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Arab women are at the forefront of realizing technology’s most significant potential and providing positive changes in the world of technology and the start-up landscape. Although only 23% of startup founders in the MENA region are women. Considering the figures, breaking the gender norm isn’t as easy as the name suggests.
The tech industry in UAE is breaking the gender norm and these Arab women entrepreneurs and founders are transforming the Middle East start-up scene, becoming pioneers for change and sustainable life.
Hayat Abu AlHassan
Hayat AlHassan is the co-founder of Sweech, a tech startup with a vision to bring joy and freedom of mobility to the Middle East region. Also, a software engineer at Bayzat, Hayat Al Hassan is at the forefront of technology, helping to integrate it easier into our daily lives.
Arab women founder is into product development and design with a degree in computer science. Her mission is to push boundaries to advance technology and entrepreneurship in the UAE and bring a women-friendly tech culture to the region.
My take on why nurturing local talent is key to building a sustainable tech industry in the UAE. @EntMagazineME https://t.co/l5KUo1WAZv
— Øياة (@HayatAlH) November 29, 2021
Nour Al Hassan
Nour Al Hassan founded Tarjama in 2008 to meet the growing demand for good translation services that cater to the unique multicultural environment of the Middle East. Driven by her fascination with languages and the way we communicate,
The Arab women founder rose to fame by tapping into an undervalued network of exceptional and talented women, she challenged conventional norms and went on to excel in the translation and localization fields. Under her leadership, Tarjama set new standards in the industry through its commitment to quality, speed, and extraordinary linguistic value.
Dina Sam’an
Dina Sam’an is the co-founder and Managing Director of CoinMENA, a fully regulated, Sharia-compliant crypto assets exchange based out of the Kingdom of Bahrain, now serving the MENA region.
The Arab women’s start-up addresses the gap that exists in the regional market today by allowing users to deposit, trade, and withdraw crypto assets in a safe, trustworthy, transparent, and regulated way through CoinMENA.
She was featured among 20 Women Behind Middle Eastern Tech Brands 2023:
Nadine Mezher
Nadine Mezher is the Co-founder of Sarwa, which is known to be the first and fastest-growing investment platform and personal finance app for young professionals in the MENA region.
The Dubai-based Sarwa is one of the first automated investment advisory platforms in the Middle East which has raised $9.9 million so far and has also expanded to Saudi Arabia after receiving a Fintech experimental permit from Saudi’s Capital Markets Authority.
Noor Al Kamil
Noor Al Kamil is the Arab women founder of an online health insurance platform named Sehteq with her husband Saif Aljaibeji. The online platform specializes in offering health insurance plans to individuals and SMEs in the U.A.E and Oman. After acquiring its first third-party administrator license in 2018 the company began its operations in the region.
Sehteq was acquired by Cloud Klair in late 2021. As of today, the platform serves more than 700,000 customers with a network of more than 2,000 providers. The health-tech firm had processed five million claims as of April 2022.
Ola Younis Doudin
Ola Younis Doudin, the Arab women founder of BitOasis, a Dubai-based fintech startup allowing Middle Eastern users to safely buy and store bitcoins online, explains that education has been a priority for women in her Jordanian family throughout the generations.
According to Ola Doudin:
“My mother and my aunts are all university educated. But, there was no sort of drive to realize your potential in terms of going out into the workplace, getting a job that aligns with your values, and making you wake up every morning eager to work. However, I think that is not related to women alone, but that the generation of my parents in general valued stability over creating new businesses that change the way people live.”
Sarah Toukan
Sarah and Faisal Toukan and Andrew Gold jointly founded Ziina in 2020. The U.A.E.-based peer-to-peer payment application Ziina allows users to send and receive payments with a phone number without the need for an international bank account number or a swift code.
The application has secured $7.5 million in its latest funding round, taking its total funding to more than $8.6 million so far. Currently available to only U.A.E. residents, Toukan plans to expand into Saudi Arabia and Jordan next year.
Mona Ataya
Mona Ataya is the CEO and founder of Mumzworld.com in the Middle Eastern region. Her company which was originally founded in 2011, has pioneered a revolutionary and gold-standard e-commerce shopping experience for all the things a mother and her baby needs.
Mona has time and again proved to be one of the Middle East’s most prominent women entrepreneurs. Beyond leading a successful and growing SME, she is a transformational leader who keeps inspiring her employees and communities. Mona is on a mission to change the region, one mum at a time.
Mona has transformed Mumzworld from a business plan on paper to an enviable brand reaching more than 2 million mothers across the region in 7 years. Today, Mumzworld prides itself on being the leading, trusted, and definitive source with over 200,000 products, an engaged community, exclusive product offerings, and delivery to over 20 different countries in the fastest, most convenient, and cost-effective way, at everyday low prices.
Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr
Dr. Aisha Bint Buti Bin Bisher is the Director General of the Smart Dubai Office, the government entity entrusted with Dubai’s city-wide smart transformation. Leading the creation of ‘The Smart City Index’, the first-ever benchmark for smart city implementation across the globe, Dr. Aisha represents Smart Dubai at global events.
Her work is recognized globally, she has received numerous accolades which include, the Excellence in Strategic Leadership Award 2017; ‘The Outstanding Alumni Award 2017’ from The University of Manchester ME Centre; “The woman in Public Sector Award” from Global Women in Leadership Economic Forum 2015; and so on.
Dana Baki
Dana Baki, the Lebanese-American Woman behind one of the region’s leading startups – a food tech delivery platform in the U.A.E, Munch: On. Formerly called Lunch: On, the company with leading-edge technology started by offering busy office workers top meals without having to pay delivery charges.
They focused on utilizing restaurant downtime and order consolidation to make restaurants more efficient and slash meal prices. Ordering and delivery times also became quicker.
According to Dana:
“We started off focused solely on corporate lunch which was a space delivery aggregators hadn’t cracked. The pandemic forced us to pivot and expand our subscription significantly to also include residential delivery, and to deliver throughout the day to provide users the flexibility to use their subscription, when they wanted it, at work and at home.
It’s been an incredible journey, and I feel like we have seen it all — the good, the bad, and the ugly — building a product and brand from scratch, scaling, geographic expansion, fundraising in good times, fundraising in bad times, having to make deep cuts, significantly pivoting during the pandemic, testing everything under the sun, managing an M&A transaction. It’s definitely been a rollercoaster, but one hell of a journey that I cherish dearly.”
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