Google has revealed the list of start-ups that will participate in the third edition of the Google for Startups Accelerator in the Middle East and North Africa, a three-month digital acceleration programme targeting technology start-ups still in the seed and initial investment stages in the region. The companies were selected based on a set of criteria, such as the problem each company is trying to solve and how it enhances the user experience, as well as their willingness to use machine learning techniques to solve industry challenges and achieve long-term success. Here is an overview of the start-ups selected to participate in the third edition of the program, including five companies that were co-founded by a group of women: ● Jomlatti (Saudi Arabia): An application for buying wholesale consumer products for individuals. ● Mindtells (UAE): A digital platform that helps diagnose, track, and manage mental health. [Business co-founded by a group of women] ● Omniful (Saudi Arabia): A platform for managing express commerce operations for retailers and cloud store operators to help them process and ship incoming orders online within a few minutes from available retail stores. ● Orcas (Egypt): A platform that provides high-quality services, educational materials, and assessments to students, in addition to allowing educational service providers to generate additional profits. [Business co-founded by a group of women] ● PalletPal (UAE): A digital platform for freight forwarding, designed to meet the needs of shippers and improve freight and logistics operations. ● Qawafel (Saudi Arabia): a B2B marketplace concerned with linking chocolate and sweets manufacturers with different points of sale around the kingdom. ● Sawah (Jordan): a platform that promotes authentic tourism experiences offered by local communities. This platform aims to promote local tourism around the world. [A business headed by a group of women] ● SgharToon (Tunisia): The telemedicine service helps specialists treat children with learning difficulties by monitoring children's early signs, connecting parents with specialists, and facilitating all steps using games. [Business co-founded by a group of women] ● Trippal (UAE): A digital platform that offers customised plans for local holidays in the UAE, and rewards customers by providing future plans, tokens, or gift vouchers. ● Zida (Egypt): Zida supports local F&B businesses to enhance their relationships with customers by offering a seamless online ordering and delivery experience. ● Mums 360 (Jordan): Brings unprecedented new resources to mothers in the MENA region by providing forums with information and educational materials prepared by subject matter experts, as well as amazing offers from trading partners. These resources are available on the website and mobile app. Commenting on the third edition, Salim Obaid, the Regional Director of Developer Relations for the Middle East and North Africa at Google, said: "Google for Startups Accelerator has evolved in the MENA region over the past years thanks to the efforts of 22 talented start-ups who joined us from all over the region in the first two editions of the programme, along with hundreds of experts who contributed to the success of the accelerator. We look forward to applying all the lessons learned in the next edition and helping start-ups improve their solutions to approach local challenges using various advanced technologies." The activities of the programme will start this week in a virtual platform and will continue until the end of March. The selected companies will receive a series of mentorship sessions via video calls on machine learning, the cloud, digital marketing, product design, user experience design, customer acquisition, and leadership development. The programme is run by a group of Google mentors, Google developer experts, and representatives from the emerging business sector.
