The Dubai Smart City Accelerator (DSCA), the leading smart city program in the MENA region, hosted its third Demo Day for the 11 startups that have made it into the program’s third cohort. The headline event of the year for DSCA, the Demo Day drew the participation of more than 150 venture capitalists, investors, and industry leaders to hear the pitch ideas and value propositions presented by the startups.
The 11 startups were carefully selected from a pool of 800+ international applicants and underwent a three-month extensive acceleration program. Their technology focus areas include AI, smart retail, data analytics, IoT, big data, tourism, and more. The startups are currently ready to take their businesses to the next level, and Demo Day aimed to connect them with the leading smart city players in the region.
Ibrahim Seksek, Managing Director of DSCA, said “We are thrilled about our third Demo Day, as it supports the Smart Dubai 2021 strategy through bringing top smart city startups to Dubai and fast-tracking their growth. The 11 startups underwent an intensive acceleration process to help them scale their business in the UAE and internationally. In the upcoming period, we will continue assisting the startups in raising investments and securing more pilot projects with corporates.”
The Dubai Smart City Accelerator is supported by DSOA, Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry, du, Smart Dubai, Visa, Orange Business Services, and RIT Dubai. The partners have played an integral role in accelerating the growth of the startups, providing them with mentorship, introductions, and market entry facilitation. The 11 startups have so far secured 11 PoCs with the partners and are in discussions for a further 33.
The third cohort included three startups from the UAE – Shorages, which assists e-commerce companies in unlocking new markets through providing storage and fulfillment services, Lightified, which helps interior designers and construction professionals make better lighting choices, and Monocle Reality, an augmented reality platform that allows its users to experience their surroundings through a camera lens.
Among the other participants was Near Motion LLC from Saudi Arabia, an interactive building system that interacts with visitors according to their locations, welcomes them on arrival, and guides them indoors step by step towards their destination through digital wayfinding. All the way from the USA, BasilLabs helps decision-makers crack the offline consumer experience (CX) puzzle.
Two startups from Jordan also made it into the cohort. The first, Carers, is a marketplace that provides peace of mind for families by using the best matching algorithm to connect them with trustworthy and reliable in-home nursing, physiotherapy, and childcare services for their loved ones, subject to the highest vetting standard. The second, Controlcast, is a digital out-of-home marketplace platform that enables companies to instantly and affordably advertise on local digital screens directly through an easy-to-use app dashboard to increase their marketing reach and effectiveness.
From India, Dressire, an AI- and computer vision-based hyper-personalization platform helps brick-and-mortar retailers know their customers’ preferences so they can present the right product at the right time to the right person. Global Miles from Turkey is a blockchain platform that enables the distribution of miles across the world to be used and managed by a mobile application for frequent flyers and airlines. Meanwhile, Receet from Palestine empowers merchants to build customer loyalty, be sustainable, and enhance the customers’ shopping experience through digital receipts and new marketing channels. Finally, Revotonix from Lebanon specializes in developing mobile robots and mechatronics solutions for any application.
