Dubai Internet City and in5 concluded their activities at the close of GITEX Global with DIC hosting a series of knowledge-sharing workshops at its pavilion, while the incubator’s stand saw startup founders gaining invaluable brand exposure as they interacted with potential clients and investors.
Throughout the Middle East’s largest technology event, DIC, the region’s leading tech hub, saw a number of high-level figures visit its centrally located pavilion, including Shaikh Hamdan bin Mohammad bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, crown prince of Dubai and chairman of the Executive Council of Dubai.
LinkedIn, Huawei and HTC were among the tech giants that had a presence at the pavilion, where they held a series of professional development workshops across a range of topics over the course of GITEX. LinkedIn offered attendees advice on topics such as how to maximize their SME’s presence on the platform; Huawei’s talks included discussion on the importance of the cloud in an organization’s digital transformation journey; and HTC’s workshops explored the rapidly expanding scope of business opportunities in virtual reality, including game development, training, health and safety, and design.
At the in5 stand in Zabeel 6, startup founders were able to sit down one-to-one with angel investors and venture capitalists to discuss potential partnerships and funding opportunities, among other things.
For Atif Ahmed, CFO of ViewIT, a property technology startup, being hosted at the in5 stand at GITEX has been an invaluable experience. “It’s a fantastic experience for a young startup like ours, which only launched on the Apple and Google app stores six months ago, to be here.
“In5 has got a beautiful setup, and we’ve actually been able to sit down and talk with a number of investors, which is crucial for a seed-stage startup like ours. Our product video has been playing on a loop, and that has attracted a lot of curious visitors who we have had the chance to educate about our offering.”
ViewIT is a platform that allows real estate agents to visit a listing and create a walkthrough video for a verified listing in three easy steps. It seeks to solve two issues: The prevalence of misleading images — the platform does not allow pictures, only video — and fake listings.
Andrew Widera, co-founder of Veehive.ai, a mobile-first online streaming community that offers creators tools to easily manage and monetize their content, also feels that he has taken a lot away from GITEX, where he spent Day 1 at the DIC pavilion and Day 3 at the in5 stand.
“It’s a really good opportunity for us to meet people — potential customers, investors and various people in the ecosystem,” Widera said.
in5 signed a number of agreements to further enhance the strength and offering of its ecosystem. Pen was put to paper on MoUs with Tie Dubai, TomTom, Gellify and Parsons to improve in5 startups’ access to mentorship networks, cutting-edge location technology, appropriate investors and market access to large corporate projects. The agreements followed in5’s announcement that its startups had raised a collective 1.4 billion dirhams ($381.1 million) in funding from VCs and angel investors so far.
