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TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco is only one week away and this year, the MENA-based startup presence is not to be overlooked!

Disrupt has organized multiple events in which entrepreneurs and startups from different regions will take part such as the Startup Battlefield Competition, a virtual hackathon, Startup Alley, Workshops, and the chance to expand their network at the after parties.

This year, five MENA-based startups will be pitching and exhibiting their business in the battlefield competition:

Ecomz Platform:

Ecomz is a Lebanese-based ecommerce website builder founded in 2014. It all started with its founder Rudy Bekerejian’s dedication to develop his own software despite the financial and technical limitations. After doing his extensive research and building different versions of the software, the first functional one generated millions of dollars in online sales.

It evolved to what we now know as Ecomz Platform which offers fully customizable layouts, practical themes, and up-to-date software; the shopping experience is therefore user-friendly, smooth, and flowy.

Cognitev:

After launching his first startup ‘MENA Commerce’ in 2015, Moustafa Mahmoud realized that his technology would be better applied by enhancing the marketing process using Artificial Intelligence, which led to the birth of Cognitev in 2017.

Cognitev offers startups and SMEs an industry-leading progressive platform called InstaScaler which, as its name suggests, helps businesses grow with just one click of a button. With the use of AI technology, InstaScaler provides companies with laser-targeted and high-quality website visitors since it uses native ads that are only displayed on premium websites.

Their product is a market disrupting innovation that's adopted by customers across 20 countries so far such as Dubai, Cairo, USA, China, etc. Moustafa Mahmoud’s dream is for Cognitev to be the first business that comes to mind when anyone thinks of marketing their business online.

Seez:

Founded in 2015 in Dubai, Seez offers its customers a platform simplifying the process of car buying and selling. Users can find the perfect car, contact sellers, and negotiate prices.

Seez combines both UAE and Kuwait’s car market in one place. For a better service, the built-in personal assistant Cesar customizes the search in order to provide users with their personalized inquiries.

Slighter:

Slighter is a learning lighter that adapts to the person’s smoking habits and the daily intake of cigarettes. Due to a smart algorithm able to connect with the user’s phone, Slighter is able to know the time, place, and reason for the user’s smoke habits.

This product was launched in 2015 by Samer El Gharib. He believes that AI technology can help humans evolve their lifestyle by changing some unwanted habits and saving time.

Slighter was picked among the top companies by TechCrunch granting them a one-day exhibit space in Startup Alley, three founder’s passes use of CrunchMass (investor-to-startup matching platform), and access to the Disrupt SF 2018 press list.

Lean Node:

Lean Node, based in Riyadh, is a software development company operating in the GCC area since 2015. They provide its users with great quality web and mobile software at low costs.

 Creating this software is achievable by using agile and lean services such as Ideation and prototyping, analytics, maintenance and optimization.