13 Middle East startups going to Web Summit 2014

Robert McGovern • 09 October, 2014

This is a crosspost with Web Summit's blog.

Well it's somehow October already and the summer is well and truly behind us. This can only mean one thing - that it's almost time again for the annual Web Summit taking place in Dublin, Ireland.

This year's event runs from 4-6 November and will cover not just the usual areas of web, mobile and digital etc., but also the ways in which technology is revolutionizing the worlds of food, music, film, and sport across several spin-off gatherings. The event has grown, in just four years, to become the biggest tech conference in Europe; this year it's expected to attract over 20,000 attendees looking to showcase their startups and become the next big thing.

With attendees coming from over 100 countries, exhibitors will be hoping to launch their startups on a world stage and many will be looking to woo some of the 800+ investors in attendance. After Elon Musk's keynote last year, this year's event has a lot to live up to; some high-profile speakers include Facebook's first investor and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, as well as the founders, CEOs, and top executives of some of the most high-profile tech companies on the planet such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Cisco, and Dropbox to name just a few.

There are over 50 startups from the Middle East region going to Dublin but here's a roundup of 13 startups that are attending.

Transterra Media - Lebanon

Transterra Media is an online marketplace modeled as e-commerce platform where journalists and news entities can come together, exchanging ideas about potential stories, negotiating prices, and eventually placing and filling orders. Journalists are able to pitch stories to organizations like Transterra, who then vet and prepare them for sale. Editors at news entities can also commission very specific stories – packages for television, online video, or print – from a pool of journalists.

Careem - United Arab Emirates

Careem is a private car booking service that upgrades the way people travel around town, making arranging transportation reliable, personal, safe and convenient. Users can order a car online or using the mobile app, track their rides in real-time, pay with credit cards, and access receipts online. Careem will be participating in the START showcase at this year’s Web Summit.

eKtab – Jordan

eKtab is the first and largest Arabic electronic book marketplace and publishing company on the internet. Combining both Arabic and translated, international, political, cultural, historical, literature and poetry books, eKtab facilitates the process of finding, downloading, purchasing and reading Arabic books online. They also offer Arabic read-aloud childrens books, contributing to developing the knowledge, comprehension and critical thinking skills of children in the Arab world.

Drawdeck - United Arab Emirates

Drawdeck is an online community that connects emerging artists, companies and art-lovers, allowing them to discover, collaborate and buy and sell artwork. By creating a portfolio on Drawdeck, artists can put their work online and in front of the right audience, giving them the potential to start selling prints and original artwork straight away.

Feelit - Saudi Arabia

Feelit is a social app that allows users to share their feelings on a timeline. Users can see the trending feelings in colourful bubbles that grow and shrink based on the feelings of everyone using Feelit. Instead of giving away ‘likes’, the Feelit community exchanges ‘hugs’ with the hug button at the bottom of every post.

Kalboard360 – Jordan

Kalboard360 is a cloud-based learning management system (LMS) focused on engaging students by making the school e-learning experience simple to use, rewarding and mobile. The platform is based around a distributed learning approach where face-to-face engagement between teachers and pupils is essential, while also involving parents and school management in the learning experience. Built-in reporting tools mean that the learning experience can be analysed regularly, allowing the educational process to be further improved for each student.

Shopbuilder - Lebanon

Shopbuilder lets users build their own online store without the need for any programming or design skills. Their goal is to provide a highly simplified but efficient online tool to help small business owners create their own website to sell online, as well as making eCommerce more available across the MENA region at the most affordable price possible.

Foona Review – United Arab Emirates

Foona Review is a social network and online directory for food, bringing foodies and eateries together on a free platform where restaurants, recipes, reviews & experiences can be discovered & shared. By offering a public space Foona empowers users to establish standards and expectations for eateries to follow, while giving eateries a space to build a following. Foona also provides Kickstarter chefs a space to contribute, grow and develop a following.

Edunation - Palestine

Edunation is a social Education Progress Management System developed to aid learning and the sharing of knowledge. The platform provides a user-friendly web-based interface designed considering the challenges schools come across including cost of ownership, skill-set level requirements, parent-student-teacher community interaction, security and stability.

Red Troops – Jordan

Red Troops describes itself as the eBay for In-App Advertising, bridging the gap between app developers and advertisers. The platform is a mobile marketing community focused on empowering app developers with a dedicated set of tools to eventually democratise mobile marketing and rid the world of excessive advertisement costs.

Guiddoo – United Arab Emirates

Guiddoo is an interactive travel app that provides virtual audio and visual tours that aim to enrich travellers’ trips though personalised tour experiences. Passionate about travel and adventure, the team’s mission is to create a personalized tour guide available to them as and when they need it. The platform aims to continuously add new attractions and services for the travel community to explore.

AwfarShi – Lebanon

AwfarShi is an offer aggregation website designed to help consumers find brick and mortar and online offers in their local market, helping users cut down on the amount of time they spend trawling the web for retail's best deals.

AidBits - Palestine

AidBits is a cloud-based Aid Information Management System (AIMS) that simplifies how aid organizations manage, learn and share data. The platform allows organisations to create beneficiary profiles to track the progress and history of the individuals that they have helped, as well as produce custom reports and analytics to display the data.