Category: Portals

Yahoo! Maktoob: It’s Official, Yahoo! Acquiring Largest Arab Community Maktoob

MMM 13 Comments
Yahoo!
Maktoob

After months of rumors and speculation by many in the Arab internet industry, today the news is confirmed and made public officially: Yahoo! is acquiring Maktoob.com, making its big step into the Arab world by acquiring the biggest online Arab community.

A press conference was held at the Fairmont Hotel in Dubai to announce the deal with top executives from Maktoob and the Yahoo! Emerging Markets team.

The deal only involves the Maktoob.com portal and its sub-divisions (including Maktoob Research, Bentelhalal and others), that will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo!.

The other sister companies within the Maktoob Group which are: Souq.com, CashU, Tahadi, Araby and the newly acquired E-marketing MENA (which will be rebranded to Ikoo) are not part of the deal, and they will go on with business as usual under the group’s umbrella.
Following this deal, the group will be rebranding to Jabbar Internet Group (JIG), injected with a $20 million investment, and chaired by Samih Toukan.

The first steps after the deal closing in Q4, will be to work on introducing the Yahoo! Maktoob Arabic homepage, as well as Mail and Instant Messenger in Arabic; then to keep moving on to providing other Yahoo! services in Arabic, and enriching Arabic content online. Other local services for the region will also be considered and developed.

The financial details of the deal have not been made public, although many numbers have been floating around the internet over the past weeks and months, none of which have been confirmed by either companies.

This is the first time in the history of the internet in the Arab world that such a deal has taken place, and promises to take the internet industry in the region to a whole new level; hopefully in terms of quality, content, competition, awareness and investment opportunities.

When looking at other global players, Google chose to open small presences of its own, mainly in the UAE and Egypt, to work on some product concept development, marketing and sales in the region. Microsoft already have a wide existence in the Arab world, but mainly around their big software titles, only recently starting to look online in the Arab world.

Hopefully this deal, as well as Google and Microsoft’s moves in the region, will open the door for more international players to start seriously considering entering the online market in the Arab world, but even more importantly will show local investors the potential that exists in investing in sound internet startup ideas, and that with the region as an important emerging market, there are more exit strategies than they initially thought.

For more information on this, you can check out the story and the press release on Maktoob Business.

[Full Disclosure: I have been a Director of a Maktoob.com division ever since the beginning of 2009, and therefore haven’t been able to report on this story any earlier.]

Bezaat, A New Classifieds Portal For The Arab World

MMM 52 Comments

BezaatBezaat is a new free Arabic classifieds portal that was just launched out of Dubai in its beta version, and targeting all Arab countries and their major cities.

Even though there are local classifieds sites around the Arab world, with different levels of success, there hasn’t been one that covers the whole region and that has been that successful, and Bezaat hopes to fill that space by providing a region-wide platform for classified ads, aiming to solve users’ needs around the Arab world.

The Bezaat team chose to widen the scope and target the whole Arab world from day one so as to not be branded as a local classifieds site, limiting their chances to grow later on and expand.

To make the system more relevant for each country, the interface is customized according to local needs and interests, highlighting the more popular categories.

Bezaat

The interface is in Arabic only, and is really simple, straightforward and organized, making it easy to surf through the existing ads or to go through the process of posting a new one.

Bezaat is a product of Danat, the same company behind Logta and Laazi.

Wheels Express, Another Take At E-Commerce In Jordan

MMM 5 Comments

Wheels ExpressWheels Express is a newly launched Jordanian e-commerce portal, taking another hit at cracking the e-commerce nut in the Arab world.

The company’s activity lies somewhere between an online shopping portal and an offline delivery service; providing a catalog of products covering DVDs, books, magazines, t-shirts, tickets, snacks, pre-paid mobile cards and more; and delivering orders directly to your doorstep in Amman (within the 12 daily delivery hours).

Users get to sign up and put in their orders, which for most types of products should be delivered within an hour, if within the 12 hours of service, with payment in cash upon delivery.

Wheels Express

Wheels Express does not keep a stock of its own. What it does is list products provided by third party stores, and then acting as the middle-man; handling the order, delivery and payment process.

Wheels Express was founded by a Ibrahim Manna’, Ibrahim Al-Mani and Mohamed Al-Mani.

The web solution was developed by the new Jordanian web company Ideation Box.

D1G Announces Closing Of Its First Round Of Financing

MMM

D1GD1G just announced its closing of a first round of financing; that will go towards funding the site, its expansion and its infrastructure on the Internet.

According to the press release issued by the company, this first round has attracted a number of regional businessmen and international experts in the internet industry to join the site’s management.

Commenting on this round, Abdul-Majid Qasem, D1G Executive Director, said that the first round of investment was able to attract the necessary funding for the next phase, and that the amount raised would help the company improve its products and services to achieve the board of directors’ vision and aspirations.

He also noted that the next round of strategic investment negotiations with some of the leading capital and private equity firms in the region is currently ongoing.

D1G was founded in May 2006, and according to the numbers released by the company have been able to build a community of more than 3 million people per month over the past years, generating more than 20 million impressions and over 15 million online monthly videos. They also claim to have grown 100% in number of users during the first half of 2009 alone.

D1G’s growth has been both organic and through acquisitions, and it seems they’ll be sticking to the same approach for growth in the future.

Just a couple of months ago, D1G announced that Usama Fayyad, Ex- Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President at Yahoo!, had been appointed Executive Chairman of D1G to help develop the company and take it into its next stage of growth. He was already on their board of directors since September 2008.

D1G also announced that prominent Jordanian business man and investor Karim Kawar will become an Active Advisor on the company’s board of directors. Karim Kawar, who had previously served as Jordan’s Ambassador to the US, is currently advising a number of regional capital and technology companies.

Beeyoot, A New UAE Real Estate Property Listing Portal

MMM 8 Comments

BeeyootBeeyoot is a new real estate listings website for the UAE, that was just launched into public beta, and which aims to connect property sellers directly to buyers and renters.

With the current downturn in the real estate market in the country, you’d think this wouldn’t really be best of times to launch a new real estate portal; but Beeyoot believes otherwise and are sure that their model putting property owners and buyers or sellers directly in touch with each other, without any intermediaries, creates room for a new momentum in the distressed real estate industry.

Beeyoot’s platform aims to help buyers and renters save on property searching costs by providing them with a free service, while enabling sellers or landlords to list their properties for a modest fee (AED 50 / USD $15 per month for the basic package), with the benefit of dealing with buyers and renters directly.

More advanced packages for users who want their properties featured more prominently and investors who have multiple properties are also available.

Beeyoot

The interface was designed to be simple and usable, in the same time providing users with quite a rich set of functionalities and filters to find what they’re looking for.

The portal’s services are currently exclusive to the UAE market, however they are planning to franchise the platform to other GCC countries.

The service is currently in beta, and is for a limited time allowing free basic property listings.

Beeyoot also has a blog called ‘The Glasshouse’ which will be featuring relevant information articles about the real estate in the UAE by industry specialists.

Carlog.com, Egyptian Web 2.0 Automotive Portal

MMM

carlog.comCarlog.com is an online automotive portal, that aims to offer its users a complete and comprehensive web experience that enables them to manage all tasks related to their car and speed up all related processes for buying, selling or simply maintaining a car.

Through the portal, users can add and list their cars in the system and keep track of their maintenance history, having the service remind them of upcoming maintenance tasks they have to do for their car.

The site also enables people to search for cars to buy, or on the other hand, create ads to sell their own cars; making it an online marketplace for cars as well. Car dealerships can also use the service to list their available cars for sale on this online marketplace.

The interface was designed to be easy to use and to make it as simple as possible for online users to learn and manage everything throughout their car ownership lifecycle through various applications designed to satisfy the user’s current and future automotive needs.

carlog.com

Carlog.com was founded by Omar Soudodi, who previously founded now-defunct Accelarabia.com, and developed by Egyptian web company eSpace. The site has a dedicated management team from various backgrounds, such as investment banking, technology, marketing, and product development.

Carlog.com was launched at the 14th International African Arabian Exhibition for Vehicles, buses, and Automobile spare parts, Automech 2009; and were one of the participating demos in DemoCamp Cairo last month.

The portal is currently only targeted at users in Egypt only, and is in English, with an Arabic version following soon.

JoCr8, An Online Community For Visual Communicators And Artists In Jordan

MMM 3 Comments

JoCr8JoCr8 is a portal created to connect visual communicators and artists in Jordan, and to be a one-stop resource for them for everything related to design and visual arts.

The site is open to everyone who practices any of the visual arts disciplines; from the traditional painter to the designer to the 3D artist.

Users can register to the site to start uploading their work to build their portfolio, that other users will be able to go through and that they can use as a showcase when applying for jobs.
Signed up users can also go through other users’ uploaded material; leave their ratings and comments on their work; and get in touch with them really easily through the interface.

The portal also plays the role of an e-zine with interviews and articles on visual media whether in Jordan, the region, or around the world. It also publishes art and visual media related news and events mainly happening in Jordan.

On the other hand, JoCr8 makes it possible for users to post and share tutorials on different subjects and topics related to design and art, making the site a source of interesting documentation and learning material too.

JoCr8

Another part of the portal is a job postings section that provides information on visual media job opportunities in Jordan and around the region. Job applications aren’t handled through the site though, it’s just a listings section, and users apply seperately to the jobs.

Jocr8, which was founded by Tambi Jalouqa and is a product of Binary Interactive Studios, won the silver award in the online communities category at the Jordan Web Awards 2008 show.

Argaam Opens Up To Contributions Through Alpha Beta

MMM 1 Comment

Alpha BetaArgaam, the Arabic financial portal, has just launched Alpha Beta, a section of the portal for informed visitors to contribute through posting their analysis of news and events taking place in the market, as well as any information that they might have that isn’t necessarily common knowledge to everyone interested in the stock market and economy in general.

Alpha Beta is open for direct contributions in the form of articles, news, opinions, analysis about regional or worldwide stock markets, investment opportunities; as well as comments and followup on articles published on the portal.

Argaam hope to create a vibrant open environment for discussion and sharing of new ideas, enabling the portal’s visitors to connect, interact and exchange opinions and information that will help enrich and develop the investment culture in the Arab world.

The portal’s editors will go over submitted material before it is published to make sure of its quality, accuracy and reliability, as well as its adherence to the guidelines for these articles, which ask for them to be focused, unbiased and precise among other criteria.

It’s an interesting move from Argaam, attempting to tap into the knowledge of the crowds for insider information about a financial market where there’s more to each story than what figures in the official press releases and news, in addition to all that takes place behind the scenes.

As with the parent portal Argaam, Alpha Beta is available in Arabic only.

Sejaal, An Online Community For Arab Poets And Poetry Competitions

MMM 2 Comments

SejaalSejaal is a new online community portal for Arab poets and poetry competitions that was recently officially launched by Jeeran, a leading Arabic user generated content portal, in its efforts to enrich the Arabic internet with a new type of genuine content and a new crowd of users.

Sejaal’s vision is to be the place for poets from around the world, and to provide poets with tools that help them express their talent and share their creativity with other poets and people online.

A “Sejaal” is a traditional activity that Arabic poets used to enjoy throughout ancient times. This form of poetry has faded in the last century due to the invasion of modern lifestyles, as well as cultural dilution. The web site was specifically designed to replicate the real life experience of a traditional “Sejaal” and therefore revive this form by riding on the most popular medium today –the Internet- making it available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Sejaal

With the beta version launched earlier in January of this year and even though sejaal is an invitation only site where only the good poets are allowed to join, to maintain the level of quality of the poetry at this very early stage, over 300 competitions were created, the topics of which reflected the general mood of events taking place in real life. For example, a competition on the sad events that took place in Gaza was started by Sejaal users through which the poets wrote 50 verses criticizing the attacks against Palestinians and encouraging the resistance of the Palestinian people.

Conservus International Wins Red Herring 100 Europe Award

MMM

ConservusRed Herring recently announced that Conservus International was named a winner of the Red Herring 100 Europe, an award given to the top 100 private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region each year.

Conservus International is responsible for the conceptualization, design and development of a 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.

Conservus International has similar e-concierge portals that can be used in the Hospitality, Business and Community sectors, and seeks to expand the MyConservus portal’s reach internationally by entering into potential franchise discussions with technology companies.

Conservus was one of the three UAE based technology companies that got an investment from Intel Capital earlier this year, and are also an IV Holdings portfolio company.

Red Herring’s lists of top private companies are an important part of the publication’s tradition of identifying new and innovative technology companies and entrepreneurs. Companies like Google, eBay, and Skype were spotted in their early days by Red Herring editors, and touted as leaders that would change the way we live and work.