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Regional and international entrepreneurs, investors, and business angels gathered in downtown Cairo at the beginning of December to celebrate entrepreneurship and welcome the fifth edition of the annual Rise Up Summit. The event went beyond the keynote speeches, workshops, and networking. Dalia Kamar, RiseUp Summit manager, announced many new exciting partnerships.

To begin with, one of the most promising Egyptian startups, Elves, closed a seed round of funding for more than US$ 2 million. The company offers a solution to connect people with personal assistants. Among the investors who took part in its first seed round, were Emaar Industries & Investments, The Dubai Angels, the Kauffman Fellows Syndicate and several others from the region and the USA.

In addition to that, the leading international private equity firm, The Abraaj Group, has introduced a growth market early-stage investment building platform called Bakery. It aims to secure entrepreneur’s access to Abraaj’s platform of global resources and local support.

EdVentures and Nahdet Misr Group launched a new investment fund to support education-tech initiatives. Nahdet Misr will grant full support to startups to further develop their ideas to disrupt the education industry in Egypt and beyond. The publishing house will secure them access to all its resources, network events, connections, and expertise

The US e-learning platform Udacity has announced its partnership with the American University in Cairo. The first joint program will focus on data science and mobile development. It will combine traditional classroom experience with online curriculum.

In addition to that, Seedstars took the stage to announce it was opening a branch in Cairo next year to support local tech entrepreneurs. At an invite-only event, the US tech firm Stripe presented its new service, Stripe Atlas, an innovative tool to handle everything involved in establishing an internet business.