Competing for $40,000 and six scholarships to the university of Sharajah in UAE, 120 promising Arab students and scientists concluded their participation in the 2nd Annual Intel Science Competition at an award ceremony help last night in Sharjah under the patronage of Dr. Sultan Al Qasimi, member of the UAE Supreme Council.

Anas Eshtaya from Palestine won the first prize for his movement and gas detection project followed by Sara Al Nasser and Hayfa Al Bassam for 2ndh and 3rd places for their projects in the fields of Medicine and Health Sciences and Behavioral Social Sciences.

Other winners included Hasan Bani Salameh from Jordan for his project in Chemistry, Mohammad Othman from Palestine for his project in Energy and Transportation, Radwan Othman from Lebanon for his project in Intelligent and Safety system engineering.

In total 81 science projects were showcased according to Dr. Martina Roth, Director of Intel’s Global Education Strategy, Research and Policy.

Here is the list of winners:




Updated: typo edited, we are very sorry.

Intel Corporation made its first acquisition in the Arab world, today it announced through its standalone business entity Intel Mobile Communications, that it has acquired most of the assets of SySDSoft, a privately held software company based in Cairo and hired approximately 100 of the company’s electrical engineers and computer scientists. SySDSoft designs IP based solutions in the software stack and physical layer domain, and RF/analog circuits embedded in mobile platforms. Its product portfolio covers technologies such as WiMAX, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wireless USB, and LTE.

This news is great for Egypt post-revolution and to the Arab world, as now more and more investors see  the exit window for their hight tech investments open again. Lets not forget Yahoo Maktoob deal that brought excitement and was like an energizer to the Internet industry.   Hope next time we break news at AC it will be an IPO for an Arab startup.

Here is the full press release from Intel, we do not know how much the acquisition was for:

Intel Acquires Egypt-based SySDSoftCAIRO, Egypt and SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 14, 2011 – Intel Corporation, through its standalone business entity Intel Mobile Communications, today announced that it has acquired most of the assets of SySDSoft, a privately held software company based in Cairo and hired approximately 100 of the company’s electrical engineers and computer scientists. SySDSoft designs state-of-the-art IP solutions in the software stack and physical layer domain, and RF/analog circuits embedded in mobile platforms.“The acquisition of engineering and design talent from an Egypt-based company in the field of cutting-edge wireless and communication technology is the first of its kind for Intel in the Middle East,” said Arvind Sodhani, president, Intel Capital and executive vice president, Intel. “The acquisition shows Intel’s continued long-term strategic commitment to the region and its appreciation of its young, growing talent pool.”SySDSoft’s solutions enhance Intel Mobile Communications’ existing multi-communications portfolio, specifically accelerating its 4G LTE efforts with the addition of leading software development and design capabilities. Intel Mobile Communications is an integral part of Intel’s strategy to accelerate always-connected computing platforms founded on energy-efficient performance, Internet connectivity and security, and spanning a variety of device and market segments, including laptops, cars, smart phones, tablets and TVs.“As we enter an era of multi-communication broadband solutions, Intel’s products and technologies will be important to our vision of billions of connected devices,” said Dr. Hermann Eul, president of Intel Mobile Communications. “Intel is making the necessary investments to further enhance its existing world-class wireless product portfolio and to offer the most reliable platforms to our customers that will work seamlessly across a range of global networks. The acquisition supports this strategy and we believe that SySDSoft’s proven and experienced engineering team, combined with Intel Mobile Communications’ existing wireless strength, positions us well for continued growth in LTE.”

Around 10 days ago ArabCrunch  had a meeting with Barig Seraj the CEO of ICT Ventures a Saudi based Venture capital firm.

Barig Seraj informed us about his company and his recent investments, ICT Ventures is a growth based VC that focus in the IT sector. The VC firm made 3 investments so far. First in Mobidiv an Egyptian mobile app developer that is working on a special Chines SMS service, then they invested in ITs2 a digital security company in Saudi Arabia and lastly ICT Ventures closed  an investment round with IdealRatings a SaaS app providing Islamic Shariah screening, purification, and  fund management service for financial institutions that identifies and manages Shariah compliant instruments in the world. IdealRating is founded by Egyptian entrepreneur Youssri Helmy . The SaaS startup received 2 rounds of funding before from  Technology development fund in Egypt and then from Jordan based VC IV Holdings.

Here is the video interview with Barig, were he shed the light on his firm, the companies the invested in and how would they excite.

The Interview was done in Four Seasons hotel in Amman, Jordan. After the interview the hotel’s security came to question the writer of this post about using a camera ?!

I am happy to have Spirula Systems as our servers admin partner, I recommend them to anyone, here is the press release for immediate publishing:

Amman, Jordan – Alexandria, Egypt. ArabCrunch – the number one tech, startup social media and mobile a English & Arabic blog, social network, and events in the Arab world – announces today forming a new partnership with Spirula Systems, the new rising Egyptian startup focusing on system administration and security.

Founded in 2008 ArabCrunch is the only entity from the private sector in the world that is fully dedicated to empower entrepreneurs, startup, tech professionals, and geeks in the Arab world, and emerging markets  via its network of sites and events. With over 100,000 page-views per month today ArabCrunch includes: ArabCrunch EN, ArabCrunch AR, ArabCrunch.NET, ArabCrunch DEMO and ArabCrunchStart global events.

In April, ArabCrunch EN which is ranked 6th in the world in blogs about innovation,  has been under massive DDoS attack followed by penetration attempts, Since then Spirula Systems played a pivotal role in defending ArabCrunch servers.

“We are proud to partner with a company that helped us during the hard time of the criminal massive DDoS attacks that brought down Arabcrunch.com site for few days, the attack was followed by penetration attempts” Said Gaith Saqer Founder and Editor of ArabCrunch.

Spirula System will bring its staff’s extensive experience in systems security and server administration to manage ArabCrunch servers and defend them from future and current cyber threats and attacks.

“Unfortunately there are people with bad intentions online, who keep using sophisticated techniques to bring down many useful and innovative sites, with this partnership we will stay on top of threats that ArabCrunch servers face and offer our expertise in defending them.” said Ahmed Mekkawy, founder & CTO of Spirula Systems.

In his part Saqer said ” Our partnership with Spirula will help us focus on continuing to serve our readers and members with breaking and insightful unbiased news and analysis and great apps and events.”

-end-

About ArabCrunch:

ArabCrunch Group’s mission is to inform, impact, inspire and create an Arab centric technology ecosystem that delivers unbiased information, empowers and connects Arab entrepreneurs, geeks, and technology professionals, both in the region and throughout the world via its properties, ArabCrunch En and Arabic blogs ArabCrunch.NET and its events.
ArabCrunch EN:
The ultimate source for Arab tech startups, companies, social media and mobile in the Arab world.
In 2009 ArabCrunch EN was ranked according to postrank as the in the top 24 worldwide engaged blogs ahead of Financial Times, WallStreet Journal and Forbes blogs about Entrepreneurship. Today ArabCrunch is ranked #6 worldwide in the blogs about innovation, 7th in e-commerce, 10th in the startups category according to invest.
ArabCrunch.NET
ArabCrunch.NET is the first and largest online social platform dedicated to connect and support technology companies, entrepreneurs, geeks, scientists, academia and investors in the Arab world.

About Spirula Systems:

Spirula Systems is a startup that is located in Alexandria, Egypt. Following the professional open source business model, and embracing free software values, Spirula aims to support the small to medium business switch its IT infrastructure – or part of it – to the use of open source software. This support varies, starting from switching the systems and being the second level support, to designing complicated structures spread across multiple geographical locations and operating such a system so as to keep it secure and to help maintain its high performance.
Supporting the local free/open source software communities is a commitment that we have taken upon ourselves, as without such communities all the software we use would not exist.

Our mission is to support and encourage business decision makers in adopting Free/Open Source Software, by offering high quality, reliable, and affordable services. While our vision to achieve that is to give systems, security, and infrastructure services to small-to-medium businesses, while targeting the local market, the MENA region, and the whole world.

After Yahoo acquired  Maktoob last year, many of Maktoob group companies were merged under one independent brand called Jabbar. Somehow similar precedence happened with Orascom Telecom’s LinkDotNet 150 million USD buyout to Mobinil, but at a larger scale.

Orascom Telecom which is one of the largest tech and telecom groups in the Arab world, has been facing legal disputes with France Telecom as the 2 are biggest shareholders of Egyptian Mobile operator Cairo-based Egyptian Co., which operates under the brand Mobinil.

So on July 3rd 2010 Mobinil agreed to pay 130 Million USD to  acquire the ISP unit of Orascom’s LINKDotNet SAE and Link Egypt SAE as part of an agreement that settled the legal dispute between Orascom and France Telecom SA.

However,  the non-ISP business unites were not part of the deal, so OTVENTURES was born as a new addition to the Orascom Telecom group.

The birth of OTVentures was announced on July 6th but overlooked by the mainsteam media, so here is quick profile of the new company which seems to be the largest indigenous Arab Internet play in terms of reach:

- OTVentures CEO is Hanan Abdel Meguid who is former CEO of Link Development.

- OTVentures says it hires 700 team members operating across over 17 countries.

The holding companies:

LinkOnlLine:

Founded  in 2002, now one of the largest, if not the largest Arab Internet company with the following Portals:

MSN Arabia:

MSN Arabia is the result of LinkOnLine partnership writhe Microsoft, MSN Arabia is available in English and Arabic. It covers Windows live services and the MSN Arabia Portal.

MSN arabia portal offers wide range of content such as: news, business and financial guides, technology, health, fitness and diet tips, entertainment games, and celebrity gossip games. The site is also integrated with other LinkOnLine products such as Otlob.

MSN Arabia uses MS bing as the default search engine after it abandoned LinkOnLine’s own search Engine Onkush. As a Portal MSN Arabia main competitor is Yahoo Maktoob and as Bing is available in Arabic, Google is the main search competitor. However Aljazeera and other news and vertical sites might also be considered as competitors.

Masraway:

One the most popular Arabic portal geared towards egyptians, Masrway offers a wide array of content and services:

News, Classified, Jokes, Video sharing, Games (single and Multi player ), SMS ( 1-Egyptian and Saudi user subscribe can get news at the of cost 4 EP per month, 2- online paid service to send SMS to other mobile phones), TV Guide, E-Gov Services (links to e-gov services) Jobs ( integrated with Linkonline careermdieast job portal), Women channel, Thanaweya Amma ( high school results), Anti Women Harassment ( good job ), Music, Travel, Food Delivery (via LinkOnLine’s otolb) Ketabat ( user generated Arabic content and news -citizen journalism), greeting cards, Hosting and Domains and webmail.

Yallakora:

In operations since 2002 providing Arabic English, news and content for football leagues in the Arab region especially in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia & Morocco and most of the European and other regional tournaments in the world. The site also offers an Arabic fantasy Football competition and iPhone app.

YallaKora key competitors are: kooora.com, Filgoal (from Sarmady a Vodafone company in Egypt), Goal.com and Yahoo Maktoob Sports. Yallakora English version still has Onkush as a default search engine, seems the developing team forgot to add bing instead.
MSN Maghreb:

MSN Maghreb is a French version of MSN Arabia targeting French speaking users in countries like Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.

Mazika:

Arabic Music Portal offering legal Music Audio and Video streaming and Islamic Nasheed with the option to buy via “Credit Card”, the site also provides online Audio & Video streaming and celebrity news.

On the entertainment front Saramady Vodafone company has Filfan a portal with content related to Music and cinema.

On Mobile, Nokia X6 Comes with Music offers free Music download for one year.

Otlob:

An online food ordering site through which orders can be placed to many restaurants in Egypt, UAE, KSA and Bahrin. And otlobmall.com a mall shopping site.

Yallabina:

Entertainment and city guide for Cairo, covering major events, concerts, and cultural events.

CareerMideast:

Job recruitment site for the Arab world, according to the about page the site has 500,000 CVs which is 25% of Bayt’s claimed CVs  number. Careermideast currently offering free job posting for employers.

LinkonLine ID: is linkdotnet single login to all its sites.

El3ab:

Online bilingual gaming offering  flash based single player & multiplayer games. The site says they will add Game Reviews Channel for reviewing the newest games worldwide. And a Fan Shop, for buying different elements “which will enhance gaming experience on el3ab.” The site offers traditional Middle Eastern games such Tarneeb and chess.

Other regional players in the Arab Gaming include: Tahdi from Jabbar, Tarneeb.com, kammelna popular baloot game from Saudi based remal IT and Wizard productions ( merged with Go3Media, it has recently received funding from Ossama Fiyad former Data Chief Office Yahoo and Chairman of D1G and Oasis 500.) and Yallagamescafe.

Baraca Arabia:

News and content for FC Barcelona Arabic fans.

Shofha:

The first Arabic legal video service, or the HULU of the Arab world. Shofha is made possible with strategic partnership with Rotana the leading Arabic entertainment company. The site offers users to: buy: download and view for a life time, renting: download and view for 48 hours and online streaming. Payment is via credit card or Linkdotnet cards.

Shofha uses unforunityly Microsoft’s Silverlight platform instead of HTML 5.

Yahoo Maktoob on the other hand has formed recently a partnership with Rotana to use and stream Rotana’s wide range of multimedia content, including music, videos, movies, concerts, TV channels and radio, through its upcoming Video Network channel for the Arabic speaking world.

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Tala who owns Rotana is planning to launch a new Arabic television news channel in partnership with the Fox network. The Prince  is also an investor in Rubert Murdoch’s News Corp who in his part made recently a $70m investment for 9.1% of Rotana.

Arab Finance:

Arab Finance Provides online trading for the Egyptian stock market, financial news, tools and analysis. It also has “Isharet el Borsa” desktop app offering real time stock quotes info, charts and other technical info.

Arab Finance also has free iPhone application for the Egyptian Stock market, providing real-time access to the Egyptian Stock Market.

Other indepandant players in the Stock segment include the following:
-Awarmer: from Suadi based Remal IT offers online trading for the Saudi Stock Market.

-Argaam: UAE based Gulf-focused financial news portal.

-Saudi Based N2V’s Mubasher.info offers comprehensive financial news and analysis tools for Saudi Stock Exchange, Dubai Financial Market, Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, Egyptian Stock Exchange, Amman Stock Exchange, Kuwait Stock Exchange, Muscat Securities Market, Doha Securities Market, Bahrain Stock Exchange, and Palestine Securities Exchange

-From National Technology Group the mother company of N2V, Mubasher Trade offers trading for Egyptian stock market and UAE stocks. And Mubasher NET for retail investors, offering market data desktop app.

-From Jordan Tickerchart: Stock analysis software for Arab  stock exchanges.

Link Data Center:

Offers a range of hosting solutions for enterprise and small and mid size business, notably: Managed Dedicated Hosting ,which offers firewalls and load-balancing devices. However we do not know which environment is supported, like the different Linux distributions, as all Otvenutres is based on Microsoft .NET technologies.

The other regional Data center we know of in the region is Bahrain based Kulacom data center in Jordan

Link Development

Is one of the largest  regional ISV, software developer and out-sourcing companies in the region. Link Development is a key regional partner to Microsoft and its products such as MS Dynamics. Link Development most notable in-house developed product is: Tempo, an Enterprise 2.0 product which is based on Microsoft Sharepoint, offering corporate blogging, employees profile, document sharing, forums, HR forums and so on.

Link Development competitors are widespread from other Microsoft ISVs to small website development companies to Oracle and its partners to open source software that offer free alternative to MS products such as Sharepoint and Dynamics.

ARPU +:

Launched in October 2003, specialized in providing Value Added Services (VAS) and platform solution in the Mobile in the telecom field. Competitors are  in many of the verticals  the company operates in. This include: Eskandenia and Globitel from Jordan and info2cell.

ConnectAds:

Is the online adverting arm of O2Ventures, it represents many sites of o2ventures and is the official representative of Facebook in the Arab world.

Other advertising networks in the Arab world include: Sarmady, iKoo which resulted from Jabbar buying e-marketing MENA and N2V’s Net Advantage . More regional online advertising companies can be found here.

If we missed anything please let us know.

Capinnova Investment Bank, the Shari’a compliant investment banking arm of BBK (Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait), announced 2 days ago a minority investment of $20 million in EBLA Computer Consultancy.

EBLA was established in Kuwait in 1993, and currently has subsidiaries in Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt and branch offices in Syria, Jordan and Bahrain. the company develops custom enterprise software and resells software for Microsoft, FileNet in the areas of enterprise collaboration, Enterprise CMS, System management.

Jamal Hijres, CEO of Capinnova stated in a press release that this is investment is one of the largest technology investments in the GCC in this year for his company.

EBLA plans to use the equity injection to grow both organically through geographic expansion and offering its clients additional product and services as well as through strategic acquisitions.

Capinnova has an authorized capital of US$500 million and paid-up capital of US$125 million. The Bank’s core areas of business include private equity, asset management and corporate finance and develops Shari’a compliant investment products and services for financial institutions, companies & establishments, high-net-worth-individuals and family businesses, regionally and globally.

Congratulation EBLA,  I hope you do not require GCC governments to use the dying IE 6.0.

Another Investemnt round made recently in the tech sector in Arabia as Intel Capital, Intel Corporation’s global investment subsidiary, announced yesterday an investment in NeuString, a UAE-based telecommunications analyst software company. With this investment Intel Capital total investment in Arab based companies this year, totals to six, from Jordan: Jeeran and ShooFeeTV and from UAE, Conservus International FZ-LLC, Pulse Technologies FZ-LLC, Vertex Animation Studio FZ-LLC.

The funding from Intel Capital will assist NeuString in pursuing regional growth and development plans in addition to extending the company’s product offerings. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
NeuString is a billing software company dedicated to delivering predictive analytics solutions and consulting services to mobile network operators to help them achieve greater financial performance. With offices in the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Russia, and Ukraine, NeuString has experienced teams who have been active in the telecommunications industry for more than two decades.

(via The National.)

Sakhr one of the oldest Arabic software companies, founded in 1982 has acquired Silicon Valley based startup, Dial Directions , a voice-activated phone service for driving directions.

I remember the first PC I used in my life was from Sakhr back in the late 80s, running its own property Arabic Operating system, where I used to play games. But during the 90s, Sakhr PC met the dust for Win-tel based PCs. However this announcement is significant because, I think it is the first time an Arab tech company acquires an American IT company (There are rumors of the other way around deals coming soon).

Today, Sakhr ( which competes with ARABCRUNCH DEMO 09 presenter Al-Khawarizmy in the Arabic search technology category) is specialized in Arabic and NLP software solutions selling basically to government and corporations, with products in the fields of: Speech to Speech Translation, Arabic/English Machine Translation (MT), Arabic/English Text to Speech, Arabic ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Arabic enterprise &Internet search, Text Mining, Arabic OCR. Arabic CMS and (LMS.)

While Dial Directions enables users to dial a special number, ask for an address, business or event, and Dial Directions send an SMS with the address or an intersection. Dial Directions has also released an iPhone voice apps “ Say Who” and “Say where” .

The merger will bring together, Sakhr’s skills in Arabic language and Dial’s skills in network-based speech recognition technology and mobile applications expertise. Both companies have released a beta version of the first real-time speech-to-speech Arabic and English translations for iPhone and Black Berry (see Video below.)

The voice translation solution enables English and Arabic speakers to speak their native language, hear the audio translation, and read the text translation – all with an iPhone or Blackberry. According to TechCrunch the application is currently in testing with select enterprise customers, with plans to release a consumer version around the end of the summer. It appears that the voice will be translated on the cloud via Sakhr translation software, and then the translated input will be sent back to the phone in audio and text, with a matter of seconds. So if there is no Network there won’t be translations.

I do not know how accurate the translation will be, but for short sentences I think it will do fine, however I doubt it will do well in complex long sentences.

Sakhr already sells products to the U.S. departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice, as well as to corporate clients. It provides Arabic and English translations for computers. Adeeb Shanaa, Dial’s co-founder and now CEO of privately held Sakhr Software, told Investor’s Business Daily that the technology will be used by to at least some U.S. military personnel serving in Arabic-speaking nations such as Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

According to Sakhr US press release, the merged firm will keep the Sakhr Software name, all Dial Directions employees have joined Sakhr. The combined company has 200 employees, and will be led by Shanaa as Chief Executive Officer. Fahad Al Sharekh, Sakhr’s previous chief executive, has become Chairman and remains actively involved in developing strategic partnerships for the company. Sakhr’s management team will be based in Silicon Valley and Washington, DC, with an offshore development office in the Middle East. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
( Via: Investor’s Business Daily, TechCrunch and Sakhr.)




Post updated.

I am sorry for not posting much on AC during the last week because I was -and still- busy with multiple projects, however today’s post is about my recent interview with an interesting and successful Arab serial entrepreneur, Kamal Nasser, CEO of Dubai, UAE, based, Conservus International winner of the Red Herring 100 Europe in 2009.(Kamal Bio at the end of the post.)

Conservus provides digital targeted advertising medium known as the MyConservus Portal. The MyConservus Portal is an e-concierge service which highlights services available at a single location and provides advertisers with direct access to potential consumers while generating revenue from these advertisements. MyConverseuv is currently available in the hospitality sector and is growing into other sectors. In February 2009 Conservus was one of the three UAE based technology companies that got an investment from Intel Capital. The company is also one of Jordan based IV Holdings portfolio company.

Via skype, Kamal walked me through a demo that shows how MyConservus works in a hotel, the demo in this case was for Burj Al Arab.

The portal appears as a default homepage to the hotel’s guests, and it provides multi lingual information that you find in some other local portals such as a guide to Dubai, latest headlines, art and cultural, travel, fun and games. Though the difference is the portal also offers hotel related information and e-concierge services such as, ordering laundry and room service, accessing business center services such as printing and faxes as well as spa reservation.  And while Internet access in most hotels in the Arab world is paid, the access to the portal is offered free of charge to the hotel guests, and is being subsidized with paid ads. The information the portal offers to the hotel’s guests is useful, it assists a guest in deciding where to go around the city, check upcoming events, shop and use the travel section to do travel related reservations and get printed receipts.

Conservus portals’ competitive advantage is basically all about location – instead of being a general online portal that competes with others for eye balls, it’s the default browser page for the hotels guests, who in 5 star hotels are mostly in the higher income segment, and would be more apt to purchasing luxury products. Thus the type of advertising offered inside MyConservus Portal is much more targeted than other mediums in this segment. Kamal told me that the type of Ads Conservus offers are more effective for many reasons:“We provide a micro sites for the advertiser, it is not a banner and it is not site, it is a full page Ad, a landing page Ad.”  Kamal adds that the ads are related to the section; say in a travel section, you’ll get an Airline Ad. “The idea is to get a targeted audience to your Ad, It is also designed -in a way to make –the visitor- interested in your products.”

The Ads are flash based and interactive. For example in the Emirates Airline Ad Kamal demoed to me, users are able to check-in directly through the Ad and have the boarding pass printed in the business center in the hotel automatically “This is the most powerful targeted ad medium: because firstly it opens by default in front of a defined audience, second: they are based in pull-Ad concept, which means a user can only go to the Ad if they are really interested in the product, there are no pops or banners. 3rd, the placement of Ads on relevant sections.” Said Kamal, he adds “We are charging $3 per ‘engagement’, our rates are more expensive than the traditional CPM models because they are far more targeted and provide great value add to the advertisers in terms of space, content and functionality”.

Here is the full interview where Kamal provides more insights about his company and the other communities portals they are going to launch soon. (Many Thanks to Kamal who offered me his time.)

AC: What are your main products?

Kamal: Adaptive explicit portals, portals that are targeted to specific audience and carry information relevant to the geo location as well as the psychographic and demographic of the users in that particular location, our main 3 products, hospitality portals, enterprise and community life style.

AC: Do the enterprise and community life style portals have similar features to the hospitality portals?

Kamal: The hospitality portals carry information relevant to guests in a hotel, the enterprise portals carry information relevant to the trade conducted in that particular environment allowing people to interact within their community. And the community life style portals carry information relevant to those communities such as bringing on the nearby schools, retail, restaurants, and blogging within the community, finding activity partners, marketplace and other.

AC: who can use these portals?

Kamal: Only people within the community.

Last March we reported that CIApple, the startup that works in the field of computational intelligence, won the first place in ASTF ‘s technology business plan competition -seed category-, yesterday I recorded a video interview using my mobile with its founder and general manager, Hussein Al-Natsheh to track the startup progress since then.

In this interview Hussein tells us that his startup has grown now from a part time project to a full time business with the support of $21,000 a grant from SRTD and his startups’ first product “Ciapple Clustering Tool” is currently in beta testing.

We also discussed many other topics, such as the support Microsoft is offering startups like CIApple. Just play the interview to know more:




(Disclosure: Hussein Al-Natsheh is a friend of mine, he is also Technology Transfer Program (TCP) manager at Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE)  who was an organizing partner in the 1st ARABCRUNCH DEMO event)