last two of which also received funding from iMENA Holdings.
HP Launches Online B2B Store in Saudi Arabia Tech giant HP has launched a Saudi-exclusive B2B e-commerce platform: www.hpstoreksa.com. The platform offers HP server, storage and networking products and services to businesses across the KSA. HPStoreKSA will merge the services of Ebhar.net with those of the three giant distributors in Saudi: Redington, Logicom and Aptec. The deal is that Ebhar.net will continue to manage the website while the distributing companies will answer customer inquiries, in addition to their usual shipping tasks.
TECHNOLOGY
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
RECENT TRENDS IN WEB AND MOBILE Silicon Valley Leaders Discuss What’s Hot by Wael Nabbout | @FulMtlColumnist
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T
his year ArabNet Digital Summit hosted all of Ben Parr, Cofounder and Managing Partner of Dominate Fund; Benjamin Levy, Partner at BootstrapLabs; along with Jon Soberg, Cofounder and General Partner at Expansive Ventures; and Faysal Sohail, General Partner at CMEA Capital and got them to weigh in on the subject. But before we get into that, let’s have a quick recap of what happened over the past 12 months. Twitter went public. Alibaba, on the other hand, claimed the title for largest global IPO ever at a whopping twenty five billion dollar valuation. There was a few other ten digit valuations in the social space: Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for a billion dollars, a $3B bid for Snapchat, Pinterest got valuated at $5B, and Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19B. Similar moves for voice over IP companies included Alibaba’s $215M investment in Tango, and Rakuten paying just short of a billion for Viber. Google bought Nest, invested in Uber and released Glass to the public. 3D printers made further advances into mainstream adoption while following Google and Apple’s move could soon see wearables become staple shelf products in electronic stores. Favorite Startups of Silicon Valley Investors What better way to gauge what’s hot in Silicon Valley than to ask four of the most prominent figures in the sector about their favorite startup. For Faisal Sohail, that would be Luminate, a leading in-image advertising and related content network. What’s interesting about Luminate is that it tackles an area that has been underserved. Google has done a tremendous job monetizing word search. Luminate is trying to do the same with pictures. Ben Parr has two favorites: Humin and Connect. They’re quite similar; both try to give context around your contacts and friends. Based on where you are, these services can show who is close by and will auto-load all their social profiles so that you know what they’ve been up to. This adds a new layer of value on top of more traditional social networks that merely link profiles together. Jon Soberg points out applications that handle big data behind the scenes as an area of interest; in particular, he mentions an enterprise credit rating service based in Germany called Kreditech. The company is able to offer micro-loans to customers based on social and commerce data. Finally, Benjamin Levy’s favorite is AI company Emospark. What’s special about it is that it adds a new dimension to artificial intelligence: emotions. Its system seeks to understand human behavior and map feelings to data collections. “That’s where we are going, a hint of the future,” Levy says. So to wrap up: image content, context, big data and emotions are hot right now. The Key Trends, and the One That Failed Following the same format—one question directed to all four panelists—the discussion moved to address key trends and ones that fizzled. The panelists agreed that social will make its way onto devices other than smartphones, and with the smart home movement, in particular. There is disruption in the venture landscape as well. A more connected world means that venture is going global . 80% of users of the top twenty five tech companies in the US come
from outside the country. The number of people with connected smartphones is expected to rise to two billion by the end of 2014. Now, more than ever, you are able to build value with less resources and capital. A trend that failed? Well not entirely, at least not yet, but wearables are having their share of trouble and need help, the panelists said. People who have bought a wearable device, on average, drop it three weeks later. Insufficient battery life is the evil keeping it from becoming mainstream. Industries That Will Be Disrupted by Smart Devices or Automation Home robots fit both of these trends according to Faysal. They could be small devices that scrub your floor at home for example, and they’re smart too. They create and save maps of their environment to better navigate their way. Healthcare, he continued, is perhaps where wearables might be able to find a better future. The healthcare industry is valued between 2.7 and 2.9 trillion dollars a year, 600 billion of these are in preventative care, and this is where wearables might take off. Its main competition could very well be smartphones according to Benjamin. During
WWDC 14, Apple announced a number of features that allow developers to integrate health readings and build apps around them. At this point Ben interjected, adding that healthcare entities take a long time to make decision and as such, they are slow in adopting these technologies. It’s hard on their budgets, it’s risky, and there is a lot of regulations. The better route involves companies or developers that have relations with health institutions.
November 2014 THE QUARTELY
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TECHNOLOGY
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION What’s Next for Chat Apps “When you have a 19 billion dollar acquisition, you know it’s starting to mature in someway!” exclaimed Ben. But why was this acquisition so critical for Facebook? Because everyone is on the app, because it’s global, and most importantly, because frequent one-to-one communication is more valuable and easier to monetize than one-to-many communication. Is there opportunity left in the market? Absolutely, the panelists unanimously agreed, but since it’s maturing, any new entrant hoping for a big break must present something radically different. The trend suggests that people right now are using different apps that do the same thing. They segregate different types of acquaintances to different chat apps. Big players moving in might change that soon. Apple, for instance, is baking chat into its own OS, which could in the long run swallow up more users.
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
The Curious Case of Snapchat Why is Snapchat so popular? Benjamin explains: First, the interface, although somewhat complicated, compared to
Ben Parr, Cofounder and Managing Partner of Dominate Fund
Jon Soberg, Cofounder and Managing Partner at Expansive Ventures
something like WhatsApp, is unique and clever. There is an element of gamification in its video capture button. But a much bigger factor in Snapchat’s popularity is the fact that it doesn’t permanently capture images. This makes it Ok to snap bad ones. On Facebook, pictures are permanent, so each one must be perfectly executed. On Snapchat, a picture is a means to simply pass on information. It doesn’t leave a permanent record. “It’s the non searchable web.” Opportunities in Emerging Markets For investors, copycats are a-ok, stresses Jon. They’ve see hundreds of copies in Silicon Valley, too. Localizing is hard. The infrastructure that exists in the US is very different from emerging markets, so investors really value entrepreneurs that are able to take something that works and apply it somewhere else. It is definitely nothing to be shy about or looked down upon. Arabic is one of the four languages, along with English,
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Faysal Sohail, General Partner at CMEA Capital
Benjamin Levy, Partner at BootstrapLabs
Chinese, and Spanish that makes scaling easier, explains Ben. All four have a huge number of speakers, some span continents and some reach over oceans. Contrast that with Europe, where local startups usually have a hard time growing beyond their borders. What Is It Going to Take to Attract the Big VCs? All the panelists agree: Exits. Big ones. Global early stage investment, angel investors and small funds have made multiple entries into the region, but ultimately, the bigger London and Silicon Valley players won’t move until they see that this part of the world can produce exits in the next five to seven years. Big funds are unlikely to move. Local companies will have to scale and grow beyond their borders to catch their attention. Having a big hit on your hands helps, too. Hits guarantee multi-billion dollar exits every couple of years. That money gets reinvested in the ecosystem and gives birth to new angels, new funds, and so on.n
TECHNOLOGY
OP-ED
USEFUL HOW TO MAKE APPS SEO FOR MATTER TRANSPORTATION Increasing A Round-Up Traffic of Taxi-Booking by Aligning Social Apps Media forwith Residents SEO in MENA by Ozal Ergen
S
ocial Media and SEO are like the yin and yang of the online arena and one without the other cannot function adequately. Having your social media supporting your SEO is especially important, because its practice has changed considerably since the birth of SEO in the mid-1990s. But what made Google so popular — the ability to rank websites based on ‘popularity’ by crawling and weighing in bound links to any given website — has in a sense remained the same. What’s different is that the popularity of a website or brand these days is not only judged by its in-bound links, but also by its social media impact and how well content is entwined with a brands website. Search engines do their best to build a holistic view of several brands before they present them to some of the 6 billion searches that are carried out every day. That’s why it’s really important to ensure your social media strategy is tangled with your SEO strategy, and every post should relate to what you are publishing on your website and the keywords which you are targeting. After all, there are several possible sources of traffic to your website. So what can be done to ensure your SEO and social media work well together? 1. Optimize your hashtags Hashtags were first adopted by Twitter and were used to perform searches inside. However due to massive popularity, they have quickly been adopted by other social media platforms like Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest. It’s highly advisable to perform hashtag keyword research through websites like Hashtatit and discover what kind of keywords your target audience could be searching for or are embedding into their online posts. Essentially by intelligently optimizing your hashtags will build
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your awareness within a specific group of people and attract attention to your brand. 2. Embed social meta tags in your page templates Having social Meta tags within your websites code will automatically optimize your titles, descriptions, images and more information which is visible in social streams. This ensures that whenever content is being shared from any given page, it will automatically be optimized with whatever keywords you have already targeted on that page. 3. Optimize your Google properties (Google+, Google Places, YouTube, etc.) Google has done whatever could be done to improve their presence in Social Media. This is great for SEO, because as all these platforms feed directly back to Google and they become an amazing opportunity to improve your rank by building relevancy and authority
Ozal Ergen is the SEO Manager at iProspect MENA
in search engines. When you are building a Social Media strategy with SEO in mind, you have to make sure all Google entities are aligned with your SEO strategy. This can be done by building a content template which takes into consideration and aligns SEO keywords, (H1, H2, Title Tag, URL,), #tags, author link, descriptions and anchor text which will be embedded into Google entities and link back to your website. These are just some of the techniques you can apply to your own brand. But the truth is the list is much longer than this and you have to be active on all prominent Social Media platforms at all times. If your website has a blog, a good idea will be to automatically link your blog posts with all your Social Media accounts, so that every time you publish a new article it can be automatically shared with your social audience and keep the stream of posts active and consistent. 4. Reach out to bloggers when you devise a content marketing strategy You need to do the research and discover opportunities to spread new content. One of the many ways of doing this is to perform blogger outreach. Bloggers are like judges in a popularity contest. The more links and relevant content you have streaming back to your website and social media channels, the better it will be for your brand and ranking chances for your target keywords.n
TECHNOLOGY
GREAT APPS TO COME OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps fordwellers, Residents MENA We often reproach ourselves, us MENA notinbeing innovative enough Even when we do create, it is often adaptations of international versions. The story goes that a large part of our online entrepreneurial endeavor resembles a localization gold rush. We rarely innovate, if at all. We’re here to refute that claim by listing ten of our favorite apps that have come out of the region.
App Mahal
WebTeb
Mapture
Perhaps the app that best encapsulates this transformation is App Mahal. Not only is it produced locally by Palestinian entrepreneur Khaled Swilat but it’s also truly original. A social network for apps, App Mahal serves to communicate useful and rated apps among acquaintances. Its core value is adding the human element to app discovery. So rather than relying on broad download numbers to gauge popularity, its smarter algorithm looks at your friends and users in your vicinity to figure out what apps you could find handy. What’s more, it’s impeccably designed with beautiful Arabesque elements. It is exclusive to Android and completely free.
WebTeb recently launched a free comprehensive health mobile app for iOS. WebTeb’s online portal initially launched in Amman and Ramallah in early 2012 and was very well received in the Middle East, particularly in the GCC, gathering about 3 million unique monthly visitors. The app integrates WebTeb’s physician backed information (the TebChecker), a symptom checker that helps patients learn about their condition, a doctors’ directory that lists doctors according to the users’ location, industry leading indexes, and tests index, in addition to the only Arabic language drug interaction tool.
Mapture was born out of a heated political debate around the June 30, 2013 protests in Egypt. The cofounders, Bahaa Hashem, Zeyad Salloum, and Belal Eid, scrambled to find graphic evidence online of the incident, but realized that whatever they found couldn’t be verified. And so they came up with Mapture, an online mobile community where people anonymously share photos. Location is captured from the device’s GPS while the date and time are pulled from the web. This ensures the information cannot be altered. Fiddling around with the phone’s time and date setting will not affect the timestamp. All users remain anonymous. This rids photographers of any fear of reprisal. It also delivers content in its purest form. The app is available on the App Store for free.
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by Wael Nabbout | @FulMtlColumnist
Ymdi
Smart Document Scanner
Ymdi is a new iPhone app that helps residents in Saudi Arabia manage their shopping around prayer times. In the Kingdom, businesses must be closed five times a day for prayer, so Ymdi offers a number of features that helps users navigate through their day seamlessly. Primarily, the app locates your position to determine whether you can make it to a certain shop before closing. Additional features include venue recommendations based on Foursquare and easy one-click access to navigation apps. The app was developed by a Riyadh-based SAP consultant Ahmed Alawaji and programmer Sultan Alharbi. The app is free and available for all iOS devices.
As far as office productivity regional apps go, it doesn’t get any better than Smart Document Scanner. Built by Alexandriabased software development company Softxpert, the app boasts a formidable myriad of features aimed at managing any sort of document. It can scan, enhance, and convert documents to PDF. Optical character recognition (OCR) makes it possible to convert scans into editable text formats. It syncs and files notes, receipts, invoices, meeting minutes, contracts, bank statements, and whiteboards. All of that and more, and it’s free. Available for download on Google Play.
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA TaskSpotting
Yamsafer Express
Escape from Paradise
TaskSpotting is an inventive Fiverr meets marketing research solution. Operating in Dubai, the company seeks to tap into the world’s most mobile connected market and create a network of amateur marketing intel recruits for companies. Through the mobile app, any person can complete a mission—which typically involves a simple task like seeing if a product is in stock at his local supermarket, checking prices, or answering a few survey questions— in exchange for a small monetary compensation. The app is available for both iOS and Android.
The hotel booking website headquartered in Ramallah recently released a mobile booking app, Yamsafer Express. Through the app you can book a hotel room as late as 5 nights ahead of your stay with up to 70% price discount. Think of it as flash sales of hotel vacancies. The whole process can be done with just three clicks: search, book, and confirm. You can opt out of providing your credit card payment. The app can be found on iTunes and Google Play.
A lot of games have come out this year from the Middle East, but we’re tipping our hat to Game Cooks’ Escape from Paradise. The game is an adventure platform that follows a bouncy ball-like protagonist trying to make his way out of paradise. Gameplay is nothing out of the ordinary; you avoid obstacles and collect points within a time limit. Graphics, however, is where the game stands out among the crowd. With spectacularly crisp high definition backgrounds and silky smooth scrolling and movement, the Beirut-based game studio has taken design and, more importantly, execution the extra mile. The game is available for free on Android, iOS, and Facebook. There are in-game purchases for upgrades.
1:0 واحد صفر
Applixya iApproval
If you’re looking for a good football live score application, you are treated to a myriad of apps to pick from. If you’re looking for one that takes the experience to the next level and offers a platform for fans to engage with one another, then look no further than ( 1:0 )واحد صفرcreated by talented Saudi developers. In addition to tracking scores, the app lets users compete by predicting the outcome of the game, collecting points, and featuring the results on a leaderboard. After the game is done, users can share views and analysis of the result. It includes all major European clubs, national competitions, and the world cup, in addition to footballing competitions from the KSA and the UAE. The app is free and available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. 16
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iApproval is a Jordanian enterprise mobile technology solutions and platforms provider. Its iApproval iPad app is an innovative application that provides an intuitive approach for corporate executives to review and approve their correspondence on the go. Users can embed markup notes, comments, recipient list and action instructions. The supporting material can be anything from office documents to videos and audio material. Users can also sign documents using a specially designed pen or directly with their fingers. The app allows for sending and receiving of text messages. It’s available for iPad free of charge.
TECHNOLOGY
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION MAXIMIZE YOUR A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
PRODUCTIVITY
Our 5 Favorite Tools for Better Efficiency at Work by Romeo Chalfoun | @RomeoChl
After much trial and error, we bring you a list of our favorite tools that have helped us at ArabNet become more productive, efficient, and ergo happier.
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Asana
Asana isn’t at all new, but it’s come a long way since it was first released back in 2011. It’s a great tool to organize and follow up on personal as well as business tasks. The free version allows you to organize tasks involving teams of up to 15 people. It has an interactive HTML5 interface with smooth onscreen movement and has several in-app integrations that makes task management a breeze. It does, however, have a couple of downsides: it can only be used when you are online, and it is probably not the best choice for people working on graphics-related projects. It also has no chat options. Moreover, while it allows you to organize tasks by date, it does not support scheduling tasks for specific times during the day. So depending on your needs, this web and mobile app may be a great addition to your business operation management. It’s one of our personal favorites at ArabNet.
Rapportive
Rapportive brings contextual information to email. It is a browser extension that works in Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Mailplane. When reading a Gmail message in your inbox, you can hover the cursor over a certain email address, and Rapportive will display the person’s social media profile, namely LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google accounts. Retrieving your contacts’ full name, profession, company, and even their profile picture
has never been easier. You can also connect with them on LinkedIn directly from Rapportive. It doesn’t end here: You can also see your contacts’ recent tweets in the Gmail inbox, and follow, reply, and retweet on Rapportive’s Twitter box. And it only takes a click to end up on any of their social media profiles displayed. Rapportive isn’t the newest kid in the block, but if you use Gmail consistently, you’ll surely come to appreciate this plugin.
Boomerang for Gmail
I can’t recount the number of times I have received an email, read it, and then got so busy that I forgot all about it. I’m sure anyone reading this piece could relate to my experience. Enter Boomerang. Boomerang can schedule emails you send and bounce ingoing emails back to the top of your inbox at a time when you are less busy and can give the email the attention it needs. It also allows you to schedule the time a certain email goes out of your outbox. You can always find messages you postponed and edit them. Perhaps its only downside is that it only works with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Boomerang for Gmail runs a “freemium model,” but the free version is both powerful and practical and allows up to 10 (+5 bonus) scheduled emails. The paid version comes with a mobile app as well as other benefits.
Streak for Gmail
Streak is a CRM-app created for integration with Gmail. We think it’s the best tool out there to handle customer processes via email. It helps you organize your inbox into 8 default business processes called “pipelines.” Some of the standard pipelines available are the Sales/CRM pipeline and the Journalism pipeline. Streak can help you break down the linear process of sales into manageable steps that you can share
with the rest of the team. You can also group emails together and move them from one “step” to the other. That’s what we really like about Streak: it’s very fluid. And it’s loaded with helpful tools such as the “send later” option that saves scheduled emails in your draft folder, similarly to Boomerang. However, if you are working with processes that cruise through all the steps of the pipeline in one day, then Streak might seem too cumbersome to use.
Any.Do
With the abundance of to-do apps in the Android and Apple store, you would probably find it easier to shop for clothes than to shop for the best task manager app. After several “tryouts,” we chose Any. Do as our champion. It is a sharp and good-looking Android and iOS to-do list app that also comes with a Chrome extension to sync the data on your mobile devices with your web browser. What we like most about the app is that it can integrate with your Gmail, and spot tasks directly from your emails, such as “follow up with Mike” or “send the revised document to John,” allowing you to schedule tasks with less than two clicks. It can handle recurring tasks, although these options are somehow limited, and timed and location-based reminders. The Android version also allows you to add attachments to your tasks, streamlining your daily tasks even further. n
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OP-ED
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN BANKING Two Ways Digital Is Transforming Retail Banking By David Horton | @DavidMashreq
T
oday the banking industry is buzzing with innovations that are driving the industry into the digital age. The evolution of mobile banking, payments, mCommerce and the branch, is pushing banks to reinvent themselves and think about how they can better connect with an increasingly tech savvy customer. In the midst of all the disruptive turmoil faced by banks is the impressive growth of video consumption over the web. Most bankers are still not aware that YouTube now ranks second, only after Google, when it comes to searching the internet. This little known fact is important because it indicates the mindset of consumers nowadays, and illustrates that people want to ‘see and hear’ about products and services before they make the decision to acquire them. Given the ignorance of this fact, it is therefore not surprising to see how most banks are not exploiting this medium to differentiate themselves in such a competitive industry. In this article, I will talk about two key areas of ‘video’ that banks must focus on if they are to remain relevant in an ever connected world.
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Video Chat for Engaging with Existing Customers The branch has long been the cornerstone of the retail distribution model, and continues to be a prominent factor in the operating costs of most banks. It is no surprise that banks often debate the need for the branch and the role it will play in the future. Branches are currently going through a digital shakeup;
we often hear of new branch designs and interactive technologies prospective customers. It is a well-documented fact that video that are helping to reinforce the customer relationship and move increases interest and engagement with consumers by more than away from transactional services. As consumers have adopted 20X that of traditional text and images on websites, and is now internet and mobile banking to execute their everyday banking accessed on smartphones more than any other content on the net. needs, they have needed the branch less and less (on average, once A quick look at the rise of YouTubers who provide video-based or twice a year!), and it is no surprise that many banks are actively advice gives valuable insight into the potential for banks. looking to rightsize their branch network. With less direct Modern day celebrities like PewdiePie have captured contact with their customers, banks are faced with the challenge enormous subscriber bases on YouTube, and now consistently of maintaining the ‘relationship’ with the customer and not outperform viewing numbers from traditional providers like become commoditized. CNN. The loyalty that these celebrities have attained from their The problem is further exacerbated when you consider that subscriber base reiterates the power of trust in what they say and the diversity and nature of visits to the branch mean that banks the importance of advocacy on social media. are struggling to provide skilled staff who are able to deal with Many banks today still dedicate very little of their marketing such a broad range of advisory services. For instance, a branch budget to digital channels, and even less on video content staff member may be very capable of helping a customer with an production. Historically, the challenge of video content has been account enquiry, or applying for a personal loan, but will typically the cost associated with its production, and the time and effort not have the knowledge to give advice on investments, or provide required to develop professional grade videos. This industry a detailed understanding of a whole life insurance plan. It is when challenge is fast becoming another disrupted market, and we such specialist advice is needed that video comes into its own, and are at the early stages of seeing video production become very allows the branch to service a customer through personal video affordable. New websites like Wooshii and MakeWebVideo are chat with a qualified advisor. already offering solutions to businesses for producing affordable, Although video conferencing is widely available to the high quality video content. The result over the next few years general public, and most are familiar will be that banks can now begin to with the likes of services such as produce video product ands catalogues Skype or FaceTime, it is still slow in which can be used on their websites, being adopted by banks as a means on smartphones and tablets, and “If you are a bank and you’re not to centralizeg skilled resources across in their digital branches to better at least experimenting with a a wide geographic branch network. communicate with consumers. video chat service channel, you The services of the ITM (Interactive Furthermore, the use of simple Teller Machine) and dedicated Video video content can be used to aid in should be.” Chat booths in branches should be the migration to digital channels for slowly making their way into everyday common transaction services. Banks banking near you. can begin to build a ‘Video FAQ’ that Banks like Mashreq, have made explains how you might pay your bills video chat booths available in their branches, and in particular online, or how to transfer money to your friends via Mobile P2P the ATM area outside of the branch in a bid to make themselves through Facebook. available to customers 24/7. Not content with just making this The possibilities for video-based marketing content are service available at a physical branch location, Mashreq has even numerous. When banks begin to realize the advantage it can play gone so far as to enable video chat facilities through its online in making a consumer choose Bank A over Bank B, it will get the banking website so that customers have the service from the importance it needs. Whilst such a statement will almost certainly comfort of their own home. Much like the MAYDAY button have its skeptics amongst banking traditionalists, I would ask launched by Amazon, the ability to video chat with the bank is you to consider that if you don’t think video is important to transforming the ‘face to face’ engagement that the bank offers its your business now, it is the equivalent of saying in 2004 that the customers. The result: customers who are not happy to frequently internet isn’t important to banking.n visit the branch still feel engaged and valued by the bank, and take comfort in knowing that a voice (and a face too) is always available when they need it. Elsewhere, we see the approach taken one step further. The evolution of video-based advice has taken shape in banks like ASB bank, who offer video chat facilities through their Virtual Branch available on their Facebook site. The long and short of it is that if you are a bank and you’re not at least experimenting with a David Horton is a C-suite executive who leads innovation video chat service channel, you should be. and delivers digital transformation of new and traditional businesses. He is currently the Chief Transformation Officer Video Chat for Engaging with Prospective Customers at Mashreq bank. This was a new role created in the bank in So whilst video chat can help banks in engaging and servicing 2012 to focus on ideation, execution and migration of a digital existing customers, we now turn to how it can help with business model.
November 2014 THE QUARTELY
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USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
FOOD FIGHT Competition in Online Food Ordering Heats Up by Ghassan Zakaria | @ghassanzakaria
O
nline food ordering/delivery has been a reality around the world for quite a while now. There are countless local, regional and global platforms for the service. Like many other services and products, online food ordering had found its way to our region. The simple
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additional infrastructure the service needs created an abundance in platforms. HelloFood, for instance, facilitates online food ordering in over 40 countries, including four countries in the MENA region—KSA, Qatar, Jordan, and Lebanon. In KSA, there are several local
platforms, including HungerStation, with over 600 restaurants; Easy2Eat; and WJBTY, which delivers “homemade” meals. However, there seems to be more regional platforms. The list includes Talabt.com, operating in the GCC;
Otlob.com, operating in Egypt and KSA; Hunger Quenchers, operating in India and the GCC; and FoodOnClick, operating in UAE, KSA, Lebanon, Oman and Qatar; to name a few. Factors of Success Food ordering might seem like the simplest process in the world; you order food, and it gets delivered. That is, simply, not true. In a world where you can eat Chinese food in New York and Turkish food in Sweden, the service has gone a long way in sophistication, with huge steps still ahead. Naturally, online food ordering should make things easier for both customers and restaurants. But that means more work on the ordering platform end to make it so. It all comes down to “passionate, innovative developers and salesmen,” according to Ebrahim Al Jassim, CEO at the Saudi local platform HungerStation. Beschir Hussain, Managing Director Middle East at the global platform HelloFood, identifies the key success factor as having “marketplace efficiency.” Foodonclick, the regional platform, agrees. It takes “a capable sales team and marketing know-how and budget to attract both [customers and restaurants]. This is a difficult task to master,” said Kivanc Arkac, CEO at Foodonclick. In other words, the level of success relies on how well you provide the basics: customer service, sales and marketing. The thing is, though, that all major online food ordering platforms are doing that. They all have beautifully designed websites where users create accounts quickly and customize their orders; apps for iOS and Android. Some even have apps for BlackBerry and Windows Phone and provide the service in major cities and areas. They use social media to “listen to our customer’s voice [and] reflect our brand’s image and to attend to our user’s concerns and suggestions in our conversational tone,” according to Arkac. The Competition Having many platforms with the same business model poses important questions: How do they compete? What would be a company’s competitive edge over another? Can the market accommodate all those platforms, one way
or the other? Or is it more complicated than that? “At first glance, people often make the mistaken assumption that our business only takes a fancy website with a list of restaurants to succeed,” said Arkac. “In reality, success hinges on our ability to provide a smooth customer experience while generating a sufficient quantity of orders for our partner restaurants.” Al Jassim regards their “user-friendly app and devoted customer service team” as the strongest factor in their position in the market. He thinks that being the only Saudi CEO in the local market is irrelevant. “This is not a matter of nationality; it is a matter of passion,” he said. Apparently, it’s all in the details! Factors like the number of partner restaurants, responsiveness of websites and apps, diversity of cuisines, etc. seem to be the main elements of competition. When it comes to local markets, it does not necessarily mean that bigger platforms are stronger. Foodonclick, for instance, has partnerships with over 2,000 restaurants, overall; while HungerStation is limited to 600, so far. But, on the other hand, Foodonclick operates in two Saudi cities—Riyadh and Jeddah—only, while HungerStation provides the service to 18 Saudi cities! HelloFood covers 9 cities and Otlob.com covers 5. That could lead us to say that HungerStation is the leader of the KSA market. But that doesn’t mean that local platforms are always stronger, because
According to Hunger Station, the estimated online food delivery market in KSA is not less than 10M orders. The total GCC market could reach 18M-25M orders a year. According to HelloFood, the food delivery and take-away market in KSA is around $1.6B of which online food delivery makes approximately 0.3% or $5.1M. By 2020 it is expected to grow 41 times.
they are focused on the local market; sometimes, a global platform gains lots of credibility, just for being global. While Beschir Hussain sees HelloFood’s competitive edge in being “the most global company, present in nearly 50 countries;” he raises a very interesting point: “Our main competition is phone ordering. I do believe that online ordering will replace phone ordering to a great extent in the future.” Ordering food by phone is, indeed, still the dominant method in our region, and KSA is not an exception. Perhaps that’s the reason why we don’t see ‘wars’ among platforms, and it probably is the reason that none of the executives of these platforms is worried about the decision of Zomato—the vast restaurant reviewing platform—to enter the market as an online food ordering platform as well. The market of online food ordering is huge, and it seems to have room for each and every sort of platform in the next year or two. The competitors in the race are still warming up. That is probably why we haven’t seen any remarkable innovation, like we saw in other sectors, such as wearables for example. But that will not be the case for long. The growth of every web sector in our region is astoundingly rapid. We’ve seen many services/products providers that could not keep up with the market, because the speed of the increase in demand was unpredictable. Participants in this race should seek a head-start that would prove very useful in the near future. Commercial operations, such as acquisitions and mergers, expansion of partnerships and areas of service, enhancing customer service and sales, and constant updates to apps and websites would definitely be useful to all parties involved—restaurants, customers and platforms. But the key to any competitive advantage, as the history of business tells us, has always been innovation. A funny lady in New Jersey once tweeted, “I won’t be impressed with technology until I can download food.” Who knows? With 3D printing, that doesn’t seem so farfetched. Food downloading or not, one fact remains true: those who innovate will always be at the top of any market. Online food ordering is no exception!.n
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USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION
THE IMPACT OF MOBILE ON RETAIL A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
How Mobile Usage in Stores Influences Purchase Decisions by Wael Nabbout | @FulMtlColumnist
O
n Device Research, a mobile market research company, recently released a report on how mobile influences in-store shopping behavior for shoppers in the Middle East. The survey was conducted
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in September 2014 with a representative sample of 1500 mobile users in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. In Egypt, 70% of the respondents were using feature phones. Egypt also has
lower smartphone adoption rates, data speeds and income levels than the other two countries, but its smartphone users share similar behavior to those in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Research Report
Q. Have you ever stopped a purchase in store as a result of using your mobile phone?
Brick-and-Mortar Shopping in KSA, UAE, and Egypt The report describes Saudi Arabia and UAE “as places where shopping is a national sport.” In fact, some of the world’s largest shopping malls are found there. The Dubai Mall for instance, the world’s largest shopping mall at 1.12 million square meters and housing 1200 stores, attracted over 65 million shoppers in 2012—that’s more than visited New York that same year. Egypt in particular has been catching up to the other two countries. Traditionally associated with market stalls and small local shops, it has attracted lately big brands such as Marks & Spencer, Ikea, and Zara and houses shopping centers including the 882 thousand square foot Mall of Arabia. Phones versus Tablets 40% of the respondents went online on their phone in the last 12 months. Cheaper handsets and data plans combined with growing network coverage are influencing mobile internet penetration, with almost 60% of respondents reporting that they started using mobile internet during the last 2 years. Meanwhile, tablet ownership is on the rise. While all respondents said that they have an internet connected phone, a high ownership of tablets, particularly in Egypt, “was a real surprise!” Seeking Assurance Is the Most Popular Shopping-Related Mobile Activity Almost 90% of mobile internet users in Saudi Arabia and the UAE have used their phone in stores to check prices and product reviews or ask friends for advice. That rate drops to 60% in Egypt. This drop is due to the high rate of feature phones in the country. Among the smartphone users in Egypt, this figure rises to 86%, bringing it in line with the numbers in the other two countries. According to the study, using the phone to ask friends or family for advice by sending them a photo of the product or calling them is the most popular shopping-related activity at 35%. In Egypt, only 20% of feature phone owners do this. Among the smartphone users, the figure increases to 43%, which is again in
YES
NO
26% 74%
Egypt
10%
90% Nader Kobeissi, MD MENA at On Device Research
line with the figures from Saudi Arabia (36%) and UAE (44%). Other activities include checking prices and reviews, as well as nonshopping related activities, like entertainment (57%), which is broken down into playing games (28%), taking photos (24%), and visiting social networks (22%). These numbers show people use mobile for entertainment purposes more than for direct shopping-related activities. Mobile Prevents and Shifts Purchases Using mobile for shopping-related activities has a significant impact on purchase decision: 90% of shoppers in Saudi Arabia, 88% in UAE, and 74% in Egypt have stopped a purchase as a result of using their phone to assess their shopping decision. 33% said they found a better price online, 18% found a better product and 16% followed a trusted friend’s opinion and stopped the purchase. This has huge implications for retailers and advertisers. Price comparison and product reviews are right in the consumers’ pockets, which makes it impossible for brands to hide product flaws or price unfairly. On the other hand, this presents new opportunities for
Saudi Arabia
12%
88%
UAE Source: On Device Research, September 2014 Countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, N=1208
advertisers who can reach out to people in real time while they are in the store. Where Can Brands Reach Shoppers on Mobile? Non-shopping activities done while in shopping centers present a great opportunity for retailers. Nearly onethird of respondents plays a game while
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USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION
in store. This means that advertising in the right games could be a winning formula using various technologies such as like beacons, geo-fencing and real-time bidding platforms. The report recommends App Annie for such purposes. It provides app ranking data and high quality mobile analytics, and “tracks the movers and shakers (and money makers) in the app ecosystem” according to the report. Chat apps are exceptionally popular on mobile. One obvious hindrance is that most chat apps do not offer traditional advertising solutions. This doesn’t mean that brands shouldn’t use them to engage fans and offer deals and discounts. The most popular apps are WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, followed by Skype and Viber. “Anyone playing games, using social
networks, reading news or watching video
Egypt
clips while in thefor store Residents can be targeted A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps in MENA Internet penetration with timely and relevant offers through mobile ad networks,” says Nader Kobeissi, MD MENA at On Device Research. The two most significant platforms that brans should consider for reaching shoppers is Facebook and YouTube. Retailers and brands should also look for advertising opportunities with local players like Souq.com and Dubizzle in UAE. On a final note, Nader Kobeissi told ArabNet: “We are very happy to see that brands in the region realize that their consumers spend more and more time on their smartphones and other mobile devices and are doing all they can to better understand this medium to strengthen the consumer’s engagement and relationship with their brands.”n
Mobile penetration Smartphone penetration
25% 120% 23%
Saudi Arabia Internet penetration Mobile penetration Smartphone penetration
60% 176% 76%
United Arab Emirates Internet penetration Mobile penetration Smartphone penetration
71% 167% 75%
Q. Which of the following devices do you have at home that are connected to the internet? Egypt
50%
Saudi Arabia
UAE
Average
45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%
Tablet
Laptop computer
Desktop computer
Gaming console
EBook reader
Source: On Device Research, September 2014 Countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, N=1500
Q. Have you used your phone when shopping in store in the past 3 months? 35%
Egypt
Saudi Arabia
UAE
30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%
Check prices
Call a friend/ family for advice
Send a photo of product to friend/ family
Check product reviews
Fill time at the checkout
Show shop assistant the item you're looking for
Check opening times
Source: On Device Research, September 2014 Countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, N=1500
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Research Report
Q. Have you used your phone in store for non-shopping related activities? 35%
Egypt
Saudi Arabia
UAE
30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Played a game
Taken photos
Used social networks
Called friends/ family
Read news
Watched video clips
Sent emails
Sent instant messages
Q. Have you ever stopped a purchase in store as a result of using your mobile phone? 40%
Egypt
35%
Saudi Arabia
UAE
30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%
Found a better price
Found a better product online
Someone I asked for advice didn't like the item
Saw a negative review
Bought a similar item online
Couldn't find info about product online
Q. Which of the following services do you use regularly on your phone (at least once a week)? 70%
Egypt
Saudi Arabia
UAE
60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
Youtube
Google+
Souq
Wikipedia
Dubizzle
About On Device Research: It was founded in 2009. It uses proprietary technology to recruit a large base of profiled global respondents using mobile internet to gain access to consumer opinions at any time and place. The company has delivered over 20 million mobile surveys in 74 countries.
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WHY BRICK-AND-MORTAR RETAILERS A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA SHOULD INVEST IN TECH
M
any of the local brick-and-mortar retailers are grappling with digital technology as they try to remain relevant in an ever-increasing competitive market. GS (Grand Stores) acknowledged the importance of technology and has taken the first steps to embed it in its retail operations. Just recently, GS has released its new iOS and Android application on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. ArabNet sat with Jamil Rayess, General Manager at GS, to learn more about the app and how it fits with the overall strategy of GS. What can you tell us about GS’s digital strategy? Our digital strategy consists of many different aspects. For example, maintaining a strong presence on a variety of social media platforms allows us to listen to our fans’ comments and feedback while also keeping them informed on the latest GS news. We’re strong advocates of harnessing the power of new technologies, as they are a great way of strengthening the link between GS and our customers. Can you tell us more about the features of the app? We launched the app with the aim of making it easier and more convenient for our customers to check the latest collections present at GS Stores, benefit from the latest activities and promotions, access our GS magazine, follow their reward points, and get the location of all our GS Stores, in addition to many other exciting features. For starters, the “Now in Stores” section displays selections that provide an overview of our collections. Users can also check the newest items from their favorite clothing lines and browse our collections per brand in the “Brands” section. These two sections are updated on a daily basis in order to keep our customers up to date. Another interesting feature is the “Rewards Program”, where users simply log in using their credentials to check their HST Co. Rewards Card information
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“The key to success is flexibility and a real desire to embrace change.” Jamil Rayess, General Manager at GS
and points balance online. They can also use their phones to scan their purchase barcode and add points without having to actually use the card. GS is one of the first brands in Lebanon to incorporate such an important feature. Do you see the retail industry being disrupted in the next few years due to technology? I don’t see the retail industry being disrupted at all. On the contrary, GS believes that technology is a positive force in the retail industry as it opens the door to a wealth of new purchase possibilities while also strengthening the bond between consumers and the brand. If anything, technology facilitates and enhances consumers’ shopping experience, which can only be good news for the retail industry. What are some of the key challenges that you face as a retailer trying to build a solid and sustainable online strategy? The online world is constantly evolving, so one of our biggest challenges is staying on top of those changes and adjusting our strategy accordingly. Some online platforms may fall while new ones emerge; that’s why the key to success is flexibility and a real desire to embrace change. What in your opinion are the challenges that are slowing down the regional
retailers’ shift to online? As we have seen during the last couple of years, customers need time to adjust to new trends. That’s why brands often need to be patient and realize that a major change such as e-shopping requires time to instigate. How are you leveraging online platforms? We believe that the key is to avoid focusing on a specific online platform at the expense of other ones. It’s all well and good to have an active Facebook page that fosters engagement, but you are depriving yourself of the many benefits that other mediums provide. For example, some users love to browse Instagram instead of Facebook, since it’s a purely visual medium. That’s why we try to maintain a strong presence across a variety of social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. What are your future plans? Moving forward, it is a question of improving what has already been established while staying on the lookout for new channels to embrace and new ways to enhance our customers’ retail experience. We’re constantly releasing updates to the app and we’ve already reached version 1.2. We’re also working on establishing a successful e-shopping platform.n
E-COMMERCE TRENDS
BUSINESS TRENDS
LARGEST MARKETS
% BY DESTINATION COUNTRY, 2013
MENA REGION VS.THE WORLD. 2012, 2013, MENA VS. INTERNATIONAL, % SHIPMENTS WITHIN MENA HAVE SEEN 100% GROWTH FROM 2012 TO 2013 MENA
INTERNATIONAL
100% INTERNATIONAL ECOMMERCE IS MORE MATURE
20%
INTERNATIONAL SHIPMENTS HAVE SEEN 20% GROWTH FROM 2012 TO 2013.
MENA THE ECOMMERCE MARKETPLACE IS STILL FAIRLY UNDERDEVELOPED AND THE AMOUNT OF REGIONAL ONLINE RETAILERS IS STILL LIMITED
SAUDI ARABIA
UAE
EGYPT
38%
28%
10%
WHAT ARE PEOPLE BUYING (SNS)
BOOKS
ENTE RTAINMENT
ELECTRONICS
APPAREL
APPAREL
SHOES
BEAUTY SUPPLIES
BOOKS/BAGS
PAYMENTS
COD VS. CREDIT CARD PAYMENT 2012, 2013, %
CASH ON DELIVERY (COD)
THE AVERAGE VALUE OF GOODS PURCHASED IN THE MENA WAS $110 IN 2013 (This figure has stayed consistent over the last 3 years)
THE AVERAGE VALUE OF GOODS PURCHASED INTERNATIONALLY IS $75 (The figure has dropped compared to last year)
2012 2013
CARD
71% 29% 74% 26%
THE MENA ECOMMERCE MARKET IS A COD ONE! THE FUTURE? MORE OF THE SAME WITH AN INTERNATIONAL TWIST
SAUDI BUYERS
PAYMENTS
2012, 2012, 2013
WHY SAUDI CUSTOMERS PREFER CASH? MENA SHIPMENTS TO KSA:
70%
35% NO CARD
TO MAJOR CITIES
18% NO TRUST IN ONLINE PAYMENTS
INTERNATIONAL SHIPMENTS TO KSA:
90%
25% CASH EASIER 4% OTHERS 18% PREFERS CASH
TO MAJOR CITIES
RETURNS
RETURNS BY PAYMENT TYPE
UNDELIVERABLE RETURNS 2011, 2012, 2013, %
2011
2012
2013
17% 20% 18% TOP REASONS:
CUSTOMERS REFUSED THE PACKAGES
CUSTOMERS ARE UNREACHABLE
2012 2013
CASH ON DELIVERY (COD)
CARD
24% 21%
7% 7%
AVERAGE # OF DELIVERY ATTEMPTS, 2013, %
CASH ON DELIVERY (COD)
CARD
1.88
1
AVERAGE NUMBER OF DELIVERY ATTEMPTS
AVERAGE NUMBER OF DELIVERIES
BUSINESS
USEFUL SMART GOVERNMENT APPS FOR INITIATIVES TRANSPORTATION
citizens’ expectations and the actual level of government performance around the world, engaging citizens in government decision-making has proven to be effective and efficient in designing government policies and services that meet or at least come close to these high expectations. There is no better and more fitting example than #UAEBrainStormingSession, the nationwide brainstorming session, which was launched by a tweet sent by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. A post on his Facebook page in December 2013 invited “all of UAE society to think collectively of creative solutions” to “find new ideas for health and education”. Within a few days, more than 82,000 ideas and suggestions had been submitted by citizens via social media and other electronic means and actual government decisions and policies were announced based on them.
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA How to Avoid the Mistakes of the 2000s by Ibrahim Elbabawi | @iBadawi
N
ot too long ago, many headlines with the word “smart” flooded the news. One story was how the Saudi authorities planned to transform the city of Arafat into a “smart city,” which was published on our (01government.com) portal at the relevant time in the year’s hajj season. Elsewhere around the world, headlines with “smart” were for stories about the Dubai Police launching smart applications for Google Glass, the Dubai Municipality using drones to carry out aerial surveys, and India’s government announcing ambitious plans to launch 100 (yes, you read it right!) smart cities, amongst other countless stories from London, San Francisco, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town. As a consequence, every time I come across a new smart initiative, the following question pops into my mind: How can we avoid repeating the mistakes of the “e” era and maximize the success of these smart initiatives? I’d love to spark a discussion with you by presenting the following four recommendations that cover some of the technology and policy issues related to any typical smart initiative: 1. It’s not only about the technology! It’s true that technology is the key enabler for all these initiatives, but it may well be very risky to focus on technology alone and overlook other factors such as the ones related to the organizational structure, human capital, culture and citizen trust, and operation processes. The case of the Obamacare website and the National Health Service (NHS) information technology program in the UK are only examples, the latter was described by a Member of the Parliament and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) as “one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos in the history of the public sector.” Such failures have taught us to put smart projects in context within the wider continuous transformation of government
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Ibrahim ElBadawi is the Founder of Exantium and 01 Government. He was the Former Strategy Advisor for Dubai Smart Government and UAE mGovernment and society, and to consider many non-technological issues. As the World Economic Forum puts it: “Technology on its own is not enough to build smart, modern governments.” Edmonton city in Alberta, Canada is a very good example of this, as it uses technology as an enabler for its six strategic plans contained in its City Vision 2040 effort to design and achieve the city’s long-term economic strategy. We shouldn’t forget that Arab societies vary greatly in their political and socio-economic situations. The illiteracy rate, for example, reaches 40% in some of these societies. 2. Engage the citizens: More than 50% of our population is under 25. Despite unemployment and other related issues, these young people are highly energetic, and a significant percentage of them are well educated and innovative by worldclass standards. Today’s smart initiatives should be seen by our government and society leaders as opportunities to engage the young citizens and spark their innovative capabilities. Openness and collaboration are among the key features of today’s digital world. As we witness an increasing gap between
3. Data! Data! Data! Neelie Kroes, VicePresident of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, has labelled data as “the new oil for our economy” when commenting on an estimation that data could stimulate a market worth 70 billion Euros a year. Sharing government data with the public can – in addition to the economic value – enable citizen engagement (as mentioned in the point above) and help governments tap into the innovative capabilities of its citizens through collaboration to find solutions to various challenges. Solutions can emerge as smart applications or data-driven policy recommendations. The smart London Plan is an excellent example of this, where “open data” is considered a key pillar of the plan. 4. Invest in Research: Our gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD) as a percentage of GDP is much lower than the world average and varies from 0.1% to 1.0% of GDP, whereas advanced countries spend over 2.5% of their GDP on R&D. Most of the giant technology companies that operate in our region (e.g. Google and Facebook), dedicate this regional presence to sales, not R&D. This situation has to change and today we have an excellent opportunity to do so.n
DIGITAL MEDIA
THE BUSINESS OF ONLINE VIDEO Beyond the One-Hit Viral by Lara Chaaya | @ChaayaLara
T
wo years ago, Saudi Arabia captured the headlines of technology news when Google revealed that the Kingdom ranked first globally in YouTube views per capita. The Middle East as a whole, with its 285 million video views per day, came second only to the United States. Over 90 million views are from KSA alone. People in most countries in the region have access to various forms of entertainment. However, that is not the
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case in Saudi Arabia, where theatre and cinema are non-existing, and television shows are mostly not locally relevant and lack original content for youth. With the lack of competition to attract the young population’s attention, YouTube became particularly popular in the Kingdom, and high internet and mobile penetration significantly catalyzed online video consumption among Saudis. “They watch four to five hours of video online,” says
Kaswara Al Khatib, Chairman and CEO at UTURN Entertainment, a multichannel network (MCN). The demand is definitely there, and content creators jumped at the opportunity. It didn’t require much: a camera, a laptop, and access to YouTube. As a result, huge amounts of content was uploaded on the platform, mostly by amateurs. Initially, these videos received high numbers of views, but over the past
see more interesting shows; however, less frequently.” The Multi-Channel Network Boom The online video landscape worldwide slowly but steadily began to shift from a plethora of random pieces of content into a flourishing network of highlystructured valuable content. This shift coincided with YouTube’s changes in layout made in late 2012, which amplified subscriptions and viewer retention rates on channels, allowing YouTube creators to reach a wider audience and secure higher advertising revenue. In MENA, the local YouTube MCNs began to migrate into view with a strong, professional digital offering. “We wanted UTURN to have a business aspect, with structured, regular shows,” says Kaswara. “These shows have an intro, a logo, a name, and a channel. That was the
Multi-channel networks (MCNs) are entities that affiliate with multiple YouTube channels, often to offer assistance in areas such as product, programming, funding, cross-promotion, partner management, digital rights management, monetization/sales, and/ or audience development, in exchange for a percentage of the advertising revenue from the channel. http://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/ mcns.html
12 months, the number of new shows began to drop and viewership has become dispersed across many channels. The ‘novelty’ effect wore off, and users became picky about what they watch. “What happened is that YouTube got saturated with content, and a lot of this content isn’t necessarily of good quality,” says Malik Nejer, Animator at Lumink. “So, a lot of people who created this kind of content pulled out. Now, we are going to
Saudi Arabia Fact Box Median age: 25 years Internet penetration: 60% Mobile penetration: 176% Smartphone penetration: 76%
beginning of the online content pipe in Saudi Arabia.” Leading MCNs in the region engaged professional script writers, content creators, directors, cameramen, and social media teams to create quality content that tackled local issues in a format that appealed to a millennial demographic. People like Ali Al Kalthami, Malik Nejer, and Alaa Wardi raised the bar of local online video content and drove subscriptions to regional MCNs by the millions. “The market is still not mature, but it is regulated, and it is going to continue to grow,” says Kaswara. “The numbers might appear like they are decreasing, but if you sum up viewership, subscriptions, and monthly consumption, you will notice the overall numbers are actually growing exponentially. [UTURN] started with around 2 million views per month. Today, we are at 25 million.” To reach a wider audience, UTURN
does not only publish its content on YouTube. It has a presence on all major social media platforms. Last year, it launched its iOS and Android app, and in March 2014, it announced a strategic partnership with Yahoo! Maktoob. According to UTURN, the total number of views across all platforms recently reached a whopping 755,737,457. Jordan-based Kharabeesh is also experiencing steady growth. “We used to have 21 million views a month,” says Firas Al Otaibi, Chief Business Development Officer at Kharabeesh. “This year we reached 43 million views per month.” Kharabeesh is currently developing its own mobile application and provides licensing for TVs to broadcast selective pieces of its content. C3 Films, who is experiencing 100% growth in viewership on its Telfaz11 channel according to its Business Developer Abulaziz Al Shalan, is shifting from solely focusing on entertainment comedy shows to other areas, namely music. “We became an MCN to go into different content areas, not just entertainment,” says Abulaziz. C3 Films will be looking more into premium models and has just soft launched Indiemaj, a network for musicians that has a different model than Telfaz. “Music is going to be big from 2015 to 2017,” states Abdulaziz. “Music has no boundaries. If you are not a Saudi, you might not understand something from a Saudi comedy show, but music doesn’t have this limitation as everyone can relate to it.” Can MCNs Keep Up? As the audience becomes increasingly selective, MCNs face a variety of challenges. Finding and attracting the talent needed to drive traffic is not an easy task. Moreover, the nature of many incumbent MCNs limits their ability to incur high production costs. “We are not a TV, and we are bound by the economics of YouTube,” says Firas. When MCNs initially launched, their primary cost was centered on content creation as a platform for technology-toscale and entry-level monetization. “We had to be smart as to how we monetize, using the advertising knowledge that we have,” says Kaswara. When YouTube
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USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION changed its policies and allowed channels to monetize, MCNs had to convince advertisers to move online so that their business models continue to make economic sense. Thus began the on-going debate of branded content versus TVCs (television commercials). “After three years, brands now believe that investing in online content is better,” says Abdulaziz. In fact, it all goes down to measuring ROI. Abdulaziz argues that a single TVC might cost $3M, but if brands channeled those $3M online, they could create tremendous amounts of content for a very high ROI. “Some brands are still reluctant to go online. They think online is weak. Eventually, they will, because the market is changing. But the longer it takes them to realize this, the bigger their loss,” states Abdulaziz. All major players in online video agree that online ad spending in the region is increasing, yet it is still minimal compared to other places in the world. “It is still not sufficient for sustaining the business,” claims Firas. As MCNs grow in size and become more mature, their responsibilities expand: they get bigger ambitions and face increasing pressures from investors as well as brands who want more than the basic pre-roll and product placement models. They also strive to gain direct access to their own audience. “Are we making a lot of money now? No,” acknowledges Kaswara. “But we are betting on the content we have online and the number of people watching them to make us more money in the future.” According to Ziad Khammar, Strategy and Development Director at DMS, the online video advertising market is growing now that advertisers are discovering that video advertising is much more than just YouTube videos. “They are allocating higher budgets to safe, original content-driven video environments like Shahid.net and OLN.tv,” says Ziad. This raises the question whether brands prefer traditional TV content online or are they willing to take a risk of newer videos specifically developed for the web.
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
What Makes Content ‘Good’ To make more money, MCNs need to produce content that appeals to a highly selective audience. But here’s the dilemma: if people only want to watch
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Abdelaziz Al Shalan, Business Developer at C3 Films/Telfaz11
Malik Nejer, Animator at Lumink
OVERVIEW OF 3 LEADING MCNS IN THE REGION C3 Films/Telfaz11
Headquarters: KSA Number of views on network (based on YouTube): 16,112,067 Number of channels: 30 Most famous show: Al Temsa7
Kharabeesh
Headquarters: UAE Number of views on network (based on YouTube): 88,067,400 Number of channels: 35 Most famous shows: Kharabeesh Toons, N2O Comedy, 3ala Rasi
UTURN Headquarters: KSA Number of views on network (based on YouTube): 16,276,179 Number of channels: 44 Most famous show: EshElly
quality content, how come most of the content that goes viral is about cats? Just think of the ‘I Can Has Cheezburgr’ blog created in 2007. The website only publishes images of lolcats, yet it received 1.5M hits per day right around its release. “The way humans behave online is very interesting to me,” remarks Malik. “Quality is not synonymous with online video, that’s a fact.” It appears that people are tired from the mainstream and are looking for something more casual and that requires less of a commitment than watching, for instance, Game of Thrones.
According to Malik, what makes content good for someone going to YouTube is “if it’s viral or not, even if it doesn’t fit the criteria of an art academy graduate who considers it as not good.” The animator explains that for a video to go viral, it first has to be novel; second, it has to have some kind of music; and third, it has to be short. Ziad concurs with Malik’s three criteria, only he names them as “originality, high production values, and efficient delivery system (limited buffering, etc.).” Abdulaziz adds “relevancy” to the list. Novelty is definitely a criteria for
DIGITAL MEDIA
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
Carlos Tibi, Founder and CEO at ICFlix
‘good’ content that is more likely to be shared. According to Carlos Tibi, Founder and CEO at ICFlix, one of their most popular films on social media was HIV, originally produced by ICFlix. “It was something new and trending that people could relate to and wanted to discuss and share with their friends.” Kaswara joins his peers in advocating novelty as a driver of good content. “Viral videos are the ones that happen when you have something new and interesting, something that you definitely want to share because it’s amazing,” he says. The Ice Bucket Challenge is a good case in point. It was an unheard of trend that evoked challenge, sympathy, and a need to be part of a social wave. Another example is the Saudi First Kiss Parody produced by UTURN. It shows a hilarious video where 20 male strangers are grouped in twos and taught how to greet each other the Saudi way: by pressing the noses together. Published in March of this year, the video has reached over 1 million views to date. It is different, unique, and surprising—a recipe for shareable content. “The aim is to generate as many ‘strong’ emotions as one can within every video,” says Ziad. For this purpose, DMS recently worked with Real Eyes—a company which can measure emotions throughout a whole video via the users’ webcam and using a mix of 2D and 3D modelling. “Real Eyes highlighted feelings such as happiness, disgust, surprise and many more experienced by
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Kaswara Al Khatib, Chairman and CEO at UTURN Entertainment
Ziad Khammar, Strategy and Development Director at DMS
the user watching the video, providing feedback on how to improve branded content creation,” explains Ziad. “Science can now tell us exactly which moments create the emotions we want.” The Myth of the One-Hit Viral Video Many advertisers and content producers are trying to figure out how to create a one-hit viral video. However, most videos only go viral when brands spend huge amounts of money, launching them in the hopes that they will catch fire. “The dilemma here is that you get views, but your product lifecycle will be much shorter,” comments Abdulaziz. “We believe that instead of trying to go for a one-hit wonder, most brands will have greater success with a 'branded video content' strategy, where they create a string of 'shareable' content, under a content platform umbrella,” says Ziad.
Firas Al Otaibi, Chief Business Development Officer at Kharabeesh
He explains that through the creation of many 'shareable' videos, a brand can benefit from longer term campaigns, resulting in much deeper connections with attributable returns versus a high risk, short term hit, which may or may not work out. “A successful branded content platform doesn't only rely on ‘viral’ type content, but should also include other shareable content, such as a combination of both, news or recent type content, plus evergreen content, that doesn’t date and is ever lasting,” continues Ziad. To create “evergreen” content, not only should it be relevant to the culture, but it should also have great memorable characters, something that Telfaz11 masters. Take Al Temsa7 for example. It is a very consistent product that requires very low budgets, and even though it has been in the market for over two years, people still find it funny because they have built an emotional connection with it. Likewise, La Yekthar gained steady traction as the people got used to—and waited for—Fahad Al Butairi and his Harry Potter eyeglasses to appear on the screen. “We created a demand. We did not fill a demand,” says Abdulaziz. “It’s very tough. You need to be ahead in the market” instead of focusing on obvious market opportunities. Other examples include Ibrahim Saleh from the Broadcast Show, whose episodes attract millions of viewers, and Badr Saleh from EshElly, which has over 2 million subscribers and reached over 222 million views.n
DIGITAL MEDIA
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION TECHNOLOGY A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking MAYApps HAVE for Residents CHANGED in MENA But the Fundamentals of Great Advertising Haven’t by Lara Chaaya | @ChaayaLara
Nick Barron, CEO MENA MediaCom, talks about the current state of advertising in agencies. How can agencies create advertisement that people will remember the next day, knowing that the clients today have small budgets? Creative work that resonates with an audience or target group works because it’s based on a great insight not necessarily because it has a big budget. The advertising landscape is littered with poor as well as excellent expensive ads, just as it is with poor as well as excellent low budget ads, so the correlation between budget and success is not direct. Great insights power great Communications Strategic Planning that in turn leads to fantastic, sticky creative ideas. A great insight can come from anywhere, be it sourced from a cultural dynamic, category reality, product, brand, or consumer truth. Real insights are instantly recognizable to experienced strategists and are the core principle around which creative ideas are developed and executed. Of course, expensive technology can change the look of the creative and might well add to the message but it’s not the start point. What are the best practices for designing campaigns that engage customers across multiple platforms? I don’t think that consumers think of the world in channels of delivery. They look at the world as an experience and set of challenges. Great marketers and brands fit into their customers lives. As the number of communication channels increases and become real-time, the chances to miss your customer increases. So it’s the role of great media agencies to help clients make the right decisions. Insights—not just information—that help in the understanding of the consumer journey and the understanding of the medium as a message and as a vehicle have to be at the core of that process.
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Nick Barron, CEO MENA MediaCom
In your experience, what are the challenges facing the traditional agency in the Middle East? Economic and commercial factors aside, I believe we have a huge opportunity to set new standards and systems in the region. Rather than holding a mirror up to other countries and trying to translate or improve we need to be at the vanguard of the new How do these challenges compare with the challenges in other international markets? We have real growth opportunities here so our challenge is to make that growth successful not just dramatic. Larger, more mature markets have to manage minimal growth so inertia can be their biggest issue How are digital ad platforms changing the traditional structure of the agency? The relationships between publishers, agencies, and clients have always been
somewhat fluid in their nature. There is a debate that has been running in circles for several years now around how technology and automation will allow clients to potentially bypass their agency partners and rely on publisher data partnerships and even crowd sourced creative solutions to drive their communications forward. There are many counter arguments that need to be considered, especially for sophisticated marketeers. Fundamentally, agencies play a core role in defining communications strategies, are platform agnostic, and bring their client partners the benefit of a macro and micro understanding of overall communications sourced from horizontal, multi category experiences. This allows agencies to become the arbiters of channel and message performance without preference or favor to any specific channel, vehicle, or platform. In order for agencies to continue to thrive, they need to continue to evolve to not only meet the needs created by new technology, but also partner with key players, startups or idea merchants to ensure they are part of the community shaping these emerging ecosystems. By partnering and pioneering, agencies, technology providers, publishers (content producers), and clients can all benefit, and importantly so will consumers as their experiences of brands and communications become more relevant and more immersive. What do you think agencies should do to survive and thrive amidst these changes? Be courageous, be challenging, and listen. The answers are pout there, but sometimes we are too busy talking to hear. What is your favorite technology/ platform used today in media agencies? Video conferencing—nothing beat people talking to each other and working in teams.n
DIGITAL MEDIA
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA THE “NOW” MOMENT
How to Implement a Real-Time Marketing Strategy on Twitter by Naila Missous | @N_MissousKadry
“I
want to feel connected. I want to feel relevant. I want to feel like a participant.” These words were the foundation to Parminder Singh’s talk at the ArabNet Digital Summit in Dubai in June of this year. A former Google executive and now Twitter Managing Director for South East Asia, MENA, and India, Singh offered insightful advice into the platform that has become an indispensable part of the life of more than 3.7 million users in the Middle East alone. “Mediums like Twitter, which are live, public, and conversational, allow brands to be in the moment now,” says Singh. “Its real-time and it has no concept of boundaries.” Here we have summarized the 5 key elements courtesy of Parminder Singh that make up a solid framework on how to implement a real-time marketing strategy on Twitter and be “in the moment.”
and Absolut Vodka wittingly latched their products onto the conversation.
1. It’s good when people connect to a brand, but it’s even better when they connect through the brand Develop your brand into a social glue through which people connect, exchange information, and bond. A UAE-focused research shows that an average Twitter user researches for products more than anything else; therefore, as a marketer it’s important to ensure that all your products have a footprint on Twitter. This footprint will act as a campfire—a talking point— around which people will connect and engage. Plan your moments for a social media takeover through events-based management. For instance, if you’re launching a promotional campaign for your new product, make sure to interact with your audience on social media throughout this period. Have a new popping shade of lipstick and your audience is tweeting their love for it? Retweet them! Reply to them! Engage in friendly banter and conversation that will keep you at the front of their mind, as well as at the top of the social media radar. 2. Brands don’t have target markets, they have target moments These are the moments that are always on and are not restricted to product placement. Simply follow the day-to-day conversations of your target audience, and this is where you can strike gold. In UAE, the second most popular activity of Twitter users is commenting on their activities—the first being uploading and sharing photos. As a marketer, it is crucial to understand which of these daily activities people are talking about and be part of the moments relevant to your brand. When the #StripforJackie campaign went on fire on social media in support of the Lebanese skier Jackie Chamoun in February, brands like Almaza, Alrifai,
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Targeting a moment ensures a continuous conversation. So plug your anti-allergy tablets to an audience tweeting about their dribbling noses with the start of the hay-fever season, and hey presto you have a sale and have engaged with a customer. 3. People want daily conversation not time-bound campaigns Laura Ellen may not be the most followed Twitter user, but when she referenced her love for chocolate in a simple tweet, she unknowingly created an opportunity for her brands to engage with her: “Can tell I like chocolate a bit too much when I’m following @kitkat and @oreo hahahahahah” Kitkat responded to
her by challenging Oreo to a game of tic-tac-toe and inserted an image of their chocolate bar. Oreo’s response was genius. The unplanned moments are always happening, and people love it when brands respond to them. Authenticity in these cases are more important than the perfection that brands seek when they are planning an offline campaign. 4. Brands use the cultural moments’ calendar to plan in advance when to “strike in the moment” Twitter is full of moments that are culturally important and that
trend regularly, whether it be Ramadan, Easter, World Cup, or Mother’s Day. Brands should identify the hashtags of cultural moments relevant to their product and ride along with them. Placing your product amidst this means that you’re part of a global gathering, and this will make your brand visible in the long run. The key here is to strike in the moment by planning in advance. Spread out a cultural moments’ calendar that spans across the year, match those moments that are aligned with your brands attributes, and plan on engaging around these moments.
Parminder Singh, Managing Director Southeast Asia/ India/MENA at Twitter
5. Real-time is a mindset that requires empowerment and authenticity In order to be in the moment, you need a real-time mindset. This mandates that the social media team have enough empowerment to execute in real-time. Imagine if the team members had to send long threads of emails to get approval on each engagement with a user. Authenticity is the second crucial component of real-time. You need to find the voice of your brand. To do so, think what figure you want to personify your brand: a father figure? A friend? Once you find your voice, use it for genuine communication. After all, authenticity in real-time marketing comes before perfection.n
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DIGITAL MEDIA
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps TYPOGRAPHY for Residents in MENA DIGITAL ARABIC
Great Arabic Web Fonts on Web and Mobile Screens by Otba Mushaweh | @LogosGuide
H
undreds of years ago, when Arabic script was in its heyday, there existed nearly 80 Arabic calligraphy styles that had an elegance so appealing that even non-Arabic scripts used them. Today, there are more than 500 Arabic fonts available for use, but more than 90% are unsuitable for reading Arabic text on web and mobile. For this purpose, and from my experience as the Founder and CEO at Typestage, I have compiled
a list of Arabic fonts that are highly recommended for web and mobile use. Each font is designed for a specific purpose; there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to typography. Fonts are a mix of Naskh style (for text) and Kufi Style (for headings and short paragraphs). Some are hybrid fonts, which merge the two styles together. The fonts in this list are for text use, and hence, most are Naskh style fonts, with a few exceptions.
Neue Helvetica Arabic (hybrid of Kufi and Naskh styles): designed by Nadine Chahine
Colvert Arabic (Naskh style): designed by Kristyan Sarkis
Abdo Line Font (Naskh style): designed by Abdulsamie Rajab
Nazanin Font (Naskh style): designed by Haghighi
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Nassim Font (Naskh style): designed by Titus Nemeth
Droob7 Font (Naskh style): designed by Sultan Maqtari
Greta Font (Naskh style): designed by Kristyan Sarkis
Nososs Font (Naskh style): designed by Otba Mushaweh
Neen Font (modern Naskh style): designed by Otba Mushaweh
Hasan Enas Font (Naskh style): designed by Hasan Abu Afash
November June 2014 THE QUARTELY
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ENTREPRENEURSHIP
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EQUITY CROWDFUNDING A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
by Lara Chaaya | @ChaayaLara
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I
n the past year, 21 SMEs from Lebanon, Jordan, and UAE launched crowd investing campaigns on Eureeca. They had 90 days to reach their funding goals. Eleven of these SMEs succeeded, some in just a few days. Brother and sister Mousa and Hanae Ayoubi, the co-founders of the Jordanian-based flash sales e-commerce website Harir, reached their target of $50,000 in 8 days. At the 90th day, they had raised $101,688. Others took more time. Eman Hylooz, Founder
of Abjjad, the Arabic book lovers’ social network, reached her goal of $120,000 on the 88th day. The time it takes for an entrepreneur to reach a funding goal is not as critical as actually reaching that goal. In a previous article, Jason Best, the Co-founder of Crowfund Capital Advisor, shared 8 tips for securing a successful crowd investing campaign. In this article, four SMEs—Harir, Poupee Couture, Abjjad, and Jopedu—will walk us through the steps of their success. What Is Equity Crowdfunding Unlike the reward-based crowdfunding platforms available in region—such as Zoomal—Eureeca allows SMEs to raise capital from the crowd in exchange for equity. Currently, Eureeca is the only equity crowdfunding platform focusing on the Middle East. Since its launch on June 2013, Eureeca has received over “Funding 600 applications from SMEs at is not easy, whether you different stages of their life cycle. do it online “During our first or offline.” conversation with every entrepreneur, we give them an important reality check: Funding is not easy, whether you do it online or offline,” says Christopher Thomas, CEO and Co-founder of Eureeca. “What [equity crowdfunding] does is make the process much more efficient and more streamlined.” Eureeca has no ceiling for the amount of capital required. “We’ve had some applications looking to raise $12M,” says Christopher. In return, Eureeca charges every SME that has reached its target a certain rate fee. So it’s in the interest of both parties that the campaign succeeds. The whole process takes on average 6 months to complete, from the day entrepreneurs submit their application to the day they receive the money—a fair amount of time to raise investment. “Financing is one of the main challenges facing entrepreneurs in our part of the world, and equity crowdfunding fulfills this need. It’s very innovative,” says Mousa from Harir. Here are the six key takeaways from my discussions with the four SMEs on equity crowdfunding.
1. Think about raising capital as soon as you launch your startup One particular observation that surprised me was that most of the entrepreneurs I interviewed never planned to raise equity until the very last moment. Roula Ghalayini, Founder of the fashion brand Poupee Couture, designed her first handbag for personal use at a cost of $200. She never thought that one day her fashion designs would be featured on Vogue magazine, Cosmopolitan, and many others. In three years, Roula saw her herself turn into an entrepreneur that sold beautifully designed handbags to over 30 countries worldwide. Up to this point, she was bootstrapping her business. Every bag she sold covered the cost of producing a new one, with a small margin that was enough to cover her personal expenses. “My business was growing at a healthy rate, but I needed to inject a bit of cash to catapult to the next level,” says Roula. “That’s when I started thinking of funding options.” Like Roula, Eman did not expect her Jordanian-based startup, Abjjad, to experience rapid growth and to need to raise equity so soon. In the summer of 2012, Abjjad was admitted into the acceleration program at Oasis 500, and in the three months of the pilot launch, the level of traffic to the website reached unexpectedly high numbers. The website received more than 10,000 users in the first month. The seed investment Eman received—$15,000 in cash and $15,000 in kind—was “barely enough for Abjjad to survive for 3 to 6 months,” says Eman. She needed money, and her ordeal of finding investors lasted for almost a year. “The problem is that in the Middle East, the online startup scene is pretty new. The number of investors in that field is limited,” says Eman. She participated in every startup event she could and pitched to local and international investors. “I had a lot of good feedback, but it was so hard to really close a deal with an investor.” The only thing that kept Eman going was the continuously high traffic she kept receiving to her website. Finally, she met Eureeca. “I was very afraid at the beginning. It was a very new idea. Usually crowdfunding is for non-profit organizations where you get funding without giving equity in return,” she says.
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“Crowdinvesting is an alternative way of funding that doesn’t replace other methods,” says Hanae Ayoubi from Harir. “What’s interesting about it is that it is validated by the crowd. And it’s ideal for startups because at first a business would be too small for other methods.” Hanae and Mousa were self-funding Harir, and although they were looking, they couldn’t find the right investor for their project. “What we really liked about Eureeca was the structured method to fundraise,” says Mousa. Because finding the right investor and closing a deal is an arduous process, Christopher Thomas advises entrepreneurs to “start thinking about raising money a lot earlier than needed— as early as the day after they think about setting up a business—and to structure the business alongside this plan.”
a marketing campaign that will build
as much momentum possible prior A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps forasResidents in MENA
2. Ask for assistance to create foolproof financial documents and excellent marketing campaigns There are many things entrepreneurs need to prepare before they go live with their funding campaign, and this process takes approximately one month. First, they need to set up a thorough business plan and prepare the valuations, alongside all other financials. They also need to run due diligence on all the people involved with their companies. For Mousa and Hanae, this was an easy task. Mousa previously worked in management consulting, and Hanae had a solid analytical and quantitative background. “We crosschecked our valuations with our friends to see if it was sound, and we checked it with Eureeca as well,” says Mousa. All financial documents need to be structured properly and legal compliant. If entrepreneurs need help preparing these documents and making sure the numbers make sense, it is always preferable to seek assistance. They can connect with professional people from their own network or from Eureeca’s, or they can use Eureeca’s templates. “For people like me that come from a creative background,” says graphic designer Roula, “business is something we acquire but are not educated in. In that sense, having templates available is a life saver.” Next, entrepreneurs need to develop
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to going live. The marketing campaign involves everything from creating an interesting 3-minute video to sending e-mail shots and running campaigns on social media. “How you market your idea determines the success of your crowdfunding project,” says Roula. “If you have a great idea but you did not market it properly through your video, or you didn’t capture your investors within 30 seconds, then your campaign has failed.” Entrepreneurs can always benefit from second opinions. It is very helpful to have someone review the video, for instance, and give feedback on the script. “Crowdfunding is all about how you really drive the campaign of your business,” says Christopher. “After one month of preparation, we created an excellent profile for Abjjad that answers every investment question,” says Eman. Having all informational easily accessible to everyone online streamlines the funding process. “Once I send interested investors the link to my campaign, they will have access to any document they need. If they like what they are seeing, they can wire the money and become investors in Abjjad within 2 days,” says Eman. The chances of investors losing interest because of the back-andforth process of sending documents is significantly diminished. Unlike the majority of SMEs, Jopedu, the Jordanian multimedia merchandising and marketing platform, took a full eighteen months to finalize preparations—but that’s an exception. When Eureeca approached the cofounders, Jopedu was still heavily present offline. “We wanted to plan everything perfectly. We wanted to launch our website. We wanted our people to be ready,” says Tamer AlMasri, Jopedu’s Co-founder. “We went live only when we felt confident. And it turns out we made the right decision. We reached our goal of $100,000 in 4 days.” 3. Choose a realistic fundraising goal Deciding how much money an entrepreneur needs to raise is tricky. In crowdfunding, if you don’t reach your target in 90 days, you lose any money you
Christopher Thomas, CEO and Co-founder of Eureeca
raised during that time. “We picked a 50k target because we weren’t sure of the crowd in the Middle East and how much they would actually invest,” says Mousa, who lived most of his life in Canada. Abjjad’s founder was a tougher risk taker. She decided to raise $120K. “Anyone who looks at online startups and sees how competitive this field is would realize that we need more than that,” says Eman. “Our competitors raise anywhere between $200K and $1M. I asked for $120K because Abjjad was gaining traction without paying a single penny on marketing. Our growth was all organic.” By the end of the campaign, Eman had 25 investors on board. The average size per ticket was $5000, and the highest ticket she received was around $12,000. These numbers vary from one SME to another. Hanae and Mousa had 34 investors, and most invested $2500 per ticket; their largest ticket was $10K. Roula got 18 investors; the average size per ticket leveled at $6000, and she specified the minimum to be $2000. “The idea of having hundreds of investors for my baby was a bit off-putting for me. I only wanted those who are committed to go on board. I knew it was a risk, but if the minimum allowed investment was as low as $500, I would have investors who would jump in without giving it much thought. But if they had to pay a minimum of $2000, they would stop and
Hanae and Mousa Ayoubi, Founders of Harir
think it through,” explains Roula. Based on these numbers, entrepreneurs can do their analysis to estimate the average size per ticket they might get in their own fundraising campaigns. After they have settled on the amount of money they need to raise, they would be able to calculate how many investors they need to get. But to reach that target, how many people does an entrepreneur need to approach? This brings us to point number 4. 4. Get 25-30% of investors on board even before you go live One of the surefire conclusions anyone could make from observing local and international crowdfunding campaigns is that the more momentum a startup builds prior to going live, the higher the chances of its success. And by building momentum, I mean securing at least 25% of investors even before your campaign goes online. Most of the time, the initial batch of investors are people that the entrepreneur already knows—people that are part of their customer base or fans, not necessarily friends or family. “Entrepreneurs don’t realize what their networks are made of,” says Christopher. Almost 25% of Abjjad’s investment came from the website’s users, and 60% of Poupee Couture’s investors were customers and other people in Roula’s network. “I made a list of 50 people I
Roula Ghalayini, Founder of Poupee Couture
met at one point in my life and thought would be interested,” says Roula. She never thought this list would comprise the bulk of her future investors. Strangers need to see that the startup is validated by its own network before they dive in. When they spot a company that has already reached 20-30% of its funding goal in the first few days of the campaign, they get motivated to invest. Hanae and Mousa did a great job leveraging their networks in Canada, London, and Jordan. They approached colleagues, classmates, friends, and customers. A few days before going live on Eureeca, they prepared people and gave them heads up on the launch of their campaign. 40% of the investors in Harir were from the co-founders’ immediate contacts, 20% were from friends of friends, and the last 40% were from people in UAE and KSA that Hanae and Mousa never met. Eman’s huge efforts also paid off. Eventually, she had Hayfa Najjar and Fadi Ghandour, among others, invest in her startup. “We have a professor in finance from George Washington Town. She invested in Abjjad even though I met her just once in my life for 2 hours, and when we left the next day she wired like 10,000$,” recounts Eman. “So now whenever I need anything, I have 45 people I can ask.”
Eman Hylooz, Co-Founder of Abjjad
5. Have at least one member of the team completely dedicated to the campaign During those 90 days, have one member of the team completely committed to the campaign. It is a full-time job. “I was working day and night, talking to people everyday and sending emails,” says Eman. “I was launching the campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. I did more meetings in those three months than I have ever did the whole year. If you don’t follow up, people will forget about you.” Bottom line is, if you can’t commit to this campaign, make sure someone is filling in your shoes and doing all the nagging needed to reach your target. 6. Be prepared for the process afterwards After the 90-days are over, and your emotions are exhausted, it would be a good idea to sit back and take a breath. But, the money is not yet in your pockets. Before that, you need to perform due diligence on all investors, and the larger the number of investors, the more scattered they are, and the more follow up you will need to do. There are different legal requirements based on each country. You will have to gather documentation, such as proof of address. Be prepared to do a lot of legal paperwork. However, we cannot say that raising money through a VC is less difficult. It’s not easy money. You just need to be prepared and 100% committed.n
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USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION
IPO-TRACK INVESTING
The Most Capital Efficient Way to Grow Wealth and Global Leadership by Mona DeFrawi | @MonaDeFrawi
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echnology, health, education, renewable energy, water‌even a space program? Identifying key growth industries is great, but also critical to MENA’s future is identifying and supporting the growth of IPO-track companies within each industry that will deliver the products and services needed. Why? IPOs are the single most powerful way to deliver growth and jobs, because of their unique high revenue generation and job multiplier effect. SMEs are important for supporting local economies, but they are not the economic growth accelerators like IPOtrack companies. The truth is always in the numbers. Let’s take a look at how the world’s strongest economy has grown over the past 40 years, eclipsing the industrial revolution to lead the new entrepreneurial revolution through companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber, and 555555R5
--5." (5f8hz5) 5 5#-5
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invested through U.S. venture capital annually – yet venture-backed companies generate 21% of US GDP R5 -5-.#'/& . 5 2*)( (.# &5!,)1."5 that delivers 92% of jobs created, postIPO. R5 ),5 "5( 15#(()0 .#)(5$) 65k5 more jobs (in medicine, accounting, restaurants, commerce) are created through the economic multiplier effect, versus only 1.7 jobs for each new manufacturing job. R5 (()0 .#)(5 )'* (# -5" 0 55i25." 5 multiplier effect of non-innovation jobs. How can we identify an IPO-track company versus an SME, since at the beginningboth are small? The one with potential for IPO is like a baby elephant, able to achieve substantial scale of growth. It’s not a restaurant but perhaps a restaurant chain (e.g. Starbucks or Chipotle). IPO investors are growth, momentum investors seeking companies
that can achieve large or global scale of operations from a solid business foundation at very high growth rates. IPO investors accept risk early on in a large business’ lifecycle to capture that portion of super high growth, where equity value can multiply 200-300-400% in a short time horizon. Today’s U.S. IPO markets usually identify the “baby elephants� as having a minimum of $100M in annual revenues with high growth momentum and $1B in market capitalization. Companies within the 1-3 year window to IPO show at least $30M in revenues, growing 200-300% or more annually. MENA leadership has shown impressive vision and commitment to growing their knowledge economies. Yet, despite great investments in incubators, accelerators, early stage funding, and more, the most powerful and capital efficient investment for economic growth—IPOpotential companies—has been missing from all the reports and plans. Even the US
government doesn’t fully appreciate what IPOs deliver to the economy. If they did, the financial crisis of the past decade would have been corrected with laser focus much more quickly. America’s own IPO markets have languished for years after the Internet Bubble bursted while other economic remedies were attempted, with little to show for the trillions of dollars spent. MENA investors are very comfortable and sophisticated with regards to real estate, natural resources, and other classic private equity opportunities. While having a strong infrastructure is important, these “industrial” investments are not propelling the future. In fact, I worry that the expensive infrastructure MENA has built is not sustainable in the future of lower oil prices, which are already beginning to materialize. Investing in “next economy” innovation businesses will be needed to sustain and create opportunities for future global leadership. I am asked all the time, can MENA create IPO companies? Of course, it can! The largest IPO in history is Alibaba, a non-US IPO. Collectively, MENA has the next emerging markets’ economy with a fast growing, underserved population. MENA also has the brainpower and more financial resources than perhaps anywhere on the planet. If its visionary leaders focus their investments in IPO-track building opportunities, they have ample capacity to create whatever they wish. MENA also has the advantage of following in Silicon Valley’s footsteps: able to magnify the successes, while avoiding the mistakes. With excellent investment and execution, perhaps Silicon Valley’s 40year model can be reduced dramatically. Of course, other factors may affect outcomes, such as legislation, intellectual property protection, early stage funding dearth, or cultural and personal factors. But the first step to a cure is always through diagnosis. Once we realize that building IPO-track companies is the path to accelerated growth, jobs, innovation, leadership and improved quality of life, hen we can chip away at the obstacles blocking such opportunities. From my recent trips to the MENA region this year, and reception of MENA investors in Silicon Valley, it is clear that there is no lack of talent, ideas, and dedication in the region. Successful
Mona DeFrawi is the Founder and Managing Partner at IPOQuest Partners. Highlighted for her work with Equidity as one of four Silicon Valley women to watch for Forbes’ “World’s Most Powerful Women.” Mona has delivered top results in fundraising, IPOs, corporate development and investor relations for over 20 years. She serves as a Mentor for the Founder Institute and is a frequent lecturer at universities to entrepreneurial audiences. entrepreneurs are actively investing and giving back, and could reach critical mass faster if matching grants and other acceleration strategies were applied. Incubators and accelerators too often just offer space. Mentoring, networking, and financing are also key ingredients that must be active components of these programs. Don’t be shy, MENA – THINK BIG! MENA is the next emerging growth economy, with potential for highest growth rates and great financial assets. This combination is unique globally, and the results can be astronomical if the aim is accurate. For a successful journey, knowing the destination from the start is the key to efficiently maximizing outcomes: make it your #1 priority to identify and grow your IPO-track opportunities.n
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USEFUL A PITCH APPS FOR WITH TRANSPORTATION AN IMPACT XXXXWhat Lessons Can We Learn from Arab Entrepreneurs By Rabih El Khodr | @ RabihelKhodr
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ss the 2014 edition of the ArabNet Riyadh conference unfolds, a new batch of entrepreneurial talent from across the MENA region will step onto the ArabNet stage and pitch for a chance at far-reaching publicity, crowd recognition, and always-welcomed monetary gains. Here’s a look back at the winning pitches of 2013, with an attempt at highlighting the key elements that act as a foundation for a memorable business pitch: 1. Have strong visuals Louay Kadri pitched Presella: an e-ticketing platform for event organization efforts. The signature purple color of the business was ubiquitous across the conference at the time, and that was more so the case with the presentation slides of the Presella team. People today engage far better with striking visuals; and with limited time to impress an audience during a pitch, coming up with appealing imagery can help in maintaining the focus of an audience. An added bonus? Having the visuals be explanatory in infographic fashion, providing easy-to-digest information as well. Always a crowdpleaser. 2. Start with a smile to loosen your nerves Soufiane Guerraoui represented MesCadeaux.ma from Morocco: a website for gift registries and ideas. English is not the first language of Soufiane, and anybody who has attempted to speak under stress in a language that is different than their own can relate to the difficulty of the task. That can easily lead to rambling: speaking a little bit too much without necessarily adding relevance to content previously shared. But Soufiane managed to stay unruffled and deliver a convincing pitch. The secret is to start your presentation with a smile, and remind yourself to breathe as you talk. Keep reminding yourself that you are in control.
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pitch felt effortless to hear: he made the best of the allocated two minutes with a succinct and direct style that shared the main features of the website one after the other. He started off with a relatable introduction with real-life situations, a simple question to state the problem, followed by the reveal of his solution with its benefits to all potential stakeholders. Simplicity in both content and delivery.
Rabih El Khodr is an independent communication trainer and consultant. He is the founder of a public speaking consultancy called Standup Communication with a presence in both Lebanon and the UAE. Standup Communication is the official Training Partner of the ArabNet conferences in Riyadh and Beirut. 3. Project confidence, even if you have to fake it Mohammad AlKadi was on a mission to connect people emotionally as he pitched his social app Feelit. What struck me in his performance was the level of conviction made on display; at one point in the pitch, Mohammad confidently said “and we will” after sharing his plans to reach a market/product fit that would lead to exponential business growth. Nothing seems far-fetched to him, and any audience would be magnetically connected to a self-assured speaker - one that knows their content and delivers it with the confidence of an expert. Fake confidence if you have to, until you actually become confident. A definite recipe for success. 4. Follow a simple structure Hussein Attar made the case for Sawerly: a website where event organizers can book professional photographers at the budget of their convenience. Hussein’s
5. Be relevant to your audience: speak their language and address their local problems Mohammed Aldhalaan pitched Noon: an online educational platform destined to help Saudi high school students succeed in their final exam, one that is crucial for university admission in their local educational system. Mohammed succeeded in harnessing the local relevance of his business idea to connect with his Riyadh audience through a sequenced pitch that was presented in Arabic, the native language of the attending crowd. He used the power of numbering to contrast three problems in the way students prepare for their exam, with three benefits that his platform provides. A classic case of persuasion through relevance. 6. Deliver an engaging show Piotr Yordanov is currently working on SwypeOut, a trivia game based on the addictive left-and-right swiping motion. Another project of his is Beepl: a visual CRM platform based on visually engaging Pinterest-style boards. For a little less than 90 seconds, Piotr stole the show through an impressive display of stage presence and content mastery. His performance was a mixture of catchy taglines (such as “Pinterest for people” when introducing his idea), a factual storyline, strategic usage of pauses and statistics all throughout - not to mention an unfailing confidence in his business idea, and himself. Entrepreneurial showmanship at its best.n
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
We Ask the Entrepreneurs:
USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION
How Do You Maintain a Work/Life Balance?
by Romeo Chalfoun | @RomeoChl
Loulou Khazen, Founder and CEO at Nabbesh
Sharene Lee, Co-founder at Melltoo Marketplace
It is practically impossible to maintain work life balance in the early stages of a startup, and by that I mean the first 3 to 5 years. Starting a business is more than a full time endeavor; you will find yourself talking about your startup at home and at social events over the weekend. You will also dream about it at night. It becomes the epicenter of your life. It is really up to the individual to maintain the balance by achieving a certain level of detachment; something that I believe men can do better than women. I certainly have to make a conscious effort to stop myself from checking emails for a few hours over the weekend, make sure I go on holiday, spend some time doing the stuff I love with the people I love and exercise… I literally have to schedule time off. To succeed in your startup and survive the roller coaster, make sure you have the support of your spouse, family, friends, etc. because your startup will have a toll on their lives too!
My focus is on maintaining sanity, not balance. Recognizing that there will be imbalances puts me at ease mentally. As a mother of 5 and the co-founder of a rapidly growing startup, www. melltoo.com, I am under a lot of pressure so being mentally and emotionally strong is important. Learning to prioritize and to measure ROI on everything is the practical side of things. Not everything is equally worth doing, so I prioritize tasks that bring the highest return. Do I cook dinner or help kids with the homework? (Help kids with homework otherwise it doesn’t get done, but we can always eat sandwiches.) Do I write the content myself or train my intern to write it? (Train my intern because that will result in much more content than I can produce by myself in the long run). With limited time, energy, and concentration, I can’t do everything, so I don’t.
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Magnus Olsson, Founder and Managing Director at Careem
Simon Hudson, Founder and CEO at Brndstr
There are three things in life that help me incorporate the intense work load into my days without burning out or neglecting my loved ones. Firstly, I exercise. Even if it is for only 20 minutes a day, physical exercise helps clear my head and leaves me energized and ready to focus. Secondly, I meditate. I am a firm believer that meditation is the best stress reliever in the market. It is something I have been practicing for as long as I can remember. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I switch off. These are the times I get to turn off the computer (what’s even better is turning off the smartphone too at the same time) to spend time with my family. It is more fulfilling and rewarding than any kind of activity out there.
As an entrepreneur, being able to maintain a healthy work / life balance is the key to success. During the development, fund raising, and seed stage the business / idea becomes your life. You live and breathe the brand, concept and overall feel for the company everyday. From personal experience I would say that there are 2 key factors to keeping a healthy balance. Firstly you need the support of your family and friends. Being able to talk about work and ‘offload’ problems helps, but always make sure there is an “off ” switch to enjoy activities that don’t involve the company. Secondly, if you struggle to keep fit, play sports, etc. then schedule a visit to the gym in your diary as you would a client. Your health is one meeting you don’t want to miss. After all, a healthy body means a healthy business.
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USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA Mustafa Nabulsi, Co-founder and CEO at Acadox
Hind Hobeika, Founder and CEO at Instabeat
It is really hard to keep the balance while your dreams are on the line every day. I think the most important thing is to have a clear set of priorities and goals to achieve. In the early days, I wanted to do everything and chase every lead. This is a must at first, but then I found out that we needed to have a target point and work for it. Distraction could waste a lot of energy and affect the worklife balance which will backfire on the entrepreneur. Today, even though I work way more than 8hrs/day, I still make sure I separate the work pressure from the other things in life, especially having fun. I strongly believe that having fun keeps the spirits and energy levels up. It’s good to leave the office (even if it’s late), and do something you enjoy. You will come back fresh and able to achieve more.
It’s hard, the hardest maybe. It takes months to adjust to the idea of having this much power over your time, even if you are very disciplined. And then when you do, as an entrepreneur that moves around a lot it’s very difficult to have a routine, so you need to really want to make it happen. Sometimes it’s very hard to convince yourself that exercising/going out/sleeping for a few hours is more helpful than working. The guilt feeling is a killer J I don’t think it goes away, I think you get used to it. For me it’s cyclic. I’d go through months where I am perfectly balanced, working out early in the mornings to catch US calls in the evenings, going out with friends, etc. But then one long trip would mess up my routine and I’d go months with no balance at all and then I’d feel even guiltier.
Lebnan Nader, General Manager at Game Cooks
Nour Khrais, Founder and CEO at Maysalward
You don’t find a balance the first 2-3 years. You become addicted to the work you do on daily basis and you forget what it’s like outside your office. But its fine; it’s not necessarily a bad thing. A startup is like your baby. You give it everything you have and all your efforts. My dream is to watch is grow. But that’s me. So far, I didn’t find the balance! Maybe I am not searching for it yet.
Life balance for an entrepreneur is a myth. When you decide to take the entrepreneurial track, you should know you are joining the military. You start as a soldier where you serve most of your time in the camp, and with time your military ranking develops and you’ll have more flexible and better time outside “Military Service Zone.” Bit by bit, you would gain what can be called life balance. But even then you will never have perfect balance because you are always “on call.”
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Louis Lebbos, Founding Partner at AstroLabs
Ramzi Rizk, Co-founder and CTO at EyeEm
First, it’s important not to feel like you need to be busy to be effective. Effectiveness correlates to how clearly you think and your ability to make sound decisions. Time is not the bottleneck, but people still feel the urge to fill-up their time with “work.” If you analyze outcomes you will notice that true value was driven by 10-20% of the time spent. The second element is a robust filtration mechanism. Some practical examples: 1) Eliminate notifications; distraction is the enemy of clear thinking (Apps, email, junk newsletters); 2) Limit the use of messaging (No WhatsApp); 3) Manage a clean inbox (Inbox zero+ Boomerang + getting off of CC loops); 4) Professionally, only work with people (clients, partners) who get things done; 5) Spend most of your time with the people you value the most and on the challenges that excite you the most; 6) Meditate.
You don’t. Being an entrepreneur is an extremely time consuming endeavor, particularly early on. Your mileage may vary, but building a company and supporting a passionate creative community is something that you do 24/7. What I’ve noticed with myself is that my personal and professional lives no longer have any clear distinctions. I try to sneak in some exercise a couple of times a week, and maybe grab a drink with friends once a week to balance things out. Beyond that, I think anyone going into this field should not expect to have much time for anything else. It’s a calculated decision to condense the work of a lifetime in the span of a few years.
David El Achkar, Founder at Yellow
I would rather think of it as my life/life balance. As an entrepreneur--and really as a personal philosophy--there isn’t a “work” that is separate from “life”. If I wasn’t as excited to “live my work” that would be reason enough to reconsider what I’m doing. That said, the topic of having a balanced life is one that I’ve grappled with for a while. For example, I started an experiment 1.5 years ago, tracking every minute of every day: a lifelog (it sounds more tedious than it actually is). The goal was to understand my behaviours, identify patterns, and more. To learn about myself and figure out what contributes to a better lifestyle. So in general, my approach to a balanced lifestyle (and many other things, for that matter) has been one of experimentation: come up with new habit/ idea, try it out, track the outcomes, then make a decision to keep or eliminate this new habit.
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USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION
NEW
A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents in MENA
MIDDLE EAST STARTUPS that should be on your radar by Maysaa Alajjan
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e reached out to some of the biggest investors in the region and ran down the most talked-about companies to come out of recent accelerator programs and demo days in order to put together this list of startups to look out for in the Middle East.
After Cédric Maalouf had realized there wasn’t a dating platform in the region aligned with the conservative Arab culture, he decided to develop et3araf an online “marriage agency” and advisor on online dating etiquette based on the culture of each Arab country. The launch of et3arraf comes on the heels of Karaz. me’s launch, a Palestine-based online educational and e-commerce platform targeting married couples. To avoid users from abusing et3araf ’s platform, each applicant is thoroughly scanned before being given access to the website. With a $75,000 seed fund from Seeqnce, et3arraf launched in Lebanon on Valentine’s Day 2013 and quickly became a success in KSA, Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan, with the total number of users reaching 40,000. They have recently closed a $150,000 seed round from Lebanese and Jordanian angels, including Hala Fadel, Fund Manager at Comgest.
Cofounders of Hashapps, a startup launched in 2012 and specialized in developing mobile apps, were doing well in business when they decided to find a revolutionary way to make app development easier. “The issue has always been between the designer and [the] developer,” says Cofounder Abdallah Zidan. “The designer has to slice the design into different sizes (images) to support all mobile platforms,
which causes the developer a lot of problems, especially with file naming and organizing.” That’s when the developers proposed to develop a platform that facilitates communication between the two sides by converting the app design into a native prototype that can be viewed on different mobile platforms, as well as exporting the native UI code that the developer will be using. “This saves more than 40 % of development time for both developers and designers.” The founders’ idea was one of the 10 pitches to be accepted in Flat6labs Cairo (out of +400 applicant). They launched their first beta version in February 2014 with a modest investment of almost $15,000. The app generated almost 700 downloads on Android and iOS versions together in the first few days of its launch. It was also selected as one of top 10 startups at the 2014 MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Startup Competition.
Travel-savvy Felix Hong and cofounders Abdallah Kanaan, Benjamin Gsell and Faiz Kalodi came up with the idea of a “traveling-made-easy platform” after they got tired from all the hassles of travel planning: hunting for target destinations, affordable accommodation and tourist activities all while having a limited budget. “We were either on Excel calculating our costs or drawing a travel plan on paper while searching for hours manually through Google, TripAdvisor, etc.,” says Felix. The cofounders got together a year ago and started developing Guiddit, the first interactive travel platform with a built-in calculator for budget calculations. They launched last April with a small self-fund of less than $50,000 and have so far received +10,000 visitors and generated more than 1000 registered users. One of Guiddit’s encouraging features is the “points” system that users can redeem in exchange for packages from partnering businesses such as expedia.com for hotels, vipcars. com for car rentals and onetravel.com
for flights. Guiddit is in the process of fund-raising $1M at the Web Summit in Ireland.
Jordanian entrepreneur Raed Malhas noticed that an Arabic Q&A site similar to Quora or JustAnswer did not exist, so he decided to build Jawabkom. com, a website where Arabic-speaking people can get answers from experts in different fields, including law, medicine, information technology, and nutrition. After setting up a quick trial website last October, Malhas and his partners tested it in a few countries, formed Jawabkom within weeks, and secured $250,000 through MENA Ventures. Malhas might give the impression that launching a startup is a piece of cake, but his years of experience as a serial entrepreneur has certainly come in handy with Jawabkom’s quick growth. He is the co-founder of MiNeeds, a free service that allows you to get proposals from local professionals. Jawabkom currently has more than 1500 experts answering the 3500 questions posted daily. Overall, Jawabkom features over 200,000 questions on all sorts of topics, ranging from legal to religious and psychological.
When Palestinian journalist Ahmad Moor was interviewing Nobel Prize winning-economist Joe Stiglitz, he was told that, if Egypt didn’t manage to create opportunity for all the young people in the country, there would be some serious problems in the future. So, Moor and Palestinian web developer Samer Atiani put their heads together, and by late 2013, they launched Liwwa, the first Sharia-compliant crowdinvestment platform. Unlike other crowdfunding platforms in the region, such as Zoomal
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USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION and Eureeca, Liwwa pays investors a return on a regular basis according to a lease-to-own structure. Focused on small businesses in conformity with Islamic financial regulations, Liwwa charges a 2% account service fee from investors for every repayment a small business makes. The service is available to small businesses in Lebanon and Jordan, and to investors in Lebanon, Jordan, US, and UAE. It has already supported four SMEs. The founders’ aim is to build a global company.
and decided to build a Lebanon-based
“virtual” online marketplace. Unlike other in MENA A Round-Up of Taxi-Booking Apps for Residents
Dubai-based Melltoo cofounder Morrad Irsane wanted to purchase a car using online platforms and classifieds, but he faced major communication and trust issues. “You have no history of the buyers or the sellers. You cannot know anything about their background. It’s more like an [outdated] online directory,” he says. So, partnering with his wife, Singaporean expat Sharene Lee, Irsane put together a team of designers and developers to create and bootstrap an interactive platform with social profiles and built-in instant messaging that connects buyers and sellers trading pre-owned belongings. Launched this March, the app was an instant success, garnering 35K+ downloads so far and more than 300 daily downloads.
With all the entrepreneurial fever going on, many budding designers and aspiring artists in MENA would be excited to open their own boutiques. However, the rise in rental fees and the capital needed for a startup may be daunting for some. This is why Mira Mabsout, Ghassan Mabsout, Theo Ohanessian, and Karl Bachian got together a year ago
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e-commerce websites that curate designs from various artists, such Ananasa.com, Etsy.com, Cirqy.com, Alhoush, and many others, MySouk allows every individual artist to open an online “store.” Artists rent an online space for affordable prices on the platform, where they can promote their brands and expose their products with visual aids. MySouk quickly went viral among aspiring artists, attracting 3,500 unique visitors in the first month of launching—a number that has eventually grown to 25,000 global visitors—with a small marketing budget.
In 2014, the employment status in KSA was doing well due to various government initiatives and policies, except for one problem: employee retention rates. “We noticed that many of the job [positions] were mismatched with the education and experience of employees,” Eman Janbi, previous HR assistant and cofounder of Nujeed, told Arabnet. Janbi and cofounders Zaher Ibrahim and Asma Janbi decided to find a solution to the employee dissatisfaction by creating a platform that concentrates on the “interests” profile for each job seeker (similar to a wish list) and then allowing companies to favor them according to the “abilities” that they accomplish. The founders pitched their idea to KSA accelerator Qotuf, from which they graduated recently with a modest sum of almost $15,000. After launching in beta mode in August 2014, Nujeed attracted the attention of 400 employees in the first month and more than 10 companies. The number of website visitors has almost doubled now to 800, with promise to reach Nujeed’s target of 10,000 competent job seekers and 100 companies by the end of 2015. Nujeed plans to grow regionally within the Arab world but have not taken any steps to expand yet.
Online retail entrepreneur AbdulAziz Al Jouf faced a hard time accepting online payments in MENA through his e-commerce website. “We had great products but we always had issues with accepting online payments. Then one day, I said to myself: why do we have to wait for someone else to make a payment solution? Why don’t we do it on our own?” Funded by Saudi Aramco’s Wa’ed program (+500k), PayTabs intends to accommodate the needs of all of MENA’s online retailers through its two premium solutions: PayPage, the online invoicing system, and e-commerce plugin & API integration, which are ready to integrate with any e-commerce website in the Middle East. PayTabs is set to launch its online payment solutions in Bahrain, Saudi and the GCC in the next couple of months.
Fashion-lover and actress Sarah Farah launched a Dubai-based wedding gift registry, White Almonds, with the help of an anonymous angel investor who supplied over $300,000. It’s very similar to the Morocco-based MesCadeaux.ma, only the latter is not solely focused on weddings and largely targets Morocco. Farah’s platform allows the groom and bride-to-be to create a wish-list that guests can gratify through online payment (White Almonds Debit Cards). White Almonds has partnered with over 30 lavish suppliers to offer various wedding gifts to each couple (art, furniture, decorative accessories, honeymoon packages, etc.) ranging from 20 AED, all the way to 180,000 AED. White Almonds has so far serviced six lavish weddings at Dubai, with a growing monetary range of 1M- 1.4M AED.
HITTING THE RESET BUTTON Why Elias Ghanem Left PayPal by Lara Chaaya | @ChaayaLara
H
e had it all. A six figure income, a Managing Director title at one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, business class tickets for his overseas trips, and all the other perks that come along with corporate life. But after 20 years of living the corporate dream, Elias Ghanem wanted to get off a path he knew was good to be on the “other side
of the equation.” For many years, he was part of a big story—the story of PayPal and previously of Visa—but nonetheless a small part of that story. To fulfill his self-esteem and ambitions, Elias knew he needed to create a story of his own. During his last years with PayPal, Elias worked closely with many entrepreneurs. “I have always
been amazed by the feelings these entrepreneurs gave me—the excitement and the willingness to change the world. And I always looked at them with some kind of jealousy and thought: Wow, if they can do it, maybe I can do it, too.” For him, the “give back” feeling was itching him and he wanted to do something for his native region and for
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USEFUL APPS FOR TRANSPORTATION
You would have some muscles that are
the entrepreneurial community in the Middle East. But even though the idea was always on his mind, he never had the guts to make the jump—until he reached a moment in his personal life and career where he thought it was now or never. “You can call it a mid-life crisis,” he says jokingly. And so, on October 10, 2013, Elias Ghanem cleared his desk at PayPal and set off to launch Telr, a multi-currency payment gateway that also offers cash management facilities to enable SMEs to kick-start their online business.
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The Post-Corporate On the first day as an entrepreneur, Elias realized that his business cards, his desk, his computer, and even his phone were not waiting for him neatly in an office, as was the case in all his previous jobs. When he set out to buy the office supplies he needed, he had to remind himself that he was on a limited budget. “In corporate life, you ask for resources but you don’t see the bill. If you are short of budget, but can justify the need, you can always get more budgets,” reflects Elias as he compares the two lives. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “Having to pay attention to the budget makes you more responsible and way more hands on and way more engaged in the day-to-day business because you know the direct impact,” says Elias. Next, Elias needed to build a team. Throughout his professional career, he fully relied on the whole structure of the HR department to get him the right resources he needed. His job was limited to raising an ask, interviewing the short listed candidates and giving the final Ok. “Corporate life runs on an existing infrastructure. As an entrepreneur, you are everybody. If you need to hire somebody, it’s your job to go from A to Z, from putting the job description, to hunting, screening, interviewing, and even to writing the contract,” exclaims Elias. The ride on the entrepreneurship roller coaster did not come without sacrifices. Before deciding to leave PayPal and launch Telr, Elias sat down with his wife and four kids living in Lebanon to explain that for the coming 12 months, they would be seeing less of him as he spends most of his time building Telr in
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Elias Ghanem, CEO and Co-founder at Telr
Dubai. “At the end of the day, it is our company that we are building here, and this comes with personal sacrifices.” Despite the sacrifices, the long hours, and the new way of life, Elias never regrets his decision. “It is a very intense way of life, and the intensity takes a toll on your brain and body,” he says. He admits that entrepreneurship comes with high risk—you will be jobless at any time if you couldn’t materialize your idea—but with it also comes high excitement. And this is very alluring to Elias. “In corporate life, you live on the next promotion. With your startup, the upside could be phenomenal in terms of valuation of your company.”
“I always looked at entrepreneurs with some kind of jealousy and thought: Wow, if they can do it, maybe I can do it too.” Learning the Skill of Entrepreneurship Being an ex-senior executive has given Elias a better sense of judgment and clarity of the industry, but to Elias’s surprise, the skills he has built over his career were not sufficient for venturing into the entrepreneurship arena. “The first three months after my corporate life were tough. It’s like when you change sports.
the same for swimming. My goal now is to become a really good swimmer, and building new muscles is very tough and exhausting,” states Elias. According to Elias, the 5 main skills that every entrepreneur should learn, hone, and excel at are: 1) Flexibility— When you hire someone, you can’t give them a specific title and a specific job description. Because you are a small team, every person you add to this team must be flexible and able to multitask. 2) Risk-taking—You don’t want to enter the entrepreneurial life for the stability of it. You want to be part of it for the willingness to take risk and see the upside. 3) Evolution—nothing is set in stone. “I have been running Telr for more than 6 months, and the business model has evolved massively every day,” says Elias. 4) Willingness to promote your business—at the end of the day, an entrepreneur can’t rely on the brand’s strength to sell it. It’s self-marketing. “Every single day,” recounts Elias, “I talk about Telr to someone.” 5) Being strict on the spending criteria—every dollar you spend is coming from a limited pot. You need to have crazy thinking, but very strict spending.
Two Final Pieces of Advice Elias has been an entrepreneur for less than a year, but his journey has already taught him two main things: First, you need to be at least two in the team. “I have met many CEOs who run their startup solo—this is very dangerous,” states Elias. “I have been lucky to meet Sirish Kumar. He has different skills but we share the same objective.” Sirish, also an ex-PayPal, is currently the co-founder and CFO at Telr. Sirish takes care of anything related to numbers, while Elias takes care of strategy, sales and business development. The second danger to watch out for when you manage your startup, according to Elias, is self-funding. “You are very limited by the money you have, and unless you are a Rockefeller, your ambitions cannot materialize. When you have investors on board, they come and they bring with them their network, their experience, their mentorship, and more opportunities,” he concludes.n