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Dubai-based Meat-O-Door is set to disrupt the meat industry

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Dubai-based Meat-O-Door is set to disrupt the meat industry
  • Creates a platform for unorganised butcher stores to have an opportunity to bridge the gap between offline and online meat shopping.
  • The entrepreneur sees growth opportunities as the industry is unorganised, inefficient and fragmented.
  • Startup plans to raise $275,000 to spread wings across the UAE and has eyes on B2B space.

Necessity is the mother of all inventions and it has proved again true in the case of Dubai-based meat aggregator start-up – Meat-O-Door.

Speaking to TechChannel News, its Founder Ambreen Khan said that she felt there was a demand and she is a consumer in trouble.

“I always felt that the kind of meat I get, being an Asian, is not the cut which I wanted. We don’t get different kinds of cuts from the hypermarkets and we need to go to the butchers. The area where I live is not accessible to reach out to the other side of Dubai. The butchers are based out on the other side of Dubai and it was always a hassle,” she said.

So, after facing difficulties, Kahn said that she discussed it with her friends and neighbours and realised that it is something which is required the most.

“When I dived deep into the concept, I realised that there was so much to explore and there is a big opportunity. The market size is huge and the entire Gulf Co-operation Council countries meat market is worth $7 billion,” Khan said.

Butchers going digital

The UAE market alone is worth around $2 billion, she said and the whole industry is so unorganised, inefficient and fragmented.

Moreover, Kahn also lived in Saudi Arabia for about 10 years and she said online shopping is a complete hassle.

“By starting my venture, I also knew that it will become a success in Saudi also. The idea is to build up a brand here because the Dubai government is very supportive of setting up startups, and expand into other GCC markets,” Khan said.

The start-up’s idea was to connect different areas of Dubai and they have divided it into 31 zones and each zone comes with different delivery slots. Buyers can schedule the delivery time, between 12-4PM or between 4-8PM.

The startup sells meat, poultry, seafood and other exotic meats such as camel, turkey and pigeon.

With the pandemic and people going digital due to the lockdowns, Khan said the unorganised butcher stores now have an opportunity to bridge the gap between offline and online meat shopping.

Moreover, due to the rising trend of digitisation coupled with the Covid 19 Pandemic, she said that consumers feel safer ordering meat online.

Eliminating multiple touchpoints

She said that consumers can now get a wide range of premium cuts in one platform by eliminating multiple touchpoints.

Since the startup is not currently into cold chain logistics, she said that they have done strict quality checks and provide the necessary toolboxes, imported from Holland, for meat vendors to connect with their consumers through digital solutions and cold chain logistics.

Many other outlets offer meat products online but she said that most products offered are by in-house stores and some products are always out of stock.

“It is also difficult to compare prices of products and customisation is not available. What we have done is the platform itself will give choice for customers regarding the price,” Khan said.

The service is available only in Dubai right now and plans to offer it in Sharjah next month.

Khan said that Abu Dhabi is quite restricted at the moment due to the pandemic.

Meet-O-Door has more than 50 butchers from Dubai and more than 6,300 products are listed on the platform.

“Right now, we are working as a marketing platform but we need to get into cold chain logistics also very quickly, as it is very important when it comes to meat,” she said, added that the platform has 250 active users and they have been purchasing once a week and spending an average of AED150.

Eid-Al-Adha campaign

Khan said that they have invested about AED500,000 and are open for the pre-seed round.

“We are reaching out to investors and plan to raise $275,000 to scale in the UAE and go for next round to expand across the GCC.  The next stop will be Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the entire GCC after that and India by 2023.  The GCC and India market is valued at $36 billion,” Kahn said.

Khan also has her eyes set on entering the B2B space as the industries such as restaurants, catering companies and hoteliers are disorganised.

“They need to systemise their orders and manage their inventory well. They need to connect to a supplier to get organised. The meat will be our core focus but we also plan to enter into meal boxes with a subscription model and disrupt the business model. Eventually into cloud kitchen recipes and create our brand,” she said.

She has started an Eid-Al-Adha campaign to book sacrifices from butchers, approved by Dubai municipality, from the comfort of home.

The animals will be sacrificed on behalf of the customer and the meat will be delivered to their doorstep by offering a wide range of sacrificial animals along with different price points and the platform also provides customers with an easy option to donate meat to underserved families through the UAE Food Bank.

Khan wants to disrupt the meat industry and become a brand down the line.

Google opens second cloud region in India to fuel digitisation

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Google opens second cloud region in India to fuel digitisation
  • The Delhi data centre becomes the tenth cloud region in Asia Pacific and 26th globally.
  • AWS has one cloud region in Mumbai and another planned in Hyderabad in 2022.
  • Oracle has two cloud regions in Mumbai and Hyderabad while Microsoft has three.
  • Goggle has invested $30b (trailing Capex) in the past three years into the cloud business.

Google Cloud has opened its second cloud region in India in  Delhi to give a shot in the arm to digital transformation.

The cloud giant now has three zones in Mumbai and three zones in Delhi, thereby allowing customers to deploy applications that meet all the data residency requirements as well as allow organisations to have high availability and disaster recovery within India.

Delhi becomes the tenth cloud region in the Asia Pacific.

Global hyperscalers are expanding their footprint in India to ride on the digital transformation wave accelerated due to Covid.

Google competes with global giants such as Microsoft, AWS and Oracle in the data infrastructure space.

AWS has 25 cloud regions with 81 availability zones globally and has one cloud region in Mumbai with three availability zones, launched in 2016, and another region planned in Hyderabad by 2022.

Microsoft has three regions –Pune, Chennai, and Mumbai, launched in 2015.

Oracle launched its second cloud region in Hyderabad last year after its first such region was unveiled in Mumbai in 2019. Globally, Oracle has 30 cloud regions.

Google did not give the investment figures but said that they have already invested $30 billion (trailing Capex) in the past three years into the cloud business.

Google Cloud continues to drive sizable growth, with Google Cloud Platform remaining one of the fastest-growing businesses across Alphabet.

With this, Google now has 26 cloud regions globally, with 79 zones and 146 network edge locations.

New Google cloud regions soon

Google Cloud will continue expanding to the following regions soon – Doha (Qatar), Toronto (Canada), Melbourne (Australia), Paris (France), Milan (Italy), Santiago (Chile), Madrid (Spain) and Turin (Italy).

Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Alphabet, said that India’s digitisation will be at the centre of this effort.

“Before the pandemic, India has been undergoing a rapid digital transformation but Covid has now spread out those trends. Last year, we launched Google for India digitisation fund of Rs75,000 crore and our goal is to connect Indians with a lot of opportunities that the internet creates and empower more businesses through technology,” he said.

Last month, Google Cloud embarked on a new 5G partnership with Reliance Jio to offer faster internet.

New growth opportunities

“The Delhi data centre will help businesses of all sizes solve complex challenges while using reliable and secure cloud technology, even closer to home,” Pichai said.

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said that they have seen enormous growth in demand for Google Cloud services in India and expects new growth opportunities coming from existing customers and new customers.

“India is one of our fastest-growing markets and the need for a second cloud region stems from the enormous growth in demand for capacity building, disaster recovery solutions, and low latency,” he said.

The Delhi data centre will offer Compute Engine, App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Spanner, and BigQuery.

 “As we emerge from the pandemic, we are turning our focus to helping Indian businesses accelerate their digital transformation, deepening our commitment to India’s digitisation and economic recovery “, said Bikram Singh Bedi, managing director, Google Cloud India.

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Majority of teachers and educators do not believe science education is fit for future

Mohammed Fahad
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Majority of teachers and educators do not believe science education is fit for future
  • Science teachers in India are more optimistic versus global average that the current curriculum for science is meeting the needs of pupils.
  • 80% of Indian respondents agree that the science curriculum taught in schools enables students to become scientifically literate and active citizens’ versus 59% in the UK and 67% in Hong Kong.

The majority of teachers and educators do not believe that science education is fit for the future as the Covid-19 pandemic has brought the role of science into sharp focus.

According to respondents who took part in “The Evolution of Science Education” survey, 398 teachers from 22 countries —with most respondents from the United Kingdom (44 per cent) and India (19 per cent), by Oxford University Press, science teachers in India are more optimistic versus the global average that the current curriculum for science is meeting the needs of pupils.

Only 31 per cent of teachers surveyed believe that science education in their country is fit for the future, curriculum for science is meeting the needs of pupils.

The research was undertaken alongside OUP’s active involvement in developing the scientific framework for the Programme for International Assessment (PISA) 2025. Teachers were asked to recommend ways in which science curricula might evolve to remain relevant to today’s world, and that of tomorrow.

Engaging learners

Teachers surveyed believe the core purpose of science education should be inspiring learners to engage with science, teaching underpinning scientific concepts, teaching skills to enable effective experimentation, and helping learners to achieve a range of desirable outcomes through science.

To ensure science education evolves and remains relevant in the future, teachers believe there should be more focus on climate change as well as tackling fake news and adapting faster to technological and societal change.

 “The scientific challenges of the past year with the pandemic and the ever-growing signs of climate change mean that there has never been a more important time to focus on science, empowering students to thrive in a changing world. I look forward to continuing this conversation about the future of science education, particularly when we release the new PISA 2025 science framework next year,” Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said.

Only 59 per cent of respondents in the UK agree that the current science curriculum enables young people to become scientifically literate and active citizens, opposed to a global average of 66 per cent.

Furthermore, only 39 per cent of UK science teachers believe that the current science curriculum adequately prepares students for the future, opposed to 56 per cent of respondents in Hong Kong and 64 per cent of respondents in India.

15 per cent of respondents in India strongly agree that the curriculum adequately prepares students for challenges they will face in the world, opposed to six per cent in Hong Kong and five per cent in the UK. Furthermore, 80 per cent of respondents agree that the science curriculum taught in schools enables students to become scientifically literate and active citizens, opposed to 59 per cent in the United Kingdom and 67 per cent in Hong Kong.

“The study of science helps to fuel curiosity in young minds and makes them think about solutions to challenges in everyday life. Its relevance in a pandemic-afflicted world has only grown. It was important to sense check what science teachers felt about how their subject needed to evolve. We are delighted with the strong participation of science teachers from India in our survey and their belief that the current curriculum is helping students to become scientifically literate and active citizens,” Sivaramakrishnan Venkateswaran, Managing Director – Oxford University Press India, said.

Key teacher recommendations:

  • Focus on instilling practical skills through experimentation in the classroom.
  • Review the existing curriculum being used, ensuring that the content is up-to-date and reflects the world that learners live in as well as preparing them for the future.
  • Reduce the amount of content to allow for more depth of learning.
  • Establish a greater connection between the science that is being taught in the classroom and what is happening in the world outside. Current teaching can be too theoretical, which does not help learners to understand the role that science plays in everyday life.
  • Re-examine the exam system. At present, teachers told us that assessment is too knowledge focused, and respondents want exams to place more focus on assessing application. Meanwhile, coursework allows assessment to take place through practical experimentation.

Adasat sees growth opportunities in Middle East for eyewear industry

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Adasat sees growth opportunities in Middle East for eyewear industry
  • Dubai-based online marketplace has seen their business doubling and expects to bring in more well-known brands onto their platform.
  • Startup wants to be recognised as an international brand where people around the world can order their eyewear products with trust and ease.

Dubai-based online marketplace for eyewear – Adasat.com – is seeing many growth opportunities in the industry, especially in the Middle East, as there is an increase in people who have started to wear glasses and contact lenses.

“Coloured lenses are in demand, especially for cosmetic purposes. In the Middle East, Arab women have grown to love to make up over the past years, making it part of their daily routine in which coloured lenses have become a “must-have” to enhance their beauty,” Ziad Tariq, Co-founder of Adasat, told TechChannel News in an exclusive interview. 

Moreover, he said that many Arab celebrities are brand ambassadors for many brands that are not available outside the GCC and many Arabs are living outside the Middle East.

In terms of e-commerce, he said that they have already seen a change in consumers’ perception of buying lenses online instead of in retail outlets.

Adasat, which means “contact lenses” in Arabic, offers frames, sunglasses, contact lenses, prescription, nonprescription and customised lenses.

Both Tariq and Payam Honari started the venture in 2019 but they had the idea from 2015.

E-commerce gains traction

“We have optical backgrounds as well as in retail outlets. We were doing market research till 2019. There were websites launched before us and we were checking their performance and researching the things they don’t have. We wanted to come with a website that is unique compared to the others and stand out from the crowd,” Honari said.

It is not easy to go online, he said and added that e-commerce has been picking up in every sector of the business but in terms of the optical industry, it is extremely competitive, especially in the UAE.

Moreover, he said that some international brands are not there in the UAE but are targeting the UAE audience.

“Not all are doing it in the right way and a lot of optical retail outlets have started to get into the e-commerce space. One of the biggest challenges is having other international e-commerce competitors also target the consumers in the UAE, making the UAE have a larger pool in terms of competition,” he said.

Covid brings new customers

Due to the lockdowns, Tariq said that they have seen an increase in sales for anti-blue light glasses, globally, as people are glued to their screens for more than eight hours, sitting at home.  

Since the first Covid lockdown in 2020, they had seen an increase in orders by 50 per cent and sales by 130 per cent and expects to double their sales this year also. 

“Covid brought us many new customers that have grown to trust our service and the process of ordering online. During Covid, we have proven to be safe and reliable – shipping all over the country in their time of need. We have also had numerous orders from customers who were stuck in quarantine in which we proved to be very reliable as we made sure that they were still able to get their daily necessities (mostly contact lens wearers),” Tariq said. 

However, he said that an e-commerce business can only succeed if you are “unique”.

“A lot of expertise in data science is required to run an e-commerce business. We study customer behaviour and always update our market research to keep up with customers’ demands. Over the years, consumers have learned to trust e-commerce,” he said.

Unique offerings

Despite e-commerce giants in the UAE – Amazon and Noon – offer eyewear products across the region, Honari said that contact lenses are medical products that need a prescription.

“Both Amazon and Noon don’t have the expertise and that is where we come in. All our staff are well trained to answer any queries regarding the eyewear and we have an optometrist also,” he said.

 “If you are a lens or eyeglass user with a complicated prescription, you will know that most times you walk into a store, they will not have it and will have to make a customised order for you, which can take a couple of days. 

“With us, we are a hypermarket for contact lenses and always have different types of lenses readily available. Alternatively, you can also call us or message us on WhatsApp for more assistance, making the process more personalised for those with specific questions about their lenses,” he said.

The marketplace has more than 20 brands on its platform and is working to bring brands that are not available in the UAE.

Honari said that there are many high-quality brands from Sweden, Germany that are not available here and there are no distributors or agents in this region.

“We are in talks with them to diversify our portfolio,” he said.

 The co-founders said that their goal is to be recognised as an international brand where people around the world can order their eyewear products with trust and ease.

“With our hub in Dubai, we plan to expand our reach within the Middle East. In the next couple of months, we plan to offer international shipping directly from our site as we have fulfilled past orders from countries such as the US, Bulgaria, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Italy through our WhatsApp service,” Tariq said.

Adasat has no plans to raise funds for their expansion plans despite raising $350,000 from two local investors in 2019.

A piece of advice to new startups

“Our business has been growing since we started but we will be investing about AED 2 million from our pockets to expand the platform and add new features,” Honari said.

Adasat plans to launch an app by the end of the year and come with unique features for customers to try out their products, using AI, by using the camera on their device and sitting on the sofa.

As a piece of advice to new e-commerce entrepreneurs, Honari said that focus on customer service is the most important aspect of any business.

“You need to earn your customer’s trust for them to purchase anything from you. Most businesses focus on becoming profitable but forget about customer service. Customer service is the key to any successful business and helps you become established and well known, which allows you to be recognised by a bigger crowd,” he said.   

Moreover, he urged them not to overspend on things that will not help raise the value of their brand. “We’ve seen many start-ups blow their investment on paying top influencers but don’t receive any sales from them. This is a huge gamble as being a start-up company, resources are very limited, so you need to know how and where to spend your money on.  

“Focus on converting your new customers to loyal customers. It’s very time consuming and takes a lot of research to gain new customers so you need to make sure that you are retaining those customers. You can always rely on loyal customers to repeat their purchases,” he said.

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Global laptop shipments to increase 15% to 236m this year

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Global laptop shipments to increase 15% to 236m this year
  • Chromebook shipments will increase 50% to 47m units compared to a year ago.
  • Chromebook market’s growth, going forward, will mainly depend on regions outside the US as well as non-education applications.
  • The laptop market is expected to decline 6% next year to 220m units.

The uptrend in the global demand for laptops is expected to increase this year also, with Chromebooks becoming the primary growth driver.

Laptop shipment is expected to increase 15 per cent year on year to 236 million units this year.

Last year, the shipment increased by 26 per cent due to work from home and distance learning initiatives.

Due to the surging demand for education notebooks, Samsung and Apple will register the highest growths, with the former having Chromebooks account for nearly 50 per cent of its total notebook shipment this year and the latter continuing to release MacBooks equipped with the M1 chip.

According to research firm TrendForce, Chromebooks have been accounting for an increasingly high share in the notebook market in recent years, and Chromebook shipment is expected to reach a historical peak this year at 47 million units, a staggering 50 per cent year-on-year growth.

The vast majority (70 per cent) of global Chromebook demand comes from the US, while Japan takes second place with 10 per cent.

However, the US education notebook market is gradually saturated with Chromebooks, and the general public has also been returning to physical workplaces and classrooms following the lifting of domestic restrictions.

In addition, the Japanese GIGA School program, which equips the student with computers and internet access, has notably slowed down its notebook procurement.

Acer and Samsung to feel the heat

The global demand for education notebooks will, therefore, slightly lose momentum in the second half of this year.

As Chromebooks occupy a relatively large allocation of notebook shipments by Acer and Samsung, the two companies are likely to bear the brunt of the education market’s downturn.

TrendForce, therefore, believes that the Chromebook market’s growth, going forward, will mainly depend on regions outside the US as well as non-education applications.

However, recent rumours claim that the demand for notebooks will decline in the second half of this year.

This decline can be primarily attributed to the fact that notebook brands are increasingly finding Chromebooks’ low margins to be unprofitable, while 11.6-inch panels, which are used in 70 per cent of all Chromebooks, have also skyrocketed in price, and certain semiconductor components are in shortage.

In light of these factors, brands are starting to lower the share of Chromebooks in their overall notebook production for the second half.

TrendForce expects consumer demand in Europe and the US to gradually weaken in the third quarter of this year.

However, low inventory levels in the channel markets will still generate some upward momentum propelling the notebook market. Hence, quarterly notebook shipment in the third quarter is expected to remain unchanged compared to the second quarter.

Furthermore, the pandemic has gradually been brought under control in Europe and the US due to increased vaccinations.

Therefore, the slowdown of demand in the overall notebook market and education sector bids will not come into force until the fourth quarter of this year, during which notebook shipment is expected to reach 58 million units, a three per cent quarter-on-quarter decrease.

Going forward, although notebook demand will likely slow in 2022, the normalisation of the hybrid-work model, as well as the recovering demand for business notebooks, will provide some upward momentum for annual notebook shipment next year, which will reach 220 million units, a minor downward correction of six per cent year on year.

Ultra-thin electronic screen developed to display brilliant colours

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Ultra-thin electronic screen developed to display brilliant colours
  • The researchers placed the component which makes the material electrically conductive underneath the pixelated nanostructure that reproduces the colours – instead of above it, as was previously the case.
  • To make the reflective screens, certain rare metals are required – such as gold and platinum.

The Chalmers University of Technology of Sweden has developed a new type of reflective screen that offers optimal colour display while using ambient light to keep energy consumption to a minimum.

The researchers had previously succeeded in developing an ultra-thin and flexible material that reproduces all the colours an LED screen can display while requiring only a tenth of the energy that s standard tablet PC consumes.

But in the earlier design, the colours on the reflective screen did not display with optimal quality.

Using a previously researched, porous and nanostructured material, containing tungsten trioxide, gold and platinum, they tried a new tactic – inverting the design in such a way as to allow the colours to appear much more accurately on the screen.

The digital screen, as thin as paper, sometimes is described as ‘electronic paper’, can not only be used for smartphones and tablets but could also be useful for outdoor advertising, offering energy and resource savings compared with both printed posters or moving digital screens.

Traditional digital screens use a backlight to illuminate the text or images displayed upon them.

This is fine indoors, but we’ve all experienced the difficulties of viewing such screens in bright sunshine.

Real breakthrough

Reflective screens, however, attempt to use the ambient light, mimicking the way our eyes respond to the natural paper.

Marika Gugole, Doctoral Student at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the Chalmers University of Technology.

“For reflective screens to compete with the energy-intensive digital screens that we use today, images and colours must be reproduced with the same high quality. That will be the real breakthrough. Our research now shows how the technology can be optimised, making it attractive for commercial use,” Marika Gugole, Doctoral Student at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the Chalmers University of Technology, said.

The researchers inverted the design for top quality colour production by placing the component which makes the material electrically conductive underneath the pixelated nanostructure that reproduces the colours – instead of above it, as was previously the case.

This new design means you look directly at the pixelated surface, therefore seeing the colours much more clearly.

In addition to the minimal energy consumption, reflective screens have other advantages. For example, they are much less tiring for the eyes compared to looking at a regular screen.

Sustainable and energy-saving solutions

To make these reflective screens, certain rare metals are required – such as gold and platinum – but because the final product is so thin, the amounts needed are very small.

Andreas Dahlin, Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers.

The researchers have high hopes that eventually, it will be possible to significantly reduce the quantities needed for production.

“Our main goal when developing these reflective screens is to find sustainable, energy-saving solutions. And in this case, energy consumption is almost zero because we simply use the ambient light of the surroundings,” research leader Andreas Dahlin, Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers, said.

 Reflective screens are already available in some tablets today, but they only display the colours black and white well, which limits their use.

“A large industrial player with the right technical competence could, in principle, start developing a product with the new technology within a couple of months,” Dahlin said.

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