“The future belongs to those who are fast.”
That’s the key statement that was made by futurist, trends and innovation expert Jim Carroll during a presentation at this year’s World Government Summit, a global government forum held annually in the UAE. According to Carroll, it is estimated that new knowledge is moving so quickly that half of what students learn right now is obsolete by the time they graduate four years later.
The same applies to entrepreneurship – the early bird catches the worm.
“The world of tech is a driver of so much change. Products are coming into our lives and becoming obsolete before we fully use them,” he said. “So our success comes from our speed.”
While the region’s startup ecosystem may not be as large as other continents, there’s no denying that a number of savvy individuals got there first with a groundbreaking idea and ran with it. Here are eight who have done it right:
FOODICS
Launched in 2014 by two Saudi engineering college friends – Ahmad Al-Zaini and Musab Al Othmani – Foodics capitalised on the forever-booming food and beverages industry in the Middle East. The company developed an innovative feature-rich cloud-based restaurant management and point-of-sale (POS) solution that answers to the needs of local small restaurants, as well as restaurant chains, in the region.
In no time, Foodics – described by customers as “simple”, “neat” and “intuitive” – became widely popular, with more than 100 restaurants and cafes using it across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain. After making more than $320,000 in profit in less than two years, the company was picked by Forbes Middle East as one its 50 most promising Saudi startups of 2016.
Foodics recently secured an impressive $4 million in funding from Raed Ventures and the Riyad Taqnia Fund.
ELVES
This innovative personal digital assistant works out of a regular Facebook messenger chat window. Founded two years ago by the Egyptian architect, Karim Elsahy and his wife Abeer Elsisy, the app – which reportedly makes $80,000 in monthly revenue – utilises a unique mix of artificial and human intelligence to cater to its users’ needs.
Customers get to chat with a real person, using the Elves app or by adding Elves to their Facebook messenger, that’ll help them find and do almost everything. From travel arrangements to hotel bookings, buying stuff online to even scheduling meetings or events, human agents on the other side of the line use AI bots to curate information and help perform tasks and make transactions on a user’s behalf.
Abeer Elsisy is currently in the top ten of Forbes Middle East’s Arab Women Entrepreneurs Making Waves.
WING.AE
It’s no secret why the Amazon-owned Souq.com acquired Wing.ae in September 2017. With a fresh take on the whole process of shipping and delivery, the UAE-based courier marketplace and mobile app was the first to consolidate the needs of e-commerce websites and small businesses for cheap and efficient ways of managing the pick-up and delivery of their goods.
Founded by Muzaffar Karabaev, an entrepreneur from Uzbekistan who relocated to Dubai, Wing.ae connects businesses to 22 different courier services operating in the UAE. It enables them to set-up everything related to the delivery process, as well as tracking their shipments across different courier agents, all at the touch of a button. Now as a part of Souq, the company is expected to help them offer new fast and cost-efficient delivery options for customers in the region.
KIJAMI
With Netflix, Huawei, and Goal.com amongst its customers, Kijami broke new ground in the region by communicating in Arabic on behalf of its international customers via digital outlets.
The digital media agency, founded in 2011 by computer and systems engineer Bassem Elhady, also manages Arabic-language social media accounts for major European sporting clubs, including Chelsea FC, FC Bayern Munich, and Arsenal.
NABBESH
Loulou Khazen, a Lebanese national living in Dubai, quit her job as a project manager at a venture capital firm in 2011 to start her own startup: an online marketplace for freelance jobs in the Middle East. Little did she know, back then, that her online business will be the place-to-go for more than 100,000 freelancers searching for part-time jobs in the region less than five years later.
Getting there first, Nabbesh secured two rounds of funding with a total value of almost $2 million, and is now being used by the likes of Facebook, Careem, MBC, and General Electric to find and hire their perfectly-matched freelancers.
SWVL
Uber left almost no room for small startups to innovate in the ridesharing business. However, Egyptian startup Swvl still managed to offer something groundbreaking. By sharing a ride in a van or a bus for a fixed flat rate, the company allows people to commute at affordable prices.
The one-year-old company was founded by Mostafa Kandil, a former employee at regional ridesharing company Careem and food delivery service Otlob. Swvl currently operates in two Egyptian cities, has more than 50,000 monthly users, and recently received an investment of $500,000 from Careem eyeing a much wider national and regional expansion plan.
BIONIC LIMBS
The medical prosthesis business is a niche market that’s seldom explored by companies from the Middle East. Founded in 2016 by two Egyptian engineers, Ahmed Aldaly and Belal Ismail, Bionic Limbs aims to tackle this highly specialised market by developing affordable prosthetic limbs with a focus on high functionality, fast production, and customisation options.
Their first product, a 3D-printed mechanical hand prosthesis that enables amputees to use their prosthetic fingers to hold things or type on a computer keyboard without using batteries or motors, earned them first place in the ‘Life Science and Healthcare’ category of the UNESCO – Closer to People competition.
FETCHR
Based out of Dubai, Fetchr is a technology-driven courier and delivery service that solves the problem of vague locations caused by the poorly organized address directory system in many countries in the Middle East. The company uses smartphone integrated GPS to accurately set pick-up and drop-off locations for packages.
Five years since its inception in 2012 by Joy Ajlouny and Idriss Al Rifai, Fetchr now operates in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Jordan, and secured an enormous funding round worth $41 million last May.