Arabnet Arabnet

The Lebanese digital automotive industry has started to garner interest, with two local startups receiving investments of over $1M early last week. Led by investors such Wamda Capital, B&Y, and Phoenician Funds, Seez, a Lebanese automotive marketplace, and Blink My Car, an on-demand car wash application, both raised seeds rounds of $1.8M and $1.2M respectively.

Founded by Andrew and Tarek Kabrit, Seez aims to use technology such as image recognition, AI and chatbots to fully transform and automate the car search/buying process so that buyers can find their ideal car, contact all sellers and negotiate prices with just one click. To use Seez, users snap a photo of the car they like, and Seez’s image recognition informs the user of the brand, model and specs, what is the fair market price to pay as the specs change, and who is selling it. Users can then submit a bid to tell the seller how much they are willing to pay or chat with them for more details.

Although Seez have previously raised money via angel investors, this is their first seed round, which they plan to use to enhance AI applications in the app, expand their team in Beirut and Dubai as well as develop their marketing scheme.

Blink My Car is an on-demand car care platform that allows users to get their car washed or maintained while it’s parked idly at other locations. The startup went live in January 2016 following a $350,000 angel investment by Al Amir Holdings and is currently active in Doha and Beirut. To use Blink My Car’s services, users download the app, pick a service, share their location, and select a time. Specialists then locate the car and take care of the rest. Once the service is completed, the user gets notified and pays.

Blink My Car will use the funding to get to a certain number of active users in Beirut, expand in Doha, and launch in Dubai in the coming 18 months. In addition to being finalists at ArabNet Beirut’s Startup Competition, Blink My Car is also one of 60 finalists from the MENA region in Facebook’s Bots for Messenger Challenge.