Asly, an Egyptian start-up, wants to venture into giving solution to the problem of counterfeit products. The developer of this application says that there are approximately 50 percent of pharmaceutical products that are counterfeit in the Arab world.
Down to the specific as he says that the fake products count up to 40 percent in Saudi Arabia, 50 percent in Egypt and between 20 and 25 percent in the UAE.
The founder explained that the app is more like a cloud service that offers monitoring as well as providing codes to pharmaceutical companies that can be applied to their products.
The service is available through mobile in two ways, the first, consumers can scratch to reveal the code, send a message by text, and wait for the answer; in the second way, in which the company is still developing is a mobile app, the user takes a photo of the code via the app and receives the answer.
Asly launched in Egypt in 2012, with a tight budget of $50,000 and immediately after launch the founders began to look for other means of funding and the began with participating in many entrepreneurial competitions.
They won second place in the SME Congress and Expo of which did contribute a little, then Dubai-based i360 accelerator DP World Turn 8 offered Asly a five-month incubation program in September 2013.
Asly is currently in talks with the UAE government to attract more business on their was as they have all intentions of serving up to 20 countries in the region within 3 years.