Where do you begin, though? What steps are involved — and what areas do you consider?

In this article, you’ll learn how to make your own website with blog and store.

As you read on, we’ll cover these and even give you 10 product suggestions you can to sell on your blog. Let’s dive right in.

Setting the Groundwork

Before you choose the instruments etc., you have to understand blogging. Businesses use blogging to grow their audience long term. Getting an audience for their products is one of their biggest challenges. Blogging works in reverse. Bloggers use business to grow their audience long term. Bloggers first grow an audience with great content, then use business to monetize their audience.

Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe’

You must first understand your audience of your intended blog and how many of them can be converted to paying customers. This comes before even selecting which platform to choose. Once you’ve done this, you can start creating content to grow your audience. Blogging boils down to consistency. As you blog consistently, so does your audience grow. A large or growing audience means a larger customer base to cater to.

As you learn to create a blog to sell products, you’ll be tempted to sell everything under the sun, but that is a mistake. Nowadays, people are bombarded with offers so they block most of them out. Equally so, too, with blogs, readers only consider those products they’re interested in. That’s usually the topic of the blog itself. So, if you’re starting a travel blog, your readers will hardly, if at all, be interested in car insurance products. You have to keep your product offering centric content to what your blog is about. That way, you’ll get the most response from your readers.

As you sell new products or whatever it is you’re interested in, bear in mind that you’re (still) running a blog. Therefore, you need to update it with free content regularly to keep your audience returning over and over to your site. One thing readers hate is inconsistent content and they seldom return to sites that are getting defunct.

When you learn how to sell on blog, you may want to become quite the salesman to pitch your offer. Don’t! People of today hate to be sold to. Every day, at any given moment, we’re inundated with ads and promos to grab our attention. How many of them do you seriously pay attention to? Exactly. To sell online, be yourself and sell yourself. The more people see your character, the more they will relate to you and what you say. So be as genuine as possible.

To sell products online is an art as well as a science, the more you delve into it, the better at it you become

If you have an idea to make and sell your product, that’s great but you don’t always have to do that. You can sell other people’s products, too. It’s called affiliate marketing and it works by placing someone else’s product (usually from another company) on your website and driving traffic to it. When people who come from your site buy the product, you get a percentage commission from the sale. A popular platform to get started on is Amazon Associates. As a rule of thumb, only recommend products from others that you vouch for or would use yourself.

Lastly, you’ll need an online checkout function with which customers can pay for the products. If you’re using a Wordpress blog, a common functionality is called Wordpress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart.

Creating a blog is simple. With payever, you can set up an online shop in seconds and start adding your products instantly. Say, for example, you’re in fashion. As a blogger, you can sign up, build a store, publish your content and syndicate through numerous shopping channels like Amazon, ebay, Google and more.

Products You Can Sell

There are many products available when you know how to sell on blog. It comes down with what you’re comfortable selling and what your blog is about. As a guide, here are the general areas below.

1. Clothing
2. Digital products (a design, downloads, photos, resumes etc)
3. Writings (ebooks, reports etc)
4. Consulting
5. Publishing
6. Paid promotion and paid reviews for brands
7. Subscriptions
8. Videos and tutorials
9. Music
10. Webinars

Must-Haves To Sell Your Own Products On Blog

This applies to all products, not just your own. While you can sell on platforms like Blogger and Wordpress, it can be cumbersome. Not everyone uses the payment functions they offer and customers online are known to abandon cart once their payment solutions aren’t included.

With payever, you start with an online shop, fast. No coding skills are required. You can sign up and set it up in a few minutes. It comes with the latest and most modern themes in your industry and updating the shop with content can be done in seconds. Payever shops are also the quickest loading on the Internet, so while other sites load, your audience will already be browsing.

Next, to sell on your blog, you’ll need a checkout feature. The checkout function of payever is simple and user friendly, making customers less likely to abandon their shopping cart upon payment. Payever provides all payment options for users to choose from: from credit card to PayPal and more. It’s a secure gateway that finalizes payments in just a few clicks. Additionally, it’s also easy to install, customize and is mobile optimized to run on all devices.

As your blog grows, so too will your product offering. So you’ll need an in-depth inventory management solution. One that keeps track of everything and notifies you instantly of changes, wherever they may occur. Payever provides this. As you sell on different channels, your inventory is monitored by payever, which keeps everything listed on a single dashboard so you can make informed decisions. This is an advantage not many bloggers have.

Another solution is payever’s social media network. With your online shop, you can run social media campaigns to get the word out instantly. It greatly amplifies your marketing efforts.

Online, it’s important to stay in touch with customers even after they leave your site. With payever, you can collect emails from your customers and then send them personalized offers they won’t find anywhere else. These offers can even be time-sensitive, to compel your customers to take action.

Now that you know how to sell products online, what’s stopping you from jumping right in? Checkout payever to get started and get your products-selling blog underway.

The Innovation Blind Spot and why Fintech startups have a lot to do to push the financial inclusion of the low-income layers

Two billion people do not have access to formal financial services. A transaction account is the entrance for financial inclusion, a term that the World Bank Group (WBG) defines as the access of individuals and business to useful financial products and services such as payments, credit, savings and insurance, delivered in a responsible and sustainable way.

Ross Baird, founder of Village Capital Fund, advocates in his book

: “Many of the world’s poorest communities live in the informal economy. People work and earn money, they make plans to save for their children’s education or just for a rainy day, they occasionally need to borrow quick cash for an emergency root canal or a new business idea. But they don’t have access to a bank, or a debit card, savings account, insurance, or a line of credit. So they rely on informal means of managing their money. That could mean storing cash under the mattress; borrowing from family and friends; or dealing with black market moneylenders when they want to start a business. These informal methods, this shadow economy, can be risky, unpredictable, and outrageously expensive.”

The World Bank proposes three areas to accomplish the Universal Financial Access (UFA) by year 2020: payment systems, credit infrastructure, and small and medium enterprises finance.

Financial inclusion is a key to reducing poverty and increasing prosperity, but the institution reported that more than 200 million formal and informal micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in emerging economies lack adequate financing because they do not have a credit history, which impedes them to have an account.

Mr Baird proposes impact-investing and investors abandon prejudices to look for local entrepreneurs to discover the forgotten market niche that affects a big number of people, so the solution will worth for them as investors and socially will have an impact too. Low income entrepreneurs do not fit the typical stereotype for VC investors and do not enjoy long-standing connections, and innovation economy is highly relationship-driven. “Many of the winners in Silicon Valley are part of a faux meritocracy: being born into the right city or social network,” he criticizes. He thinks that entrepreneurs of different social backgrounds shall be eligible for funding because they usually see the hole and can suggest the patch to heal the problem: “In the UAE there are hundreds of thousands of migrants workers. But the average investor probably isn’t familiar with the challenges facing these workers, and opportunities for businesses like remittances that involve sending money back home to family. That would make them more likely to invest in something different, like real estate, even though remittance is a huge market.”

“The innovation blind spot are the ideas that we miss because of the way we invest. It is a shared responsibility. Government can set the tone for investment in a city, state or country, by supporting entrepreneurs and making it easier to invest. Investors make hard decisions every day. It is best when government and investors are working together,” he explains. The best way to positively impact is topophilia, love for the place, so everyone will help keeping the ecosystem: “Any community is the sum of the people living and leading there. Dubai is a unique city, ultimately we’ve seen that there is a thriving community of entrepreneurs, investors and entrepreneur support organizations all dedicated to supporting local entrepreneurs.”

He also recommends that entrepreneurs select the best project among themselves: “Peer-selected investment is one solution to rethink the way we support and invest in companies. It’s produced some pretty great results for us so far.”

Traditionally, two-pocket investments target quick financial returns and make philanthropy contributions separately. Mr Baird found out in 2016 that only 15 percent over 150 unicorn companies solve the top six areas for the world´s population: food, health, energy, agriculture, financial services, and housing. He proposes to make one-pocket investments that combine social impact and financial returns so that in the long term they create value that lasts. Mr Baird recommends having the feet on the ground and look for the widest social impact instead of favoring the conditions for unicorns, as it will most probably not happen: “There’s nothing wrong with participating in an accelerator, if it’s the right step for a company. The issue is when community government leaders develop strategies to try and replicate Silicon Valley and build just the right conditions for unicorns. In most parts of the world, that’s a recipe for disaster — unicorns are extremely rare, and most cities will have better luck building an ecosystem that supports more realistic businesses, in sectors that the city has a particular expertise in.”

No poverty is the number one of the Sustainable Development Goals.

This article was originally published on Arabian Blue Ocean on April 19, 2018.

Have you ever imagined to launch a cyberattack by using your printer node so someone else gets their Netflix subscription hacked?

Augmate and Defensor prevent these actions to happen.

Facebook, why did you activate your "Crisis Response" five days later?

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you´ll do things differently” (Warren Buffett)

The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal is one of those case studies that will be a classic at faculties of Journalism, MBA schools and PR academies. If a reputation crisis explodes, crisis management team should take fewer than four to five hours to react. Never five days.

With Facebook stocks, which in January were up about 400% since its 2012 IPO, in free fall to lose $50 billion, the machinery to face the reputation and crisis management started to work in the classic way: be proactive, be professional, and promote the positive. The key of the show is bringing authenticity to the stage. And at the end, everything worked by the book, but adding a five days delay. Just to clear some ideas, start by getting awareness of your new, unknown situation, and work as fast as you can:

1. Don´t believe it will never happen to you just because it has not happen before.

2. Having a doc type “In case of reputational problems, do …” in the drawer will not prevent the scandal to happen.

5. Be seen to take the appropriate actions, and say the right things.

6. Prioritize: people first, money later.

7. Prepare the information for the press conference, anticipate their questions.

8. Never underestimate customers´ concern (especially when 2 billion people are your active users).

9. Be the authoritative source of information, one voice one company, no dissidents.

10. Media pollution causes more economical loses that the issue itself: monitor media and suspicious, misleading sources.

11. Express your regret about what happen AND apologize sincerely, be an example to your offspring if you want:

12. Do not admit liability unless it has been proven. NO SPECULATIONS.

13. Get third parties to show your innocence, as your own arguments won´t be sufficient to convince stakeholders.

14. Build credibility with consecutive, complementary statements.

“The secret of crisis management is not good vs. bad, it´s preventing the bad from getting worse” (Andy Gilman)

The issue would have turned worse if instead of US citizens data, the EU citizens´ privacy were involved and GDPR, the European Union law about data protection , were fully implemented. Next May 25th, the will be applied. It states penalties up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 Million (whichever is greater) for organisations breaching data privacy of EU citizens, wherever the issue happen, and ‘clouds’ will not be exempt from GDPR enforcement (see the GDPR checklist revised by Norton Rose Fulbright).

Lack of diligence´s issues already ticked “done” on the pending tasks list, the last chapter of the story has to do with Christopher Wylie, Cambridge Analytica-founder turned whistle blower, who has been temporarily blockedFacebookInstagram WhatsApp. Would this last measure be enough to protect reputation against future leaks?

Once things had passed and calm arrive, second thoughts may pop up: Which company will dare to ask potential customers to fill up their data by sharing their Facebook profile? Would you trust and share yours?

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on March 22, 2018.

Todd O’Brien was the master of ceremony of the centrifugal event to present the first Startupbootcamp Dubai Smart Cities cohort. Ten teams selected out of 1,000+ applications pitched their more innovative ideas on IoT, Blockchain, Open City Data, Urban Automation & Mobility, Artificial Intelligence, Sustainable Cities & Living, Smart Government, Smart Retail, and Machine Learning to improve our lives. During their time in the accelerator, they produce 20+ proofs of concept. They are improving our future life. They are making a difference. Let’s have a glance to their ideas.

Buseet

I would love to have a collective transport service to take me door to door from home to the office, to the supermarket, to the gym, and to have my kids going and coming back with a shared-transport a bit cheaper than the school bus, which by the way does not provide service if they remain longer for their afternoon sport clubs. We are all creatures of habit, with slow changes in our daily-weekly routines, so transports may be headache even if public buses are available to us.

That’s why Buseet caught my attention: is it possible to select my daily trip with pickup and drop-off points with my particular timetables? May I specify the booking type and the days I use the service?

It seems the answer to both of my questions is “Yes, you can”, therefore my dream is becoming true. The payment on credit or cash doesn’t worry me, but I really appreciate that they inform me by email 30 minutes in advance and the SMS to my mobile 15 minutes ahead of the bus’s arrival, so I can pick up my stuff and leave/arrive on time. And I don’t have to drive myself, control the pedal in the yellow light, and overtake a lorry to change my lane. What a peace of mind.And their market study is convincing for investors: out of the 20 million of Cairenes, their “obtainable market” size is 14%, and 88,000 users would generate $62 million of annual revenue. So far, they have 3,000 users, 15,000 trips and 45,000 seats sold, and got 130,000 followers in social media. What a hit for a bus service, isn’t it? Let’s put in figures in our cities, and the calculator will bring us a good investment opportunity.

Friendÿcar

Monthly bills are a pain for everyone, but while we don’t consider renting our washing machine to reach the end of the month payments, to share the car may be more profitable for the lender. The founder of Friendÿcar thought something like that, and a couple of years ago Ahmed El Gamal decided to disrupt the auto-insurance market with a peer-to-peer car borrowing app.

Friendÿcar vision is to evolve the society to a time-access model in which any of us can access any car anytime anywhere in the world. Their app has a bunch of awards, so that signals we are moving towards their vision.

Smart Sensor Devices

Yes, I have a sour throat these days, and happily the rain showers has softened the situation as the raindrops brought down so many floating particles on the air. The terraces are covered with muddy watery mixtures, so if the rainfall gets heavier during the day, the air will be even cleaner. Unfortunately it is not like this most of the year, so in order to prevent so many breathing and respiratory problems Hibou Air, a smart sensor device, will help to monitor the particles in suspension. Alex Juanro introduced this easy to install all-in-one solution with low power consumption that can help to beat the fourth largest health threat to humans, air pollution, a problem that costs $750 billion, equivalent to 1% of the Global GDP. Juanro sets the market size in his pitch at $6 billion, and Dubai’s local market at $135 million. Smart Sensor Devices offers to customers to either purchase the device or to pay for a monthly subscription to monitor the data. Their revenue goal is set at $10 million.

Hibou Air, as an eco-friendly IoT system, connects to your dashboard account and measures air quality, temperature, humidity, ambient pressure, ambient light and UV light. I spoke to Axel Hammar and he mentioned that their idea is applicable indoor and outdoor, and I thought that it will be great to have such a device near me, a sun allergic sufferer, living in the desert and escaping from the direct sunlight as fast as a vampire runs away from the sunrise.

VeriSmart

KYC is the acronym for “know your customer”, a tricky problem that costs $1.6 billion to J.P.Morgan, Saurabh Gupta explains.

The Know Your Client establishes that investment advisors know detailed information about their clients’ risk tolerance, investment knowledge and financial position, so it protects both sides.

To accelerate fast the ID verification process, including multiple documents, face to face interaction, waiting time and the repetitive process, VeriSmart proposes a kind of artificial intelligence, a remote automated “kyc solution” that registers customers biometrically, it is available 24/7 and it will be the once in lifetime solution to confirm our identity when we pay online, rent a house, take a taxi and make a phone call.

Yes, everything can be done from our mobile, which can verify the truth with our biometric data. We simply have to upload a photo, signature and document, and once their verification is done, we get our VeriSmart Key. Once in life, and forget to re-upload constantly all our personal data.

The service is practical for banking, education, telecom, travel, property tenants, recruitment, finance and hotels. The service is available in 13 countries and accepts 765 document formats, which is not a low number.

Docswallet

I wrote before about the fleeing in Oxford ten years ago, where I sent my official University degrees for verification and everything I was seeing on the TV was the shire covered with all kind of floating objects from private houses, and dedicated emergency services rescuing pacific citizens with their cats on their laps. No news from my certificates thought, as landlines were cut due to the heavy raining. It could be possible that my dry-stamped docs were also floating somewhere there. (Glup)

The situation would have never happened if by that time we had Docswallet, a blockchain verification of documents that verifies the authenticity of the issuing institution and the holder’s ID. The digital locker of academic records is already accessible and working at some US universities, bringing peace of mind to applicants in India. Avira Tharakan The idea is scalable and applicable to other sectors such as immigration visas, so consulates and local governments may find a fast use of it, and the same is applicable for trade documents, property, travel documents, health records, and good conduct certificates, so necessary when applying for residency visa.

Astron

The special sauce behind Astron is a combination of machine learning, internet of things and voice control to run resources efficiently. The sustainability that Anastasios Avranas defends on his pitch has to do with reduction of waste, money saving and the creation of a greener and smarter environment.

Given the acceleration of misuse of resources since the new millennia started (260% jump of the energy price, 60% more of emissions from energy production, 30% increase of energy demand), we do not have much choices other than tying the belt and invest in an intelligent platform for efficient asset and facility management.

Astron collects the data analytics and operates under real voice communication. The machine learning and artificial intelligence is scalable and compatible solution to current infrastructures.

Responscity

Kudos to Responscity, the only startup with a lady co-pitching on the stage!

I have lost the counting of how many times I called to report an issue –fallen tree, garbage not collected, an unconscious person walking at night- and have to ballpark the address for the public services to arrive. In all the occasions, it took longer to identify the place than to mitigate the problem, but that time is the price good citizens commit to avoid bigger problems in their community. When we take in consideration highly dense populated cities the problem may seem unabated, and that is exactly the situation that Responscity want to solve: their digital home identity devices (DHI), installed with a screwdriver on the wall –nothing more practical-, provides a smart address with geolocation, contact details and other information, so citizens and local services can better know about waste management, citizen connection, early warning alerts, and complaint management in a timely manner.

So far, Responscity has helped to canalize 25,000 complaints posted by citizens; got 60,000 bills delivered, registered an 80% drop in garbage complaints, and sent 900,000 alerts.

Countries like India, were urban population will equal country population by 2050, a 34% more than today, will definitely make a good use of this device, a scalable world solution as more and more people abandon their lands to set up in urban environments.

CivilCops

Another option to report incident to the authorities is through our mobiles, an essential companion in our lives when we are far away from home. CivilCops’ idea is to reach the authorities to report issues with water, transport, cleanliness and safety in real time through artificial intelligence. The tool will enable smart governments to monitor the trends and localize problems, hence solving the issue in shorter time. Their projected revenue until 2019 is $1.2 million and they expect around 5 million citizens to get impacted.

I opened the site and, surprisingly, it automatically opened a chat with my Facebook ID, which was not active on the device at that time.

InteliTaap

I would never imagine that the aisle of the shop could be able to know what I’m doing, even if I’m just touching the fabric to know if is linen or synthetic, and leaving the place after verifying that –again- the percentage or synthetic is as high as I were to pay for 100% silk shirt. Good quality polyester, someone told me once. Anyhow, InteliTaap sensors can tell the retailers where I have been, for how long and –almost- tell them I left because of their polyester shirts. InteliTaap sensors obtain all kind of data in physical stores: their heat-maps, cross-shopping, zone analytics, path analytics, in-store analytics and repeat visits are just astonishing.

With the opportunity of 8,900 retails in India to use their tracking devices, what about extending the scope to 81,000 shops, including those in the Middle East? All the information collected provides retailers a more efficient and cost effective way, allowing mixing products in different locations to yield better results. The idea is scalable to other sectors different than retail: wouldn’t be incredible to integrate it in stadiums, airports, shopping mall, schools? The options are infinite to improve smart cities.

Grid Supply Chain

Ehab El Shishiny quantifies the yearly losses in freight and logistics $1 trillion, so Grid Supply Chain enables the tracking of goods through the internet of things, satellite data, and machine learning, maximizing the use of containers. Any cargo moving by airplane, ship, train or truck appears on data. Their real time tracking instant freight wants to move the entire industry from reactive to predictive, and so far their 100% coverage on ships is a great kick start.

https://www.arabianblueocean.com/single-post/2018/03/02/StartupBootCamp-is-the-first-cohort-to-bring-Dubai-Smart-City-nearer-to-us

Is there room for startups whose product is not an electronic device or a one day download-and-delete app? Apparently yes, as long we all need a moisturizing cream or something stronger to fix what harsh weather causes to our cutis (don´t tell me what harsh is, I have been living in the desert for several years where sandstorms hit time to time). But the challenge is: how to run it in a sustainable way, how not to deplete resources to solve a global population worry? “In the UAE plants grow naturally in the desert using very little water and poor soil, so they are not competing for food. We decided to take advantage of these uniquely found resources and transform them into valuable products. We discovered not only beauty related properties, but also small properties of these plants, so together we got a PTC patent* to protect the use of these extracts,” says Lina Yousef, co-founder of De L´Arta, the first Middle East sustainable skincare brand.

De l´Arta wants to be the first company in the world that uses renewable resources while not depleting the basic resources of water and using completely natural products, so there is nothing being released back into the environment that is harmful. “We also want to bring beauty back to the world, feeling good, so that´s why our slogan is Responsible beauty, people feel good about using their product sustainable. So we are a sustainable skin care brand,” says the scientist. Reasoning seems logic, but it requires an internal vision to keep you focus for years. “I´m 26 years old. I come from civil engineering, but six years ago I started creating my own lab where I discovered the use of plants. I was doing my own personal care stuff, taking care of the environment. I don´t like what goes into the water system with the sulfates and so on. We [Lina Yousef and I] met in 2014. We carried two years of research. I learnt a lot involved in science and care products. So this project is coming out from my passion, love of science, love of nature, environment,” explains Saeed Al Khoori, De L ´Arta cofounder.

They pitched a dream and their dream become true

It was a call to action when Lina Yousef and Saeed Al Khoori hurried to enter a MadTalk competition due the day after. They made the top five out of the 250 applicants. “We spent four or five hours preparing the application and sent a video. We didn´t have many expectations, we participated, people saw the vision we have and it kept going,” remembers Dr. Lina Yousef. That contest put them on track of their real possibilities and today they are at Catalyst, the Masdar-BP accelerator where their business process got fast: “We leverage by coming to Masdar Catalyst, it´s a spin off. They support us and we are getting the proper infrastructure and support, things really accelerated since September 2017, so we are really working hard and getting their logistics, but our research has been going for over two years,” says Dr. Lina Yousef.

“What happens after someone washes her hands, it goes into the water, and synthetic materials cannot be processed by nature?”

The team is happy with their accomplishments: “We have so far a PCT patent that has been applied for the innovation, the second thing is we secure the supply chain, so we know exactly how and where we are going to get our botanicals from. We have prototypes — a serum and a night cream using these active ingredients — .” They also have a clear path about their next steps: “We have seed funding to carry other pilot study which we are going to start this year. We are looking at 500 consumers to get their feedback. We are now in discussions with a global leader based in France that manufactures cosmetics globally in a very sustainable way, so we are very excited in how this project is evolving,” says Lina Yousef.

The route may look a bit vast, but Saeed cleared the path by sorting out the first selection: “I know the toxic plants, so we stayed away from them. We chose the plants that are more abundant. We are planning to do further research because there are more than 600 species in the UAE.” De L´Arta will be outsourcing the cultivation within the country. “We are not going to be picking resources from the desert, we want to have a quality control environment to grow these plants”, describes Dr. Lina.

The basic elements will be 100% Emirati and internationally certified: “The active botanical ingredients are going to be sourced from the UAE. It is an interesting opportunity because there isn´t anything like this in the Middle East right now with extracting natural. The European market has very strict regulatory parameters (…), so we are spending our time now is in certifying these extracts and making sure they are safe.”

The certification will make things clear for environmental conscious consumers: “We are not organic. We are natural. Organic doesn´t mean sustainable, there is a distinction. We aim to be sustainable, all of the materials that we are using are coming from a renewal resource, and the entire pipeline is, to best of our knowledge, following the most sustainable practices.”

De L´Arta founders frame their doing around “Responsible Beauty” and aim to conquer the luxury skin care products in Europe and Latin America

The first 500 customers

The sustainable skincare startup will be producing 500 bottles — to distribute to a diversified portfolio of users and get their feedback — in a designated laboratory in Masdar City: “We call it a “demonstration facility”, available for people to come and check. We will be manufacturing in our demonstration lab using recipes that are provided to us by experts, using bioactive concentrations from the plants that we already know are the right amounts, we already have prototypes available that we produced ourselves, and those are the ones that we have been handling to friends and family. For example, my mother has a very sensitive skin. It is really is amazing, and it calms down any inflammation. We´ll start the trials in the second or third quarters of this year.” De L´Arta typical customers would be people aged 24–65 years, educated and environment concern, affluent urban, people who care about their lifestyle but want to feel good about their impact in the environment. “People care about their beauty. Our creams are cured to preventing ageing, tiding the skins and clarifying, so anyone who fits these categories,” says Dr. Lina Yousef.

According to their planning, De L´Arta will be taking off from of the region to chase their real interesting markets: “UAE is a hub of international population, we want to really capture the right profile, the territory target is the GCC and Mena region, but in three years from now, we are really looking into the European market and the Latin American market.” But why are you going so far? “Latin American consumers are very aware [of sustainability], Brazil is very well known for their sustainability practices, so it is already a market that is ready and is not yet saturated when you look at the presence of certain brands. Europe as well is not as saturated. Asia, China, Japan are very saturated and very difficult, there are very strong regulations to enter their market”.

So how are you crafting this new wave of sustainable skincare? “Number one is our uniqueness in the region, especially in the desert. Using desert plants, nobody really focused before on this. Number two is our entire sustainable approach; we even care about the recycled packaging. We are positioning in the luxury segment, our creams are not for everyone, we are targeting people who have the money to spend and who are knowledgeable and would be interested in trying something different”, comments Dr. Lina Yousef. Are you afraid from imitations? “We can´t prevent them from coming into the market. We have a strong team of people, our brand strategists have tremendous experience in cosmetics, and we have a very strong network and support. We feel we have the proper strength to get us into the market (…). We aim in five years to capture 15% of the market in the natural segment, but I don´t feel comfortable talking about figures right now. We are scientists,” sentences Dr. Lina. From the first entry perspective, Saeed al Khoori has no doubts: “There are not threats because we are the first company using these plants from the UAE, that´s our strengths.”

Next months will be filled with plenty of activity for the four members of the team. “We are in the pre-seed stage, the amount of money that we are going to receive is going to accelerate, and this is what we are looking for right now, we are looking for investment, investors interested in coming and talk to us, that´s really where we are. Typically, for first stage AED 5 million — somewhere around there — and then we´ll move forward. Marketing takes a bulk. The technology is here, the manufacturing is available, so it´s about getting De L´Arta out to the world right now.”

Going back to that day at MadTalks, Dr. Lina recalls: “People see the difference we are bringing, the uniqueness. The most important thing is our passion. Saeed is really passionate of plants; it is part of who he is. We have a lot of these elements — team, money, and place — for a successful adventure”.

So let the adventure start.

The 12th Sustainable Development Goal set by UNDP is Responsible Production and Consumption.

* PCT — The International Patent System. The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) assists applicants in seeking patent protection internationally for their inventions.

If there is a competitive difference that Solva can make for your receiving organic salad delivery, is to contribute to a better air quality with electric motorbikes. “We want that when you receive the delivery of your organic food, you know that your salad did not reach your home generating CO2 gases,” says Yousif Al-Abd, co-founder of Solva, the startup born at Sheraa incubator and developing now at Catalyst, the Masdar-BP accelerator in Abu Dhabi. Solva´s mission seeks to reduce gas pollution by replacing piston bikes by electric bikes and sharing logistics between delivery companies. That would reduce the number of bikes on the streets and meeting the full demand.

“We want to contribute to the sustainability visions that the country is working on. We look at the transport sector because it contributes to the 7 percent of UAE GDP but at the same time, it contributes to the 74% of the CO2 emissions. So we broke it down and we noticed that the bike sector is not served at all. There are 55,000 bikes only in Dubai, emitting CO2 on daily basis,” Mr Al-Abd explains. “We started by thinking how we can disrupt and replace these bikes by electric bikes. Later on, we evolved the idea [with] the concept of sharing logistics, reducing the number of bikes on the street while actually meeting the full demand, using all the big data analysis and blockchain to make sure we optimize the sector itself. This reduces the life cycle cost and life cycle emission. We are trying to use the data to have smarter logistics while embedding electric vehicles,” he explains. Solva team is composed by graduates of Masdar Institute: “We come from this environment that wants to change the world, it has been our dream from the beginning,” he proclaims proudly.

The company is running a pilot stage and partnered with nine companies from the food industry and ecommerce industry and gets data every five minutes from all the data loggers installed in their bikes. The first Solva bikes imported from China already arrived. Solva amended the technology by adding a cooling system to work in a 50 C degrees environment. The startup plans to grow a 2% on weekly basis to a targeted 4,800 bikes by the end of 2019: “This is less than 10% of the Dubai market only. We really think this is very doable.” They expect to design their own bikes at Khalifa University facilities, and students from that institution, Masdar, UAE University, and NYU create their in-house, UAE based technology. “In April we start recruiting. Once we are sure, we can start manufacturing, ideally is Q2 2019,” he states.

Government stakeholders are already aware of their idea. “We have held meetings with ADWEA, RTA, Ministry of Climate Change, Masdar, Masdar City, SMA. We have meetings with representatives of Expo 2020 who are running a fund that give $100,000 for every startup, and we are pitching for it in April. Based on Masdar evaluation, we are at AED 10 million valuation, which is even pre-seed stage,” says Mr Al-Abd, and adds that they are considering a cryptocurrency ICO at a later stage to finance Solva.

“We have a movement, the tag #solvacleandelivery. The next time you have a food delivery coming on a bike with piston, take a picture and tag us because we don’t accept anymore a bike that delivers food with a piston engine producing CO2. It´s more than just a bike, it´s a movement”

Electric bikes will require batteries and charging stations. Solva´s solution is a station with two options: a charging pole in which any electric vehicle may connect, as well as being a swap batteries point. Customers can add their data to the smart contract based on blockchain and get their battery exchange on the spot. “If you own one of our bikes you can swap your ID[card] and get a battery, and we charge you on a cloud based system for the difference between the two batteries,” Mr Al-Abd illustrates.

Solva collects data about the delivery services and traffic movements and will move into the concept of sharing economy, so food deliveries and ecommerce may use the same bike at different times: “We are going to enable the sharing economy while retaining bike ownership. We´ll start moving the whole overall logistics to the smart data driven sharing economy concept.”

Mr Al-Abd presented Solva at the Young Forum Energy Leaders during the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2018 to a packed auditorium of Emirati students eager to join him: “I would say it´s a shift, people are changing and not looking for 8.00 h. to 17.00h. jobs as in the old days.”

Their planification will move from serving other businesses to serving also private customers. “We are only B2B (business to business). Ideally, we will integrate and go B2C (business to customer)”, he says. Solva´s next market will be in the GCC, in which they hope to create jobs: “You can come into that platform, have your own bike and be in the logistic industry. Imagine a unified application and you can order from wherever and whoever picks up the bike, will be able to deliver to that location. It´s an optimized platform, this is the future.”

Regarding other opportunities, Mr Al-Abd suggests to purchase Solva bikes: “If you go to our website and buy a bike, we will rent it for you, we´ll operate it for you and give you your return on the investment. A bike can be shared by ten people and make return on investment.”

The team has also prepared the battery disposal stage. “Our supplier has EU certificates for quality assurance and disposing batteries. The deal is that every container that can be filled with batteries is going to be shift back to be taken care by the supplier according to all the regulations, so we are not going to dispose batteries in the UAE,” Mr Al-Abd mentions.

Solva is his third startup. So far he learnt to fail and not to be stubborn: “When you come up with one idea you think it´s the right thing, but with the market you have to be opened enough to change. And now, I am in the right place, with the right team, with the vision, investors, and people listening to us, just because I failed before”.

“The mentality of the majlis in the new generation is actually to share knowledge, talk about failure, and work on things together versus the old majlis, sometimes judgmental, that made you worried to share. It´s a new generation. The majlis evolved. A new majlis. Go to The Hub in Emirates Towers, is full of young Emiratis, they are making a difference”, he sentences.

The 13th Sustainable Development Goal set by UNDP is Climate Action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact.

This article was originally published at Arabian Blue Ocean.

The SDGs seeking to alleviate poverty and hunger, improve health, education and access to water and sanitation, reduce inequality and protect the environment go on parallel with some Islamic values.

To achieve the SDGs in developing countries will require $4.5tr per year. The mobilization of private resources is fundamental to achieve the SDGs so finance flows up down to local businesses that can have social impact and generate profits in local communities.

Jafar Babayev and Ramil Muzaffarsky Maharramov are the cofounders of Maliyya, a startup with a special attention to the Islamic Finance.“We came up with an idea to establish a Shariah-complaint P2P financing and investment platform which will offer broad choice of Shariah-compliant investment & financing instruments and products, lower transaction cost by skipping intermediary financial service providers, full Shariah certification of financing & investment products by reputable scholars, small investment amount as low as $100, and access to the cross-border pool of investors and financiers through global availability and P2P nature of the platform,” says Jafar Babayev, Maliyya´s CEO.

“Maliyya’s value proposition is very simple. We ask ourselves what kind of pains people feel when they decide to lend their money. And those pains are very clear: low returns, limited investment options, and costly process. Secondly, we found out that the borrowing process is cumbersome too. Anybody willing to borrow will need to consider high rates, excruciating fees, and lengthy due diligence process,” explains Jafar Babayev. “

In parallel, we discovered that both investment and borrowing process becomes more miserable if you are a Muslim and want to act in accordance with your religious beliefs. For instance, although 25% of the global population is Muslim, Islamic banking industry accounts only for 1.3% of the global banking sector,” he continues.

“Muslims, based on their religious beliefs, invest and borrow differently. Whenever a Muslim decides to invest or borrow, he or she must ensure that the transaction complies with religious laws forming the part of Islamic tradition. Therefore, whenever we mention that a product offered via Maliyya is Shariah-compliant, we imply that Muslims following religious rules could safely use it. However, we want to make it very clear that non-Muslims are not prohibited from investing or borrowing via Maliyya. We never discriminate people on any ground,” he clarifies. “Maliyya was born to make finance inclusive and to provide access to those who were excluded from modern financial services either because of the cost of financing or because of beliefs. Therefore, Maliyya is and will remain an inclusive financial technology enabling affordable, fast and reliable investing and borrowing in all its markets. People from any religion, nationality or believe can access and use Maliyya,” he completes.

“Investors (lenders) are unhappy with profitability, financial products and the investment process offered by their banks. Usually, our investors are mid-level tech-savvy managers having enough savings to invest but want to do so on their own terms. On the other hand, our borrowers are either consumers or owners of small and medium enterprises looking for better borrowing rates and easy and quick process,” Jafar Babayev says.

The market expansion will happen from the UAE to the GCC and the MENA. “UAE is our primary target market for now. We believe that it is best option for testing such an innovative investing and funding technology as Maliyya. Our next target market is Bahrain which also comes with a very advanced and supportive regulatory framework for financial technology. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh are the next markets Maliyya plans to target for scaling up,” explain Ramil Muzzafarsky, Maliyya´s CFO.

From Azerbaijan to Dubai

One year ago, Jafar Babayev and Ramil Muzzafarsky, partners in Confidelity Partners, a management consultancy firm, were discussing restructuring a defaulted cross-border loan transaction with their clients. “Defaults on foreign borrowings became usual to Azerbaijan after the local currency lost its value significantly in series of devaluations of 2015. Azerbaijani banks started experiencing huge problems to pay back debt borrowed before 2015 when the economy was flourishing. Some banks went bankrupt. As a result, the cost of borrowing became enormous. However, the economy started recovering in 2017, and demand for financing increased. Banks were unable to meet the demand because the local population withdrew most of the deposits. On the other hand, foreign banks were reluctant to lend to local banks due to risks,” explains Jafar Babayev.

During their discussions, they tried to find a way to decrease the cost of financing and at the same time to increase returns for lenders. “Moreover, we wanted to make all that in compliance with Shariah because the majority of Azerbaijani are followers of Islam. Consequently, we concluded that there are significant legal and technological fundamentals for ordinary people to finance other ordinary people,” says Jafar Babayev, and continues: “It was a joint decision, but the core of the idea came from me. We take all decision unanimously.”

Startups must faces competition and difficulties, but their field is even more complicated due to tax implications and regulatory environment, but they keep a realistic vision. “Tax implications for investors using Maliyya’s marketplace could wipe out several percentage points from their expected profits. Capital requirements on crowd financing technology increase financing needs of Maliyya. Unfortunately, the regulatory environment for Islamic Financial Technology remains a challenging area for Maliyya. This is true for most of the countries with majority Muslim populations. Regulations are quite cumbersome for a Shariah-compliant investing and borrowing marketplace, such as Maliyya,” tells Ramil Muzzafarsky.

The ecosystem is still peaking up and it is still not mature enough, so convincing investors is a challenging task. “Despite the hype, the Venture Capital industry is still underdeveloped, and the risk capital is severely limited in the broader Middle East region,” describes Ramil Muzzafarsky. “We underestimated the limited availability of the risk capital in the Middle East region. We thought that a great idea, vision and team would be enough for take-off and fundraising,” completes Jafar Babayev.

Both are MBA graduates from Sloan MIT and IE, and think that Islamic finance still have a long way in the western institutions, although in the old continent it starts to take off slowly. “As a graduate of MIT Sloan School of Management, I can say that Islamic Finance remains largely unknown in leading academic and business circles of the USA. Europe is doing much better in this regard. Some business schools in Europe offer Islamic Finance specializations, which is mostly non-existent in the USA. The reason for limited knowledge of the Islamic Finance is mainly due to the smaller market share of Islamic Finance. Islamic Banks account for only 2% of global bank assets,” explains Ramil Muzzafarsky.

Maliyya got shortlisted from 100 applications to be part of the inaugural batch of DIFC Fintech Hive, the accelerator program launched in partnership with Accenture that brought together the next generation of technology leaders and entrepreneurs to address the needs of the region’s financial services industry. During the three-month program Maliyya had the opportunity to be mentored by leading executives from Citi, Emirates NBD, Emirates Islamic, ADIB, HSBC, Mashreq, RAKBANK, Standard Chartered, and Visa, as well as senior representatives from DIFC Authority, Accenture, and IFC. “Technology support will be available on Facebook and Envestnet | Yodlee. Dubai Islamic Economy Development Center (DIEDC) provided special mentorship from Islamic banking and finance perspective. Clyde & Co, Simmons & Simmons, as well as Support Legal, will help Maliyya to cope with legal and regulatory issues. It was a great 3-month experience. The success of the Fintech Hive is related to Raja Al Mazrouei, the Executive Vice President of DIFC Fintech Hive. She herself is a great person and a big enthusiast of fintech. She provided huge support for all participants including Maliyya,” explains Jafar Babayev.

Soon after having participated in the DIFC FinTech Hive, Maliyya got into the MetLife Foundation & Village Capital Financial Health Forum last December. Another 10 startups were selected out of 150 applicants from around the world. “It was a great experience to have the chance to present Maliyya in front of a dozen of investors, stakeholders, and MetLife’s global staff. We learned a lot,” Ramil Muzzafarsky says.

Right now, the startup is on its seed phase for investment. “We are looking for a seed investment of $ 250,000 US dollars. This investment would enable us to make Maliyya fully operational, and to execute full integration with a payment system, with our select financial custodian service providers, and with select partner commercial banks”, says Ramil Muzzafarsky. “We have pitched more than five times. We believe that $2 million would be sufficient to take Maliyya to breakeven point and eventually to profitability in five years. Maliyya’s technology has minimal marginal cost after the launch of the platform. We plan to capitalize on that”, he completes.

Both cofounders are from Azerbaijan, where the wave of startups has not yet developed. “Azerbaijan does not have a developed startup ecosystem. However, there are some organizations and communities which try to organize various networking events,” comments Jafar Babayev.

“We are confident in the value proposition and business model of Maliyya. We would be happy to operate Maliyya for a long time without considering an exit. However, to enable some of our investors to exit and to cash on their investment, Maliyya would consider IPO or partial sale of its shares to a strategic buyer, most likely in the next 10 years,” concludes Ramil Mufazzarsky.

I came across Decision Critical, a productivity and organizational tool for startups to maintain a visual canvas of expenses and budget of the project they want to launch.

I registered and got a one month-free trial of Decision Critical’s pre-release beta version, with the promise of experimenting with “a disruptive new enterprise modeling software which makes realistic, zero-based budgeting intuitive and streamlined,” so I have played with it for a couple of weeks.

Budgeting is the nightmare of mostly all the entrepreneurs, who focus most of their time on an invention to help the world. Their product will not see the light if the project run out of money. Decision Critical proposes a seamless modeling to ease the microeconomic exams and create the forecast for breakout and zero-based budgeting.

The tool helps you to organize:

Business concept (products/services and organizational structure with detailed salaries of everyone), Resource allocation (from resourcing to equipment, land & buildings, raw materials and most important: financing),

Business environment (taxes and utilities),

Reports that angels and corporate investors will ask you before considering your fund request (operational report, balance sheet, income statement, cash flow, cash balance), and

Inventories (unit sales, units produced, headcount & footprint).

Decision Critical considers

observable, operational events,

so with a little intuition

the results will show up

No need of ratio-based financial model or too much technical solutions, difficult to understand by the team members. Decision Critical crosses data and avoids bias and distortion caused by wrong assumptions or seasonal changes, so no cash deficit will escape from your eye. If you decide to change your previous assumptions, the tool will take it: you may enter your primary values, map dependencies and evaluate/correct course of your original forecast.

In case you are a bit unexperienced and fear accounting, budgeting and organizational enterprise, the software proposes base scenarios in which you may change/plug your numbers, departments, and names; decide the currency of salaries and when to pay employees –beginning or end of month- , control the raw materials, keep an eye on inventories (FIFO or LIFO at your own), and many more things.

I played with a scenario of a dumpling producer, plugging numbers on products as manufactured goods (beef and cilantro) and semi-finished product (raw dough), setting the cost per batch, kilograms or tons, and estimating the time for batch production, making changes on the cash flow statement by altering the depreciation expense of an equipment and the VAT variations, etcetera. I felt that several MBA courses passed again in front of my eyes while plugging values.

This article has been originally published at Arabian Blue Ocean.