ArabNet Kuwait gathered entrepreneurs around exciting panels and talks

After lots of announcements about ArabNet conference, the event successfully landed to Kuwait for the first time. Arraya Ballroom was the place to be on October 4 and 5. There were representatives of many respectable companies, such as KNET, MasterCard, Twitter, Careem and many others. We were also there, wouldn’t miss such an event that brings us the opportunity to attend interesting panels and talks.

Well-known speakers and panelists

One of the major conference panels was the opening panel that gathered Kuwait’s leading entrepreneurship advocates — Abdulaziz B. Al Loughani (Vice Chairman at The National Fund for SMEs Development), Essa Al Essa (Chairman at Mefazec), Mohammad Alhajeri (Chief Investment Officer at Impulse International), Mohammad Jaffar (former CEO of Talabat) and Shafeeq Al-Saed Al-Omar, Assistant Undersecretary at Ministry of State for Youth Affairs. They discussed the digital ecosystem and what are the opportunities and obstacles for entrepreneurs here in Kuwait.

Hashim Bahbahani, co-founder of Coded and a member of StartupQ8 community, participated in a panel that was held during the second day of the conference. Charles Saliba (Founder and CEO at HR Works s.a.l.) and Meherzad Dastoor, (Senior Manager, People Advisory Services at Ernst & Young) joined him on the stage and discussed talent acquisition since that’s one of the biggest challenges startups face nowadays. They were also talking about challenges startups face, outsourcing or doing everything in-house, the best practices for hiring, training and retaining talent, which we all know it’s not very easy.

Who won the ArabNet Kuwait contests?

Aside from all ArabNet talks and panels, there were two contests. One of those was called Startup Demo Competition, where Meddy by Abdulla AlKhenji (Qatar) won the first place for an app that helps people find best doctors based on patient reviews and credentials. SoukDesigner by Kamel Kabbani (Lebanon) took the second place. It is an online platform that enables people to sell products in their personalized online store easily and economically. Third place went to Pricinity by Ahmad Al-Benali (Kuwait). It’s a search engine for products, prices and stores throughout Kuwait and the region.

Ideathon contest was won by Jaffer Mohamad Mahdi, the youngest participant at some ArabNet competition so far. With his idea called MySpot, he could actually help resolving one of the crucial problems in Kuwait — finding a parking spot.

We would like to thank the ArabNet team who worked very hard for the last couple of months to bring this event to Kuwait and gather entrepreneurs and startupers around awesome topics.

Make sure to be there next year!