The Leading Online Tech Festival for Emerging Markets

Sriram Krishnan is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he invests in early stage consumer startups. Today, Sriram serves on the board of Hopin. Prior to joining a16z, Sriram held numerous senior product roles. Most recently, he led core consumer teams at Twitter where he was responsible for products including the home timeline, new user experience, search, discovery, and audience growth. Before this, Sriram created and oversaw various mobile ad products for both Snap and Facebook, including Snap’s Direct Response ads business and the Facebook Audience Network, one of the largest networks in display advertising. Sriram started his career at Microsoft where he touched numerous projects related to Windows Azure. He is the author of ""Programming Windows Azure"" published by O'Reilly. Sriram writes actively at @sriramk on Twitter and at sriramk.com. Along with his wife, he also co-hosts The Good Time Show on Clubhouse, a nightly show through which they interview innovators around tech and culture.

Alex Antolino is a creative director, content creator, and overnight music producer.

David Miltner is the Head of Growth Marketing for International Expansion at Fiverr International Ltd. (NYSE: FVRR), the company that is changing how the world works together. David and his team are responsible to grow Fiverr’s international footprint and connect local businesses with top talented freelance experts. Before he joined Fiverr, David successfully scaled up new mobility start ups in Germany and Europe.

Kieran Flanagan has a proven track record in helping businesses, from start-ups to scale-ups, grow their traffic, users, and revenue. At HubSpot, he's played a major role in the growth of their international business, product-led business, and global customer acquisition group. As an SVP of marketing, he currently leads a group that spans global customer acquisition, HubSpot media, and HubSpot academy and community.

Elie is the co-founder of Anghami, the leading music streaming service in the Middle East. In late 2012, seizing the opportunity of a lack of proper digital music service in the Arab world, Elie and his partner, Eddy Maroun, launched Anghami (‘my tunes’ in Arabic). Since then, Anghami has reached over 85 million users, streaming a billion track played each month. With offices in Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Dubai, Cairo & Riyadh, Anghami's 120 people team successfully raised over $30 million from VCs and leads the subscription race in the region, announcing an IPO in March 2021. At Anghami, Elie runs the operations and product development, spending most of his time working between clouds, streams and pixels.

One of the most interesting questions of our time is what will happen to societies, economies and innovation as almost everyone has a super computer in their pocket — and what it will mean for those who don’t. Now, with access to rapidly changing tech, and with Covid, much is massively accelerated. When I travel — now on zoom, once 250,000 miles a year - I love to see and understand this shift bottom up; to understand differences in culture, history, governance. But I also love to see what is shared as, for all the diversity across borders, problem solvers in rising markets share a ton - more so often than with the West. Tremendous impact and wealth will be created. I am hopeful by nature; love to hike; read much of the time; try to be of-service all of the time - and hopefully share all of it first and foremost with my kids.

Emily Oberman is an award winning multidisciplinary designer whose work encompasses strategy, brand identity, motion graphics, publications, packaging, advertising, and websites. Her work is unique in that it blurs the line between promotion and design—often using language and humor to make an emotional connection for brands both global and local. Her clients include Warner Bros. Entertainment, Warner Records, and Fisher-Price, Rotten Tomatoes, Saturday Night Live, DC, J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts, Ready Player One, League of Legends, The Wing, COTE Korean Steakhouse and Netflix’s Queue digital magazine / platform. Before joining Pentagram, she worked at the legendary design studio M&Co., working with Tibor Kalman. Emily then co-founded Number Seventeen with Bonnie Siegler in 1993. A graduate of Cooper Union, Emily’s work has been recognized by the AIGA, TDC, ADC, CA, among other acronyms. In 2004, she was awarded Copper Union’s Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award. In 2016 she was one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business. She has served on the national board of AIGA and as president of its NY chapter. She has taught at Yale, Cooper Union, Parsons and The New School.

As Jungle Creations’ Brand Development Director, Siobhan leads the brand strategy for the company’s portfolio of media brands, which have over 125 million followers across social platforms, employing new approaches to content, partnerships and platforms.

Erik founded Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa together with Mikkel Vinter in 2006 and he has more than 20 years of experience in mobile telecoms in both MNO and MVNO. Erik has a proven track record of building successful MVNOs in the world including in Saudi Arabia starting from the acquisition of the initial license and subsequently holding the position as chairman in the operational entity since inception. Erik is dedicated to ensuring that Virgin Mobile Middle East &Africa maintains its position as the leading MVNO/MVNE player in the region with particular focus on the Middle East. For the first five years, he held the position of Chief Financial Officer being was responsible for all financial activities, including local and global debt and equity fundraising. From 2011 until the middle of 2018, he worked as Chief Business Development Officer focusing on developing new business opportunities and nurturing the relationship with our JV partners across the region. During his career, Erik has held many senior positions across several different countries in Europe, working with both frequency-based and MVNO-based greenfield mobile companies and traditional telecom companies offering both fixed and mobile services. Prior to Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa, Erik was Chief Executive Officer of Realtime, a global VAS provider, where he successfully managed a turnaround of the business and developed a strong growth strategy for the company in Europe, South America and the Middle East. Between 2000 and 2003, Erik was the Chief Financial Officer of a telco corporate venture fund. Erik graduated from the University of Aarhus with a master’s degree in economics and Business Administration in 1994. Married and living in Dubai with 3 children, Erik is an enthusiastic runner and enjoys spending time with his family and visiting new places in the region.

Bedy oversees 500 Startups’ ecosystem development programs--including investor education courses in partnership with top institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley and INSEAD, and leads 500’s corporate startup innovation and consultancy. She has helped launch strategic partnerships and accelerator programs across the globe. Bedy joined 500 Startups in 2011 becoming General Partner of its Global Flagship Funds I, II, III and IV. Among her investments are Talkdesk, Viva Real which sold to OLX, and Cinepapaya, acquired by Fandango. She is also a Managing Partner of Falcons I and General Partner of the Sanabil 500 MENA Seed Accelerator Fund, which focus on MENA startups. Prior to 500 Startups, she worked as a management consultant specializing in distribution and go-to-market strategies for Fortune 500 companies in Brazil. She founded Brazil Innovators, an organization that became the premier hub for Brazilian tech founders, with a network of over 5,000 members. Bedy is a member of the Society of Kauffman Fellows, Class ‘17, a Guest Lecturer at Stanford Center for Professional Development, INSEAD and Berkeley, and a Forbes Contributor. She holds a BA from Fundação Getúlio Vargas, an MLA from the University of Pennsylvania, and is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

Fadi Ghandour is the Executive Chairman of Wamda Group, a platform that invests, nurtures and builds entrepreneurship ecosystems across the Middle East and North Africa. Fadi is also the Founder of Aramex, one of the leading global logistics companies. Fadi spent the first 30 years of his work life as CEO of Aramex, building the company, making it the leading emerging market logistics company, employing over 15,000 people working in over 250 offices in 90 countries. He took the company public twice, first on Nasdaq making it the first company from the Arab world to do so, then on Dubai Financial market. Fadi is a serial entrepreneur. In his career, he was involved with founding, investing and launching tens of companies and non-profits, ranging from digital tech, hospitality, fitness & wellness to security. Passionate about impact and social entrepreneurship, Fadi founded and chairs Ruwwad for Development, a private‐sector led community empowerment platform that helps marginalized communities, across several countries in the MENA region, overcome marginalization through activism, civic engagement, education and financial inclusion. He has also co-founded and continues to support Al-Riyadi, one of the leading not-for-profit sports clubs in Jordan. Fadi also served and continues to serve on several global and regional boards of companies, education institutions and non-profits.

Transformation Group Partner, Former UpLoad VR Entrepreneur in Residence and Futurist for Rackspace, Blogger, and Author Robert Scoble is among the world’s best-known tech journalists and futurists. He is also a keynote speaker and most passionate about Virtual and Augmented Reality and how they will change and disrupt business. Futurist Based on his many meetings with tech pioneers and thinkers, he is always looking for early changes in patterns that foretell lasting trends. Three such trends have resulted in his three books with Israel. Siri was launched in his house. He did the first live video from inside the first Tesla (Elon Musk gave him a ride before he gave his best friend a ride). He has the first video of a Google self driving car up on YouTube. He was first to show the world many companies and technologies, like those, and Flipboard, Pandora, Instagram, and thousands of others. Technology Expert Scoble is best known for his blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He later worked for Fast Company as a video blogger, and then Rackspace and the Rackspace sponsored community site Building 43 promoting breakthrough technology and startups. He worked for Upload VR  — a new media site covering virtual and augmented reality — as its entrepreneur in residence, where he developed new shows, events, with other entrepreneurs in the Upload Collective, a co-working space for virtual reality-focused startups. Transformation Group, LLC Founded by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel in March 2017, Transformation Group, LLC, is the first consulting firm dedicated to helping big brands develop and implement Mixed Reality (MR) strategies, a trend just now starting that will soon transform businesses as profoundly as the smartphone did a decade ago. They believe that a decade from today the center of digital commerce and life will have migrated from today's handsets to tomorrow's VR and AR headsets--or smart glasses, as they will be called. Robert wants to help brands understand, plan and implement strategies to make this vital transformation. Books Robert has interviewed thousands of tech company founders, and his three books, written with Forbes author Shel Israel, have predicted three decade-long trends Naked Conversations predicted how businesses would use Social Media before Facebook was released. Age of Context predicted how wearable and mobile technology would bring new kinds of software. His newest book, The Fourth Transformation, predicts how augmented and virtual reality will change every business. Keynote Speaker As a globally in demand keynote speaker Robert delivers a rocket ride through the future of technology, and shows you how your business is about to be disrupted by mixed reality, which will bring a new user interface onto smart cities, IoT devices, self-driving cars, robots, and drones. He gives businesses an insight into how other businesses, like Sephora, Disney, and Ford, are already using augmented reality and how your business will need to change to get ready for consumers and workers who will be wearing augmented reality (or what we call mixed reality) glasses while interacting with their business.  

Jeremiah is a technology analyst who forecasts how technology will impact business, society and our lives, based in Silicon Valley.

Kat Cole is an inspiring leader and operator with a track record of turning around companies and building brands, teams and high-growth businesses over two decades. As COO and President of Focus Brands, the owner, franchisor and operator of global limited-service food brands, doing billions in product sales in over 50 countries, she leads the company's 7 brands: Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s, Moe's, Schlotzsky's, McAlister's, Carvel and Jamba with 6500 operations globally, and leads the multi-brand licensing and CPG business. She is formerly president of Cinnabon Inc. and past Group President Focus Brands. She has led the evolution of several brands through product and technology innovation, organizational structure changes and building customer-centered cultures. Kat is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a member of the Milk Bar Board of Directors, an advisor to high-growth businesses, and mom of two. Kat is a past member of the United Nations Global Entrepreneurs Council, was featured on CBS Undercover Boss, and was named one of Fortune’s 40 under 40. She is past chair of the board of the Women's Foodservice Forum, past Silver Plate winner from IFMA, named most admired leader by QSR magazine and named Elliot Leadership Motivator of the year. She is a college dropout, yet has her MBA in International Business. Her journey from restaurant hostess at 17, executive by 26, president by 31, and investor by 35 is often shared as an example of the American and entrepreneurial dream. Outside of the foodservice industry, Kat is an angel investor and advisor to early-stage consumer products and Direct-to-Consumer companies and an outspoken advocate for women’s issues and the broader role of business in democratizing access to education and opportunity.

Allen Blue is vice president of product management and cofounder of LinkedIn, the online professional network. At LinkedIn, he is responsible for LinkedIn’s overall product strategy. He also sponsors LinkedIn’s work and education products within the economic graph team, including the products and platforms supporting Skillful.com (a joint effort to close the middle skills gap in the United States between LinkedIn and the Markle Foundation.) He advises several startups in Silicon Valley, most focused on improving health and education. He sat on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Data Advisory Council, helping guide the department’s efforts to make its data broadly available to American businesses. Blue serves on the boards of the Hope Street Group, a non-profit which focuses on bringing economic opportunity to Americans through a combination of policy and practice, and Change.org, an online destination for making grassroots-driven change easier. Before LinkedIn, Blue cofounded SocialNet.com, an online dating service, and graduated from Stanford University.

Former president of HBO Enterprises, currently marketing professor at NYU Stern School of Business, visiting professor at American University in Dubai and former staff writer at the Los Angeles Times.

Mike Butcher (FRSA) is currently Editor of TechCrunch Europe. Mike is also involved in a project to bring European technology entrepreneurs and investors together in a club environment called TechHub (@TechHub), in London initially. A long time journalist, Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. He is a former editor ofNew Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and the European edition of The Industry Standard magazine. Since 1996 he has launched or re-launched numerous media web sites and in 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia's European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted "One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade" by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 he was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London's creative industry by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club. In August 2008 TechCrunch Europe was awarded the best "Web 2.0 and business blog" in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine. In 2009 it was named as one of the Top 10 blogs out of the UK. Also in 2009 he was named one of the Top 10 bloggers on Twitter in the UK. In October 2009 he was named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph. In April 2010 he was named as one of Britain's Top 100 "digital power-brokers" by Wired UK magazine. In April 2010 TechCrunch Europe was shortlisted in the Specialist Digital Publisher category of the prestigious UK-based Association of Online Publishers' Digital Publishing Awards. In November 2010 he was named as one of London's most influential people in New Media and "king of dotcom commentators" by The Evening Standard Newspaper. In February he was listed as one of the Top 100 most influential people on Twitter in the UK. He has spoken at the prestigious Monaco Media Forum and Le Web, among many other conferences. Mike is a regular commentator on the technology business, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg. Mike's personal blog is mbites, while he Twitters as @mikebutcher.

CEO and Co-Founder at Careem Mudassir looks after growth and expansion. He spent a geeky decade in Silicon Valley before becoming a management consultant in the region. He aspires to build the Middle East's first corporate institution that will improve people's lives and inspire others. When not traveling, he is hanging out with Captains and giving engineers feedback on user interface. He is an alum of McKinsey, Stanford and USC.

The co-founder and CEO of SOUQ.com, the largest online retail and marketplace platform in the Arab world. Since co-founding SOUQ.com in 2005, Mr Mouchawar has overseen aggressive expansion of the company to become the first choice in online shopping for millions of customers in the Middle East. Mr Mouchawar has more than 15 years of experience in technology and business management. He started his career as a Technical and Systems Consultant with EDS in the US, and before starting SOUQ.com, he spearheaded a consulting company that managed numerous web and e- commerce projects in the Arab world. Mr Mouchawar holds a Master's degree in Digital Communications and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Mr Mouchawar’s family background is in trading, which combined with his passion for innovation and technology, has led him to start, develop and lead the e-commerce market in this region. As keen to set high goals for himself and his team in his career as he did as a Basketball player, he is an inspiration to young entrepreneurs looking to blaze their own trail and he is passionate about creating jobs for Arabs and like-minded entrepreneurs to join his growing team. In March 2015, Mr Mouchawar received an award from His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, in recognition of SOUQ.com’s digital influence in the UAE. Recently, Mr Mouchawar was awarded the prestigious Retail Business Leader of the Year & Entrepreneur of the Year Awards by Gulf Business (Motivate Publishing).

VP, Chief Creative Officer at Facebook where he leads the company’s creative efforts to make advertising across Facebook and Instagram more relevant for people and more valuable for businesses. Mark joined Facebook in 2011 and today his team, The Creative Shop, operates from more than 40 Facebook offices and last year alone helped produce several thousand projects across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Oculus for an extraordinarily diverse client base including 80% of the world’s top 100 advertisers. The Creative Shop does all this through close partnerships with all the major advertising groups and collaborations with independent creators, influencers, artists, production companies, media companies and technologists. The work these partnerships create is regularly recognized in the press for driving innovation and at leading award shows, including Cannes Lions, where Mark has served on the inaugural Innovation and 2016 Glass Lion juries. Mark helped establish the Facebook Awards to celebrate the best creative work on the platform and in 2012, he founded the Facebook Global Creative Council. Mark is proud to serve on the boards of AD and the IFP, Independent Filmmaker Project.