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Souktel and adaffix win Mobile Premier Award for best woman-lead mobile startup in partnership with Women 2.0 and the Women in Mobile Data Association

Barcelona: Monday, February 15, 2010 – The Mobile Premier Awards (MPA) today announced that the Best in Female Entrepreneurship, in partnership with Women 2.0 and the Women in Mobile Data Association), has gone to Souktel and adaffix.

Selected from a group of 38 award entries in this category, Souktel’s Operations Manager, Amber Houssian, and Founder & CEO of adaffix, Claudia Poepperl, respectively received the award from Shaherose Charania (CEO and Co-Founder) from Women 2.0 and Helen Keegan, Founder of the Women in Mobile Data Association during the ceremony today at the Petit Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, in front of an audience of investors, operators, media companies, entrepreneur peers, press and influential bloggers.

Both award partners commented: “There were so many strong applicants this year and two female-led entries stood out in particular. It was too hard to choose between them as they’re so radically different, so the WiMD & women 2.0 judges decided to give two awards – one to recognize consumer innovation and one for a company with a global mission for sustainable social change.

“It’s a great honour for Souktel to receive this award,” said Palestinian co-founder Lana Hijazi from the organization’s headquarters in Ramallah, Palestine. “We believe that this award will encourage others in our region—and especially women—to start their own mobile technology ventures”.
“We are delighted to receive this industry recognition only ten months after we started the company and launched ADAFFIX,” said Claudia Poepperl, CEO and founder of adaffix.

Shaherose, CEO and CoFounder of Women 2.0 says, “Judging the applications was refreshing and exciting. The majority of the Women 2.0 founder community is Silicon Valley (and North American) and is skewed towards a web, biotech or cleantech focus. Mobile entrepreneurship is growing in a different way with the exposure to the iphone and android platforms but Europe and rest of the world has been exposed to entrepreneurship in this sector for a long time. I anticipate increase in the number of female founders innovating in the mobile industry, in particularly from Silicon Valley and as well as from the rest of the world in the coming year.”

Helen Keegan, founder member & co-organiser of the Women in Mobile Data Association, says ‘I’m thrilled to be able to recognise female entrepreneurship in the mobile industry. Souktel has shown real initiative to use ubiquitous SMS text messaging to reach their core audience to help them find jobs and find aid, thus making a tangible difference in Palestinian territories. SMS may not be exciting, or the new, new thing, but it works, and this is a great example of effective SMS in action. Equally, we need to keep an eye on what’s coming next and adaffix is doing just that with the innovative ADAFFIX product which combines social networking, local content and voice calls in a customer friendly format.’

“This year’s competition was the largest ever with over 600 start up submissions from all continents” added Rudy De Waele, CNO at dotopen. “Souktel and adafix are great representatives of a new generation of innovative startups reaching out to global markets using mobile technology. At dotopen, we remain committed to enabling this type of collaborative projects with growth and ecosystem development.”

Other Mobile Premier Awards categories included:
• MPA in Innovation – The best grassroots startup innovation chosen by their peers in partnership with MobileMonday
• MPA in Entertainment – The best startup in Mobile Entertainment in partnership with Mobile Entertainment Forum
• MPA in User Experience – The best startup in Mobile User Experience in partnership with MEX.
• MPA in Social Change – The best startup using mobile for social change in partnership with MobileActive.org
• MPA in Female Entrepreneurship – The best woman-lead mobile startup in partnership with Women 2.0 and the Women in Mobile Data Association

About Souktel
Souktel is the Middle East’s first mobile service that uses SMS and voice technology to link young people with jobs–and connect aid agencies with people who need help. Founded by Palestinian, Canadian and American graduate fellows at Harvard University and the Arab-American University of Jenin in Palestine, Souktel has been changing lives across the developing world since 2006.
Souktel’s mission is to reduce poverty and stimulate growth in emerging markets, through mobile services that give communities the information they need to improve their lives. Souktel’s vision is a developing world where people can find work easily and quickly, through better phone-based access to job information. And a developing world where families can boost their standard of living, thanks to better information about aid and social services.
Co-founder Lana Hijazi leads Souktel’s outreach to partners across the Middle East and Africa. In 2009, Ms. Hijazi was the only Palestinian to receive the prestigious King Abdullah Award for Youth Innnovation at the World Economic Forum for the Middle East. The award, presented by HM King Abdullah II of Jordan, recognized Hijazi’s role in promoting women-led technology ventures in the region. In the same year, Ms. Hijazi was also the only Palestinian named to Arabian Business magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30” social venture leaders.

About adaffix
adaffix is a Call 3.0 company that enriches the phone call experience by adding social and local content to calls in real time. We believe that automatically connecting calls with relevant content is the most natural evolutionary element to add to telephony, and brings the whole experience of phone calling into a new era. Our award winning application ADAFFIX (www.adaffix.com) instantly provides alternatives for a business that the user has not been able to get through to, displays the name of an unknown caller as the phone rings and shows status and picture of Facebook friends when they call. ADAFFIX runs on a fully automated basis that does not require the user to act, but instead react to our service. adaffix is privately held with headquarters in Vienna. www.adaffix.com

About Women 2.0
Women 2.0’s mission is to increase the number of female founders of technology startups. Women 2.0 supports entrepreneurs with a network, resources and knowledge to take your startup from an idea to launch. Find out more at www.women2.org and join our mailing list for upcoming events, news, and more.

About Women in Mobile Data Association
The Women in Mobile Data Association is a global group of women who work in the mobile data industry and meet from time to time, in London, in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress and in other parts of Europe and the US. The aims of the organisation are to improve and promote mobile content services and applications for women and other underserved markets, learn from each other about this business and provide networking and mutual support.
To join the group, please contact us through LinkedIn or facebook or contact Sapna Malhotra.

About dotopen
dotopen is the organizer of the Mobile Premier Awards, the largest global competition in mobile start-up innovation as well as the enabling partner in start-up and innovation competitions around the world. dotopen.com is the open platform for organizations, where, as a decision maker, you can showcase your company, discover relevant partners and build your ecosystem.