Executive Magazine

Top 20 Entrepreneurs in 2015

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

Every year Executive highlights 20 of the finest entrepreneurs in Lebanon. For this year, we focused on companies which either had a strong environmental or social impact, and which had a large job creation prospect.

Listed in alphabetical order below, the following entrepreneurs and businesses are those that Executive has chosen as the Top 20 enterprises in the Lebanese ecosystem, which scored highly in the above categories of impact and employment. To see more about the Lebanese ecosystem, and how these companies fit into the sector, visit our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section.

CardioDiagnostics

When Ziad Sankari lost his father to a heart attack at the age of 17, the tragic circumstances motivated him to develop tools to monitor cardiac signals from the heart in a bid to catch and prevent life threatening conditions. By 2010, at age 24, he was a biomedical engineer, and in 2012 he founded CardioDiagnostics, a startup which offers wearable hardware and a service package to analyze the data received from the cardiac devices. (Read more)

Carpolo

Carpolo was started by Ralph Khairallah, a business planning instructor with previous startup experience, and Mohamad Nabaa, a recent graduate in computer science from the Beirut Arab University, in mid 2015. It’s an app dedicated to carpooling and lift sharing for university students in Lebanon. Similar to the European website BlaBlaCar, which offers shared rides to passengers from drivers between cities, Carpolo aims to reduce carbon emissions and congestion through car-sharing in the metropolitan area, and is due to be piloted at AUB. (Read more)

Dream Matcher

Ali Chehade’s Dream Matcher networking event began as an online startup, inspired by an idea for a television show which subsequently pivoted into an offline company. The Dream Matcher ‘experience’ is a networking event that lasts for a couple of hours and hosts 50 to 70 people. During the event, participants write their dreams on post-it notes, stick them to a large wall and have them viewed by others. In a bid to help one another achieve their ambitions, participants with relevant skill sets approach the post-it writer during the event to offer their assistance with their ‘dreams’. (Read more)

Fallound

Fallound is a startup founded by Stefano Fallaha and Emad Yehya, a high school student and a computer science undergraduate at AUB respectively, who identified a gap in the social networking and messaging market. Habib Haddad, the chief executive officer of Wamda, serves as their advisor. Their product is a ‘hands-free voice-based’ app which uses 27 second voice notes to create and deliver a stream of online content that forms the base for a social network. (Read more)

Figurit

Haramoun Hamieh, a digital content manager with five years experience at Al-Hayat newspaper, and Ahmad Sharif, a senior information management consultant at Layout International, came together to form Figurit after their apparent frustrations with the workflow process within the journalism sector. They have developed an “intelligent data-driven dashboard”, as described by Hamieh, to provide journalists with information and analytics in trending stories. (Read more)

Krimston Two

Krimston labels itself as inventing the solution for all Apple lovers who are recurring travellers and tired of having to switch phones when abroad. Co-founders Fouad Fattal and Nabil Nasr have developed a product, due to go live early 2016, that is a new SIM card solution to enable users to operate a cell phone with two SIM cards. The product, which looks like a phone cover, can be understood as a ‘phone without a screen’. A SIM card slots into the cover, and a downloaded app enables the user to interchange between the two SIM cards and use them both. (Read more)

Le Wagon

When Malik El-Khoury returned to Lebanon in 2014, he was surprised at the lack of appropriate developers he could recruit for the tech startup he wished to establish. After spying a gap in the market, he decided in 2015 to licence the ‘Le Wagon’ program from the French coding school of the same name, which was formed in 2013 by Boris Paillard. Though the program itself is not an original startup, the idea of licensing and hosting such an event displays an entrepreneurial tour de force from El-Khoury, and is worthy of one of Executive’s top 20 places in this year’s startups in Lebanon. (Read more)

Lebtivity

Lebtivity was started in May 2012, after one of the five co-founders realized there was no central page in Lebanon that contained information about future hiking events. After brainstorming, they decided to expand beyond a page dedicated to hiking to include all types of events in Lebanon. Since their inception, the website has grown and people are allowed to add their event to the page for free. Randa Farah, one of the co-founders, has spoken of the positive feedback that Lebtivity has received, with many users remarking how surprised they were at the sheer quantity of events taking place in the country. (Read more)

Markelligent

Markelligent, a startup founded at the end of 2014 by Fadwa Mohanna and Elias el-Khoury, aims to harness the IoT through collecting data from the sensors and providing companies with services relating to data analytics. Their intention is to offer IoT solution packages to citizens’ pre-existing problems, generating revenue for Markelligent and improving the quality of collective lives. Once a challenge has been identified, Markelligent develops the needed sensors to measure the readings related to that challenge and start collecting all kinds of data generated by those sensors on their cloud. (Read more)

Modeo

MomAdvice

Rita Deek, a trained psychologist, was continuously approached at children’s birthday parties by mothers anxious about the psychological behavior of their children. After several rounds of questions, examples of which included how parents should deal with child bullying, she and her co-founder, child and youth counsellor Nicholas Chehade, decided to put together MomAdvice. The startup, which was formed in September 2015, is a mobile phone app that connects mothers with a team of 10 specialist child psychologists, who are vetted and have their credentials thoroughly checked by the two co-founders. (Read more)

Moodfit

In 2014 Tarek Jaroudi, Mohamed Sabouneh and Ghassan Abi Fadel, students in the American University of Beirut’s (AUB) MBA program, were frustrated with the lack of easy communication between interior designers and potential clients, and came together to form Moodfit. Having conducted extensive research with suppliers, designers and clients, the final product is an online interior design program which enables a user to transform a space with the help of top interior designers, and removes the need for the continuous on-the-ground presence of an interior designer. (Read more)

Next Automated Robots

What started as a final year university project at the Lebanese American University in Byblos in August 2014 has evolved into Next Automated Robots (NAR), a startup in Speed’s acceleration program that is working to produce a fully-autonomous 24/7 drone called “QuadroFighter”. The aim of the drone is to detect wildfires at an early stage, and target markets are governments and private NGOs, or individuals cultivating wide areas of land. The drone alerts the user through desktop or mobile applications, without piloting, and relays the coordinates of the wildfire. (Read more)

ReAble

When Emile Sawaya’s younger brother was diagnosed with autism seven years ago, he became aware that the market offered very limited technological tools for independence for those with cognitive difficulties. Fast forward to 2015, Sawaya and his blind co-founder, Paul Saifi, have developed the ‘ReAble wallet’ that focuses on money management and financial transactions for people with autism and eventually for a broader range of people with special needs. Sawaya’s main motivation is that many people with autism have difficulties with the concept of understanding value and the premise of value exchange, especially with monetary difference that is owed to them after a transaction. (Read more)

Sensio AIR

Sensio AIR is the creation of Cyrille Najjar and neuroscientist Eve Tamraz, who founded the White Lab in early 2015 and have recently relocated to London with the second phase of the UK Lebanon Tech Hub acceleration program. Their product centers around a piece of hardware which detects “allergens like pollen, acarids and mold as well as harmful gasses” as quoted by the company, and feeds data on the quality of the air back to an app on a mobile device for analysis and notification. The patent for their device is filed in both the UK and Lebanon, which they have identified as key parts to their main sales market. (Read more)

Taaheel

Taaheel was started in 2005, when Hoda Bibi – chair of the educational department at the Lebanese International University who holds a doctorate in educational counselling – became frustrated at the standardized tools of assessment in schools, which she felt were culturally inappropriate for the MENA region. After three years she and a team developed a battery of tests which can be used to assess children to identify special needs, a first crucial step before any assistance can be offered to the child in question, and subsequently develop an educational course of action. (Read more)

TEDMOB

TEDMOB – Technology Entertainment Development for Mobile – was formed at the end of August 2015 by Mario Hachem and four silent financial backers. The firm offers clients services from three main business avenues: app development, value added service to mobile operators, and offering consulting services to ‘appreneurs’ – startups which are app-based and need support during development and launch. (Read more)

Teens Who Code

TickleMyBrain

Tara Nehme, the Lebanese-Canadian founder of TickleMyBrain (TMB), first noticed that people’s resumes needed assistance when a friend asked her to check their CV at the last moment before applying for a job in Dubai. What started as a small career advice blog in 2012 has evolved into an online platform dedicated to improving the presentations of users’ credentials. TMB offers services for improving documents (such as resumes and various applications) uploaded to their website for a minimal fee of $99 for the basic package, and $5,000 for a business plan. (Read more)

Urbacraft

January 22, 2016 1 comment

Mother and child reunion

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

This company is part of Executive’s Top 20 for 2015. Read more stories from our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section, for the latest analysis on the country’s ecosystem.

MomAdvice

Industry: e-Health

Product: Health care app

Product launch: 2016

Established: 2015

Employees: 3

Founders: Rita Deek and Nicholas Chehade

The investment in e-health related technology has been earmarked by Lebanon for Entrepreneurs (LFE) and the Investment Development Authority of Lebanon (IDAL)’s joint survey on development opportunities for Lebanon’s ICT subsector. Deek has identified mental health as an area which still attracts social stigma, and has developed an application which she feels provides an important source of support for mothers concerned about openly seeking help for their children. The app provides one-to-one chat features with psychologists who receive queries about users’ children, and respond accordingly, in a WhatsApp-style chat facility. There is no age limit to the child that can be discussed, and the app is currently being developed for both Android and iOS operating systems.

Therapy sessions are often expensive, and in Deek’s experience in Lebanon, mothers are often reluctant to seek crucial support due to financial and social pressure. The revenue model is based on subscriptions, and is currently valued at $15 per week or $50 per month for each user, with an 80:20 revenue split for the psychologists and MomAdvice respectively. While competitors exist in the US, research conducted by Deek identifies that within the region there are no psychological platforms which specifically cater to mothers and children, and she feels this gives MomAdvice an added boost as a startup which solely focuses on a niche market. MomAdvice’s ambitions for expansion stretch far beyond the region. They intend to recruit local psychologists who are certified and legal within their country of operations, and ensure they remain country specific. Currently 50 beta testers (who are mothers based in Lebanon) are giving very positive and helpful feedback. The app is due to be launched in 2016, and MomAdvice has recruited both a business and a software developer after a capital injection of $25,000 from AltCity’s Bootcamp program. According to MomAdvice’s projections, by the third year of operations the company should reach 60,000 users and generate $500,000 in income.

Overcoming the stigma surrounding the discussion of mental health is important, a stigma which is often present in any culture, and Deek hopes that the social impact of her startup will provide vulnerable individuals the chance to discuss anxiety-inducing problems. While she stresses that her team of psychologists will advise users to seek face-to-face counseling for serious issues, she concedes that there is no intermediate support network for mothers looking to receive advice on how to deal with lesser problems, such as continual bedwetting. This is a gap MomAdvice is hoping to fill.

January 22, 2016 0 comments

Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship in Lebanon

Educating with intelligence

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

This company is part of Executive’s Top 20 for 2015. Read more stories from our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section, for the latest analysis on the country’s ecosystem.

Taaheel

(Lebanese Association for Rehabilitation and Development)

Industry: Education

Product: Special educational needs assessment kit

Product launch: 2008

Established: 2008

Employees: 9

Founder: Hoda Bibi

The battery enables testing the IQ, mental development, and emotional intelligence of the child, and deducing the academic achievement. Each domain outlined has tests and quantitative and qualitative tools to assess children, and Bibi’s target group is teachers who are working. As many students have learning difficulties, Taaheel’s tool kit enables teachers to assess a child with tools which are more appropriate to the cultural setting, to analyze the development of the child and with the results determine an individual education plan (IEP) for the child in question. The National Council for Scientific Research sponsored the most recent study in Lebanon in 2011-2012, and Bibi has subsequently been training and selling the kit.

Bibi’s intention is to have this tool in each and every school in the Arab world, so that “students will not be victimized, and will continue their education and succeed,” especially in communities which stigmatise those with special needs. In order to expand, she designed the kit with a flexible IEP output, so it can also devise relevant IEPs for highly gifted and talented children within the region who, she describes, so often are categorized with special needs. Indeed, she eyes all children with learning difficulties within the MENA region as the target group for this product, and the ministries of each relevant country is paying for the use of this kit.

Until now, around 15 schools in Saudi Arabia and 200 schools in Lebanon employ these tests, where country-specific curricula are observed and alterations are made so the tests cater to individuals in that country and are purchased by the schools for $1,000 per kit. There is a PR section within the Taaheel team, who markets the tool kit to customers, and the Ministry of Social Affairs in Lebanon has approved the tool for use. Taaheel is now moving into a new phase, however, with developer Ziad Mugraby implementing a new technological system to make the entire kit digital and take the battery of tests online, so that licensing and usage of the tool by practitioners is facilitated in the modern day. This new technological phase began at the end of 2013 and is due to be rolled out in 2016.

January 22, 2016 2 comments

Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship in Lebanon

From apps to appreneurship

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

This company is part of Executive’s Top 20 for 2015. Read more stories from our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section, for the latest analysis on the country’s ecosystem.

TEDMOB

Industry: Technology and apps

Product: Various

Product launch: 2015

Established: 2015

Employees: 14

Founder: Mario Hachem

The target market varies with each service provided. For large scale apps, all manner of entities often need to outsource app development as they do not have the internal manpower, and clients are willing to pay around $20,000 per service. For telecom value added content services, TEDMOB is aimed at mobile operators at the mercy of over-the-top (OTT) services, such as Whatsapp, which create no revenue for the operator while pushing them into becoming internet value providers. Their service offers projects to operators which generate them recurring revenues through subscriptions, such as the music streaming app Anghami, that offers content within an app and marketing through a subscription with a mobile operator. Their final business avenue, ‘appreneurship’, offers far more than the construction of app technology but extends to guidance and advice on monetization of products, and TEDMOB already has seven clients seeking this service.

While TEDMOB is a relatively junior startup, revenues reveal a strong start, with expected revenues of $350,000 in 2015, and projections of over $1 million for 2016. Hachem’s track record of successful app development with previous companies, such as apps2you – which offers app building services to clients – allows him to guide clients through the monetization of app development. His previous apps include “LAF Shield”, which was named 2015 best M-Government app in the Arab level Safety & Security category at the Dubai/Deloitte awards. As Lebanon becomes more connected to a global technological infrastructure, the need for strong app developers becomes ever more apparent, as is providing them with opportunities to use their skills in the country.

With regards to social entrepreneurship and impact, TEDMOB’s appeal goes beyond the obvious employment of his 14 team members. Hachem’s aim is to hire 14 more graduates with minimal experience in 2016, as he argues that TEDMOB has the capacity to train fresh recruits and bring them up to scratch. TEDMOB also has plans to launch an educational academy, which targets universities and offers undergraduates internships within the company, experience that is valuable to potential future employers. Future expansion plans include a foray into the gaming industry, which Hachem hopes will generate strong income through the ‘stickiness’ – the technological term for addictiveness – of their products.

January 22, 2016 0 comments

Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship in Lebanon

The brains of the operation

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

This company is part of Executive’s Top 20 for 2015. Read more stories from our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section, for the latest analysis on the country’s ecosystem.

TickleMyBrain

Industry: Recruitment

Product: Resume and presentation services

Product launch: 2012

Established: 2012

Employees: 4

Founder: Tara Nehme

Tara Nehme, the Lebanese-Canadian founder of TickleMyBrain (TMB), first noticed that people’s resumes needed assistance when a friend asked her to check their CV at the last moment before applying for a job in Dubai. What started as a small career advice blog in 2012 has evolved into an online platform dedicated to improving the presentation of users’ credentials. TMB offers services for improving documents (such as resumes and various applications) uploaded to their website for a minimal fee of $99 for the basic package, and $5,000 for a business plan.

Nehme identified that many candidates suffered at the application stage of careers due to poor presentation of otherwise good credentials. Akin to coaching for a pitch to an investor, TMB offers guidance to clients wishing to give the best first impression possible, without deceiving potential employers by carefully monitoring the content management of a portfolio. TMB’s main business is selling the overhaul of resumes and cover letters, but they offer other services as well to meet premium writing requests of clients. Until now, the business has operated through a freelance writing team.

Their business model matches freelance writers with clients who need editing and language services, at a 30:70 revenue split to TMB and the writers respectively, the latter of whom are heavily vetted by the business. Their future model centers around scaling the business to include a ‘tiered system’, offering express services with a fast turnaround alongside the current TMB system, as Nehme often has urgent requests. The value proposition of this would be the speed of writing turnaround, which is how they wish to scale globally.

The project is currently self-funded, and Nehme took a $15,000 loan and offered stakes to other employees within the company, including her chief designer and chief technological officer, with the majority stake resting with Nehme. The operations are based in Beirut, with freelance writers worldwide, and they review the services by incorporating a feedback mechanism from both writers and customers. Most of her employees, bar seven freelance writers, are Lebanese and TMB have recently opened offices in the Beirut Digital District as operations are based in Lebanon.

The company became profitable seven months into its foundation, with 15,000 sign ups to the website, and more than 3,000 paid users. TMB’s biggest growth is within the business plan offering, with more than $100,000 in total sales in the last year. Their target market includes any professional with a need for overhauling the presentation of their credentials. In terms of scalability, Nehme believes that their future lies with an express service, which will be rolled out in February 2016 and marketed globally. TMB’s value to the Lebanese economy is their ability to improve the chances of employment for their customers, and the opportunities offered to their own employees at what is essentially a tech-based startup. Nehme explains that their corporate social responsibility services go beyond a resume refurbishment, and regularly holds workshops and lectures on credential presentation. “I care very much about the Lebanese, and I care that they get the same chances as everyone else. What we’re offering is the chance to compete in a very tough world,” says Nehme, who hopes that TMB’s impact will come full cycle and see individuals who benefited from their services feed back into the Lebanese economy.

January 22, 2016 0 comments

Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship in Lebanon

Building blocks

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

This company is part of Executive’s Top 20 for 2015. Read more stories from our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section, for the latest analysis on the country’s ecosystem.

Urbacraft

Industry: Consumer and retail

Product: Construction toy and educational kit

Product launch: 2014

Established: 2014

Employees: 1

Founders: Sabine de Maussion and Ayssar Arida

Sabine de Maussion and Ayssar Arida developed urbacraft in 2014 after identifying a gap in the toy industry for locally appropriate toys. Their main product is a hybrid “customizable building set” which allows individuals of all ages to form buildings out of modular plastic pieces – ‘urbs’ – and other printable materials and elements – ‘kits’ – such as a cardboard façade, which can be added and ‘hacked’ (e.g. ‘colored in’) by the user. Unlike other composite toy creators, urbacraft’s philosophy is rooted in open source construction, and allows the user to add parts they designed themselves. Their product for the recently opened Sursock Museum store includes a card façade with the building’s recognizable windows. Pieces are compatible with other toys, and parts or self-designed elements can be printed using either a normal or 3D printer. The company functions as a hybrid software-production company, since individuals who use the product can upload designs of façades or other parts to the urbacraft community, which in turn can be downloaded by other users and ranked in popularity.

In terms of local business, urbacraft aims to have small regional distribution centers for the plastic parts and encourage local economies by having children from the age of eight upwards print downloaded plans in local printing offices. This vision ties in with their aim to reduce their carbon footprint by not manufacturing in China, and figuring out distribution channels to those without access to a 3D printer, thus enabling localized manufacturing. In terms of expansion, Arida is keen to recruit Lebanese talent and hopes for a team of around 40 to 50 people within the first four years. “Two of our main needs for jobs are designers and product managers. Beirut is a fantastic place for both and the economics of Beirut makes it much easier and cheaper than to hire elsewhere. We will be tapping into the design, architecture and creativity that is already there – an extraordinary resource,” he says. The company also aims to continue running operations from its main offices in Beirut for the foreseeable future, hiring for sales and social media.

urbacraft has identified that the world’s largest consumers of toys over the next few years will come from emerging markets, and in particular the construction toy market has seen 35 percent year-on-year demand growth. While children are the main target market, Arida stresses the importance of such a model for other parties. “We’ve seen so much interest from adults like architects needing to prototype buildings or corporations using them for workshops for building design,” he says. Professionals and corporations are a secondary target market for urbacraft, along with educational institutions where the startup wants to expand sales into open-ended learning systems as educational toys.

Going forward, urbacraft is looking to raise between $500,000 and $1 million in seed funding over the next year, and is pitching to investors interested in consumer goods. It is currently the only non-American company enrolled in the XRC Labs accelerator in New York, which is a joint program between the Kurt Salmon global management and strategy consulting firm and the Parsons School of Design, also based in New York. The accelerator has taken a 6 percent equity slice for an undisclosed investment and provided services, and urbacraft has already been through Phase 1 of the UK Lebanon Tech Hub acceleration program.

January 22, 2016 0 comments

Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship in Lebanon

Some assembly required

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

This company is part of Executive’s Top 20 for 2015. Read more stories from our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section, for the latest analysis on the country’s ecosystem.

Modeo

Industry: Furniture and design

Product: Modular assembly furniture

Product launch: 2016

Established: 2015

Employees: 2

Founders: Emile Arayes and Aline Gemayel

Modeo is a young startup launched in February 2015 which caters to individuals who wish to try their hand at furniture design. Formed by two working architects, Emile Arayes and Aline Gemayel, who were frustrated by the lack of low-budget assembly furniture, Modeo allows users to build custom plastic furniture through a mobile app interface, and uses geometric “interlocking modular parts” to assemble a range of pieces. The design can be viewed in a virtual interface before ordering, with sizing and color options, as either a 2D designed image or a 3D projection. The pieces are then delivered to the user’s door, and assembled in a similar IKEA-style flat-pack method. Having come second in the Bader Startup Challenge in May 2015, the company is now enrolled in the Speed@BDD acceleration program and developing its business plan and strategy, as well as improving the design of its final product.

Arayes and Gemayel are currently recruiting a business strategy partner who will monitor the manufacturing and distribution of the Modeo system and furniture product. They have guidelines to be environmentally friendly, and are constructing lightweight furniture pieces which can be reused and reassembled post initial construction. Their target is the mid-to-low end range market of furniture users, and they are using low-cost recyclable plastic material through the ‘lean startup model’ – iterating design of the product and improving prototypes through the needs of early customers.

Dealing with mobile apps, storage and distribution means that the company will need to recruit local talent, along with using local 3D printers to demonstrate the concept to investors. Plans for mass manufacturing are not yet finalized, but local 3D printing is helping Modeo to improve their model before they move to plastic injection models formed from aluminium molds.

Though their business plan is still going through stages of development, they stress that main sales will come through their app, and do not intend to host their furniture in showrooms, but only in exhibitions as a marketing ploy. Moneyback guarantees are also in place in their business strategy, should their furniture not satisfy individuals, which overcomes the initial ‘trust’ barrier. Their target client base are those who would use similar assembled furniture lines, such as IKEA which comes from outside of the region, yet they stress that their advantage over such manufacturers and unique selling point is the ability to both assemble and disassemble pieces easily, enabling users to reuse and repack the furniture when moving. Their projections estimate a sale of 16,000 average-size units in the first year of operations, generating roughly $1 million in revenue.

January 22, 2016 0 comments

Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship in Lebanon

School of code

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

This company is part of Executive’s Top 20 for 2015. Read more stories from our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section, for the latest analysis on the country’s ecosystem.

Teens Who Code

Industry: Education

Product: Coding classes

Product launch: 2014

Established: 2014

Employees: Recruitment on project basis

Founders: Nour Atrissi and Ziad Alameh

Teens Who Code is the brainchild of co-founders Nour Atrissi and Ziad Alameh, who met in AltCity and decided to form a startup in October 2014 dedicated to teaching young adults how to computer program in different languages in 2014. Aimed at improving computer literacy amongst teenagers, Teens Who Code offers courses and private sessions to individuals in a number of different areas, from web development and Raspberry Pi classes, to android and iOS development. Their reasoning for targeting the youth is that programming skills are, like a language, often absorbed faster by a younger mind and can subsequently shape future career paths. Their board of advisors also boasts familiar faces, such as David Munir Nabti, CEO of AltCity, and Nicolas Sehnaoui, former minister of telecommunications.

Their business model is currently centered around developing curriculum for bootcamps – 10 week programs which Atrissi explains are in direct response to market demand – which will be rolled out in February, and which she feels enable students to improve in the most efficient manner. In addition, next year they will start targeting schools and offering after school classes in addition to separate bootcamps. A pull factor included on their website is the offer of a free hour-long coding session for new sign-ups with Alameh. Several of their graduates go on to receive job offers, and Atrissi explains that the AUB undergraduate who manages the TEDxAUB website graduated from their program. Teens Who Code has been self-financed over the past year, and has collaborated with AltCity to use their office space when offering large classes. Teens Who Code will seek external funding over the course of 2016 in a bid to expand across local and regional markets, while approaching schools to advertise and advocate their project in an educational setting. Having physical teachers on the ground encourages and pressurizes students to complete their programs, which gives Teens Who Code a competitive edge over massive open online courses (MOOCs) run by educational giants like Coursera, which have a four percent completion rate compared to Teens Who Code’s 90 percent completion rate. Aside from online platforms, Atrissi stresses that there are no competitors who specifically teach coding to teenagers in Lebanon.

Atrissi and Alameh are looking to recruit coding teachers for their different courses, which retail at $250 for a two month bi-weekly iOS development course and set a limit of 10-12 students per class. While there are no limitations on previous experience, Teens Who Code try to filter students into classes according to their coding history. As the model for her startup is scalable to the entire region; offering licences of the curriculum and content to other cities within the Arab world is her current expansion plan, which she claims avoids the costs of having their own physical facilities and tutors. Teens Who Code also identifies quality control as a key element of their expansion plan, with key deliverables for each student within their courses. Although Atrissi does not reveal exact financial details, the project is currently self-funded and equity is equally split between her and Alameh. Immediate future plans will be concentrated in Lebanon before they seek external investment of $50,000 to roll the model out to the wider region.

January 22, 2016 0 comments

Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship in Lebanon

The air that we breathe

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

This company is part of Executive’s Top 20 for 2015. Read more stories from our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section, for the latest analysis on the country’s ecosystem.

Sensio AIR

Industry: Health care and ICT

Product: Allergen and particle tracker

Product launch: January 2016

Established: 2015

Employees: 6

Founders: Cyrille Najjar and Eve Tamraz

The device is similar to a smoke detector in installation and appearance and allows for quantitative and qualitative analysis of the quality of the air, especially that within the home. Sensio AIR has eyed Europe as a first main market in light of continuous reform to EU air quality directives, with the European Commission quoting air pollution as one of their “main environmental policy concerns since 1970”. Sensio AIR has identified 21 million people with respiratory problems in the UK alone, based on a 2010 report from Mintel, a global market research and insight firm, along with 12 million who are allergic to their own homes. The device therefore “detects everything that is in the air,” claims Najjar, who explains that it can observe particles down to a minimum of a micrometer, and often identify what the particle is. The smart allergen monitor has piqued interest among professionals and has already won two competitions: the Harvard Startup Pitch Competition in Boston and the Instituto de Empreza International Venture Day in Paris. Beta testing has been launched and electronics production is based in the UK, and Tamraz and Najjar claim that their product is more sensitive due to the accuracy of their hardware than any other detector on the market today. There are two versions, a bespoke and a business-to-business model. Their main unique selling point is that the device detects more than one presence within the air (e.g. both pollen and carbon monoxide), unlike a single feature device like a carbon monoxide detector. It also does not operate purely on ‘threshold technology’; detectors which will only sound an alarm when a certain level of a pathogen or toxic fume is reached. The Sensio AIR monitors the content and levels continuously and sends data to the user.

Najjar and Tamraz, along with their other two colleagues, eye selling 5,000 units in London, 1,000 in Paris and 200 in Beirut as a starter, and the company breaks even after the selling of 2,200 units, with Najjar confident that they will begin making profit after one year of sales. They will offer a variety of packages to accompany the units; an enterprise solution where the device is bought and a monthly fee is paid, a corporate 3G package, and a personal package which includes a one-off payment and installment of a wifi device for $299. Little boosters can also be installed in a separate room for small additional costs. The data on the units will be analyzed, and allergic homeowners can use the data in a health care perspective. Tamraz estimates that this will corroborate outbreaks with specific detected allergens, thus allowing for a diagnosis based on the principles of deduction rather than, for example, a test which pricks the skin with a needle containing a small amount of the allergen. They will launch the product during allergy season in March 2016, with the back end development based in Lebanon and the main sales market in London, though they hope to eventually have equal sales and demand here and eye the MENA region as a strong expansion plan because of frequent sandstorms. In commenting on the efficacy of their device, Najjar explains the testing they did on the quality of the air in Lebanon in summer 2015; “You don’t want to know, the results were so bad. We need a strainer, not a detector. We need to strain the air with a filter.”

January 22, 2016 1 comment

Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship in Lebanon

Guarding against fraud

by Executive Editors January 22, 2016

written by Executive Editors

This company is part of Executive’s Top 20 for 2015. Read more stories from our entrepreneurship in Lebanon section, for the latest analysis on the country’s ecosystem.

ReAble

Industry: Health care and ICT

Product: ReAble wallet mobile app

Product launch: 2015

Established: 2015

Employees: 3

Founders: Paul Saifi and Emile Sawaya

When Emile Sawaya’s younger brother was diagnosed with autism seven years ago, he became aware that the market offered very limited technological tools for independence for those with cognitive difficulties. Fast forward to 2015, Sawaya and his blind co-founder, Paul Saifi, felt that the market was worthy of exploration and wanted to develop tools which would give individuals, such as Sawaya’s brother, the ability to gain some independence from caregivers. They identified a gap in the market, which offered only expensive technological tools catering for a Western market.

Their main product is the ‘ReAble wallet’ that focuses on money management and financial transactions for people with autism and eventually for a broader range of people with special needs. Sawaya’s main motivation is that many people with autism have difficulties with the concept of understanding value and the premise of value exchange, especially with monetary difference that is owed to them after a transaction. The ‘wallet’ is an app which can be loaded onto any Android smartphone, and works through optical character recognition (OCR). It allows the user to register the bills they have in their possession, and subsequently scan receipts into the app, which can register the time, date and value of purchases. The app then informs the user of the correct change they should receive and affords them budgeting capabilities throughout a time period. The caregiver has a corresponding app with push notifications informing them of the user’s transactions. This bridges the gap between a concerned caregiver and an individual with autism, while simultaneously offering them a degree of freedom and independence. A prototype of the application, which works on Android, is scheduled to be unveiled at the Banque du Liban Accelerate conference in December 2015.

The application was designed with therapists – here in Lebanon and in Canada, the United Arab Emirates and the United States – so that the application (in terms of color, buttons and interfaces) was appealing without being distracting to those with autism. There are current plans to incorporate an element of artificial intelligence to identify the financial habits of users, and deduce whether they are harmful (e.g. overspending). ReAble is currently working with two institutions in Canada and two in Lebanon, Assafina and CARE, Consultant Advocacy for Remedial Education.

To monetize the product, the business model will be based on a subscription plan and allow the user to buy the application for $5 per month, an estimate at the end of 2015. This subscription plan can be rolled out to care centers, which would need extra tools to manage the app, from a dashboard package to enterprise, services and maintenance. Their target market is teenagers and adults who have mid-to-high functioning autism, and Sawaya says this is a market of 35 million based on WHO statistics worldwide and not limited to the MENA region.

Initial tests would support the enthusiasm Sawaya has for this project. Within 48 hours of launching applications, they received interest from 100 beta testers, who Sawaya explains are individuals with vested interest in the product, and are working to extend the project to remote therapy access through an online platform hub for people with disabilities, and roll the product out to iOS and Windows Mobile platforms. With their intentions to stay headquartered in Lebanon, they are currently looking to recruit a programmer in the country and wish to gather as much technological talent as possible, coupled, eventually, with their own in-house therapists.

January 22, 2016 0 comments