Startups | Page 9

KSA entrepreneur Tariq Nasraldeen, founder and Chief Executive Aviator of Firnas Aero, to elevate the drone industry by exploring an untapped avenue- the use of drones on airport runways.

The funding is a "sizeable seven-figure dollar" investment, and will be used to further growth and product development.

Customers get to choose the size and format they want, and they also have the option to select a frame for their piece- and they can do all of this from the comfort of their homes.

66% of women entrepreneurs find difficulty in obtaining funding, which is what led TiE to launch the TiE Women Global Pitch Competition to support female founders.

Led by the social enterprise Potential.com, the campaign brings together Aramex, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cisco, Schneider Electric and World Free Zone Organization.

The foremost driver of employability and the most sought-after skillset for employers in the MENA region is English proficiency. Yet, the MENA region unfortunately boasts the world's lowest English proficiency rate.

Pandemic or not, there are always challenges to overcome and consumer needs to be met. And a keen entrepreneur always displays a natural inclination to find and fix problems, to make things better, and improve the world at large.

A new startup, Bookends, homegrown in the UAE, offers a digital platform to buy and sell secondhand books, with shipping and delivery available all over the UAE.

With the transaction expected to close in the second quarter of 2021, it pegs Anghami at an initial pro-forma enterprise valuation of approximately US$220 million.

Dubai Startup Report 2021 is a guide on Dubai's startup landscape and what it can offer to international investors and other interested parties including business-friendly incentives and measures.

Middle East social commerce platform RadYes wants to equip restaurants with tools to sell their dishes through the restaurants' social media accounts, website and even WhatsApp.

Sharjah Startup Studio, the UAE's first government-backed startup studio, aims to position startups to power the nation's digital transformation.

The healthtech startup aims to achieve its mission of further improving the quality of diagnostic standards, and improve its machine learning capabilities for greater accuracy for early detection of breast cancer.

As a company that produces a variety of seafood products directly from fish cells, BlueNalu's new funding round, which follows its $20 million Series A in 2020 and its $4.5 million Series Seed in 2018, marks the largest ever financing secured by a cell-based seafood company in the world.

The pandemic seems to have driven the region's VCs to be more sophisticated and strategic in how they deploy capital, and also to be bolder.

A ceremony held in late November 2020 at the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention's (MOHAP) Training and Development Center in Sharjah marked the conclusion of BE BOLD.

Led by General Partners Noor Sweid and Basil Moftah, this enterprise proudly declares on its website that its vision is global, and its focus is growth- and Global Ventures has been clearly exhibiting its premise by supporting entrepreneurs in emerging markets that are working to "change the world."

Even as one may be inclined to dismiss 2020 as though it doesn't need to exist in our collective history, a little introspection will reveal that all of us have almost certainly learnt some valuable lessons through the course of the year- things that we probably wouldn't have grasped had our world not been turned upside down over the last 12 months.

When a business is in the process of scaling up, the skills or characteristics required of its CEO are different from those that were needed when it was founded.

Consistent action, executed relentlessly, will always pay off, at the time of any change.

From finding out how entrepreneurs in Dubai can access government stakeholders, to figuring out enterprises their businesses can collaborate with, this edition of Ask The Expert is meant for anyone who wants to develop and grow their companies in Dubai.