Intel Capital Invests In Three Middle East Companies: Nymgo, Jeeran And ShooFeeTV

The World Economic Forum in Marrakech yesterday witnessed some really interesting news from Intel Capital, which announced 3 new investments in the Middle East; UK-Lebanon based Nymgo, as well as Jordanian companies Jeeran and ShooFeeTV.

This investment marks a second round of investment from Intel Capital in both Jeeran and ShooFeeTV (both also IV Holdings portfolio companies), after the previous investment that was announced in May of last year.

The investment in Nymgo also marks Intel Capital’s expansion of its portfolio in the Arab world to a total of eight companies: Nymgo, Jeeran, ShooFeeTV, Conservus, Pulse Technologies, Vertex Animation Studio, NeuString and Sphere Networks.

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ShooFeeTV Goes On And Launches Its TV Channel

ShooFeeTVShooFeeTV has gone on as planned and launched its own television channel, which will air an around-the-clock scrolling guide of programs from more than 150 of the most popular satellite channels on the ArabSat and NileSat platforms.

Clips and trailers for upcoming shows and movies will also be aired on the channel, through segments like its ShooFee Aflam, ShooFee 7elo and ShooFee Riyada.

The channel will also broadcast original content developed by ShooFeeTV, where hosts discuss entertainment news.

ShooFeeTV also has plans to integrate some of the features from their portal into the TV channel, such as discussion boards and comment threads for individual shows.

The TV channel has been a project ShooFeeTV has been pursuing and preparing for from the beginning as another platform to provide their service and information to viewers, as well as drive more people to their portal.

The new ShooFeeTV channel is being broadcast via the Arabsat Badr-4 satellite.

Intel Capital Invests In Two Jordanian Companies Jeeran And ShooFeeTV

Intel
Jeeran
ShooFeeTV

In a joint press conference today in Amman, Jordan, Intel Capital‘s latest investments in the Arab internet scene were announced.

These new investments from Intel Capital are in Jordanian internet companies Jeeran, one of the leading user generated content portals in the Arab world, and ShooFeeTV, a free online Arabic television guide. Both companies are also IV Holdings portfolio companies.

This comes among Intel Capital’s ongoing push in the region, supporting local entrepreneurship in the Middle East and funding companies in the internet and technology sectors through its $50 million Intel Capital Middle East and Turkey Fund, which is aimed to assist the companies in pursuing regional growth and development plans in addition to extending their product offerings.

Under the umbrella of this fund, Intel continues to increase its investment in four key areas: local entrepreneurship, education, digital accessibility and specialized technical competencies, to help promote technology skills, knowledge transfer and jobs creation.

As has become custom for most such investments in the Arab world, the size of these investments has not been disclosed.

ShooFeeTV Launches Newly Designed Bilingual Version

ShooFeeTV

ShooFeeTV, the free online Arabic television guide, is officially launching a new bilingual version of their website a bit later today, at a launch party held in their Amman offices.

The new version comes in both Arabic and English, with a new more simplistic design, as well as a more powerful search engine, allowing users to find whatever they’re looking for faster. 

Among the other new features and additions that were introduced with this new version are:

– The possibility to search either by theme or by type through the 100,000 database entries and the listings detailing the times and programming for the Arab world’s most popular satellite channels. (“Drama”, “Comedy” or television series, films, sports events and other types.)

– The introduction of tagging and tag clouds to better organize the content and help users find what they’re looking for.

– The use of optimized high-quality, high-resolution images on the home page.

ShooFeeTV

ShooFeeTV To Broadcast From Jordan Media City

ShooFeeTVShooFeeTV has signed an agreement with the Jordan Media City (JMC) to transmit its free-to-air satellite channel from the JMC site in Amman.

ShooFeeTV’s state-of-the-art data center will link to JMC by a fiber-optic connection that will carry the signal from ShooFeeTV to the satellite platform ArabSat via JMC’s facilities.

After extensive market research, ShooFeeTV decided to go with JMC not only because of their experience and extremely efficient operations. “It’s a tightly run ship,” says Amjad Tadros, founder and CEO of ShooFeeTV.

The ShooFeeTV agreement with the JMC represents a company philosphy of quality and excellence. On-screen graphics and broadcast equipment come from The Harris Corporation, and provide flexibility and reliability for businesses that can’t afford to go offline. The Harris broadcast equipment can be easily integrated with ShooFeeTV’s online and mobile phone products.

ShooFeeTVShooFeeTV, the premier content provider of Arab satellite channel information on television, the web and third-party services, will air an around-the-clock scrolling guide of programs from more than 150 of the most popular satellite channels on the ArabSat and NileSat platforms. With original quality programs to supplement the channel such as ShooFee Aflam, ShooFee 7elo and ShooFee Riyada, the channel will serve as the only information portal continually updating viewers on the best films, series, sports and more.

The business has been built on a conceptually designed model that allows for a seamless transfer of content from ShooFeeTV’s data center to the final-content viewer.

In addition to the channel and a highly developed website, viewers will be able to access ShooFeeTV’s content through a variety of media, including mobile phones, podcasts and syndication services.

ShooFeeTV Free Arab TV Guide Service Officially Launched

ShooFeeTVShooFeeTV, a free online Arabic television guide, has officially been launched as a useful resource for TV fans, allowing them access to the program grids for the 120 most popular channels, carried by NileSat and ArabSat.

ShooFeeTV has been under development for some time now, recently going public with a beta while they ironed out the final details before this release. But they’ve already been syndicating content to Maktoob’s TV Guide section well before the launch.

The site holds a wealth of information revolving around Arab TV channels, their programming, details about the different shows, movies and actors (both Arab and foreign); and this information is provided in a number of different ways, to make it as easy as possible for the user to find what they’re looking for quickly.
Short news features about popular programs and actors are provided by the ShooFeeTV team too. 

Photos and videos from the world of television are also made available that users can view and share with their friends. ShooFeeTV users can add comments, vote in weekly entertainment polls and participate in discussion forums and television-related blogs available on the site.

From the beginning, the site recognizes which country a user is located in, and automatically sets the programming grid to their local time, eliminating any painful time conversions.
To further personalize their use of the website, users can log on on and create their own listings grid featuring their favorite channels, using the ‘My ShooFeeTV’ feature.

ShooFeeTV screenshot

The website features selected programs highlighted by the site’s independent editorial team, as well as the most popular programs, as ranked by users of the service.

ShooFeeTV also provides a podcast, which in three minutes each time takes viewers one week ahead, highlighting upcoming movies, sports events and television shows. The podcast will also be available on iTunes.

ShooFeeTV doesn’t stop at the online side of things; taking things a step further to distribute their content through a number of other channels. For example, they plan to distribute a special version of the podcast to radio stations who wish to provide TV programming to their listeners; mobile services giving users access to TV listings on their mobile phones should be coming soon; deals are being pursued to syndicate their content to other portals, newspapers and magazines; and a satellite TV channel featuring Arab TV listings is part of the plan.

ShooFeeTV was launched from Jordan; it was founded by entrepreneur Amjad Tadros. 
Accelerator Technology Holdings (ATH), through their IV Holdings arm, announced their investment in the startup earlier this year.

ShooFeeTV

Accelerator Technology Holdings (ATH) Invests In ShooFeeTV

ShooFeeTVAccelerator Technology Holdings (ATH) announced its investment in ShooFeeTV, a Jordan based interactive entertainment portal that will be targetting satellite television viewers across the Arab world.

ShooFeeTV will be boosted in its aims to combine mobile, online, and satellite technology in order to become this region’s original multi-platform TV guide.

ShooFeeTV haven’t officially launched their service yet, and typing in their domain name ShooFeeTV.com gives you a simple splash page, even thought they’ve been working on a beta version that has been available online for months now here.

No further details were announced about the deal, its terms or the size of the investment.

A more detailed profile of ShooFeeTV and their service will be published on StartUpArabia soon.

# Source: Accelerator Technology Holdings (ATH)
# Related: Ajabni (AR)