Muscat-based eMushrif has accomplished a rare feat that few other Omani startups could pull off to date. The company announced earlier this week that it scored $1 million in a pre-Series A round, which might very well be the highest capital raised by an Omani startup in a single round.
A number of investors participated in the round including Phaze Ventures, Wadi Accelerator, Bahrain-based Dividend Gate Capital, Sparklabs Energy, and Myrad Holding, along with an undisclosed number of angel investors.
For those unfamiliar with the company, eMushrif was launched in 2016 by co-founders Adnan Alshuaili, Awadh Alshukaili, and Issa Alshuaili. Their aim was to upgrade the run-of-the-mill school buses to sophisticated smart buses that parents and school administrations can safely rely on.
Without delving into the technical nitty-gritty, eMushrif basically installs a specially designed IoT device on school buses for marking attendance of students without requiring any human intervention. The device comes equipped with a visual child check and detection mechanism that ensures that no child gets left behind inside the bus under whatsoever circumstances.
Additionally, the device is also integrated with different apps — one each for school administrators and parents of students. These apps allow real-time tracking of school buses and deliver notifications as and when needed.
“eMushrif is on a mission to save lives on school buses and regain parents’ trust in school transportation. Our system consists of sophisticated hardware and intelligent software that helps schools and parents to keep track of buses and students with four levels of safety checks inside the bus to provide a high level of safety and efficiency,” says the company’s co-founder and CEO Adnan Alshuaili.
Besides school buses, the startup has also optimized its proprietary IoT device to go along with certain other verticals for enhancing commuting management solutions.
Alshuaili added: “We are also revolutionizing commuting services in other verticals such as oil and gas by providing intelligent commuting management system.”