From Searching Cheap Flights to the MENA and South Asia’s Biggest Fair: GITEX 2018
The increase in the exchange rate has inevitably affected us, travelers 🙂 Because of this, instead of making a detailed holiday plan, we are looking for an opportunity to find an affordable flight ticket. In fact, our Dubai adventure has begun in this way. As the weather began to cool in September, Pegasus’sdiscounted air ticket news immediately pushed us to the idea of landing in the hot sea. While we are thinking if we go to Qatar or Dubai, we realized that there is an event which is the biggest technology show of MENA (the Middle East and NorthAfrica) and South Asia in Dubai between the dates when we planned our holiday. Then we thought about why we do not turn the holiday into an opportunity, so we immediately took flight tickets and started the preparations for the show.
GITEX is a technology fair held for 38 years. The fact that it is organized in Dubai, a city that makes serious investments and works on technology, also adds to the attraction of the event. The event, which has participants from all over the world and important names in the sector, lasts for 1 week and so it is called “tech week”. There is also an extra event called GITEX Future Stars for start-ups. Competitions are organized for initiatives, and meetings are held that allow start-ups to connect directly with mentors and customers.
This year, we attended Gitex between 14-18 October 2018. For the first time, we attended an international event and we took part in the GITEX Future Stars to see the process and procedure of an international event. The fair, which we prepared in about 3 weeks, gave us a huge experience before going. We realized what we can do in a short period as 3 weeks and how we force our limits 🙂 We worked day and night, so to speak. With 3 products -Menulity, Montask, Goldyrobe- we took our place at the show. The Menulity application, which was prepared with Augmented Reality technology, attracted great interest in the event. Even CNNInternational channel introduced our application in its programs.
The biggest contribution of the Gitex Future Stars to us was that the Gulf region was actually open to technology, and instead of the difficulty of entering the European and American markets, we can choose this region for our customer list because of the ease of communication and needs. Although political relations have a negative impact on trade between this region, the point of view of the Arabs to us can be broken after a certain point. Due to the increase in foreign exchange rates, the labor costs in our country make us preferable. But we also noticed during the exhibition, in this region, the Indian software developers are very effective and very cheap.
As a result, I cannot say that it is very useful for inspiration because it has start-ups on the Future Stars side. We also observed that they discriminated positively against their own citizens. Visitors also give priority to companies in the UAE or Saudi Arabia. However, since Tech Week players are big players, there are more effective participants. Therefore, I think that Tech Week is more effective and helpful in generating ideas and winning customers about new technologies. We plan to rejoin next year and take part in Tech Week.
PS 1: Although we went to Dubai for a holiday, we returned tired because of the event. Anyway, our purpose was a change of scenery 🙂
PS 2: You can check the websites for our products:
