On Wednesday, September 19, 2018, the Touch Innovation Program held its first cohort graduation ceremony at Antwork Beirut. The program is dedicated to support local startups and the digital economy as part of touch Digital and Innovation strategy, an initiative by Touch Lebanon. The graduation started with a panel around “Unleashing the Lebanese entrepreneurship ecosystem full potential.” IM Capital's General Manager Dr. Nicolas Rouhana was invited as a speaker along with Elie Nasr, Co-Founder at FOO, Fadi Mikati, Co-Founder & President at TEC, Khaled Zeidan, Managing Director at MIC Ventures and Nadim Khater, Chief Commercial Officer at touch. The panel covered many interesting points related to the funding gaps & challenges in the ecosystem and opportunity for growth. The speakers debated what are support institutions providing entrepreneurs today and what's lacking in the ecosystem. They also tackled the opportunities the different  regions of Lebanon has to offer and the challenges facing hubs outside of Beirut and closed the panel with some best practices for collaborations between large businesses and startups. Here ‘s the 6 “touch innovators” who finished the first cycle of the TIP:

• Sympaticus is an Online therapy app for treating Mental health problems delivered by licensed therapists. Our mission is to improve access to Mental Health services in Lebanon and the MENA region.Anyone can get help without traveling to an office. Sign up and start feeling happier!
• Feel22 is the leading online beauty shop in Lebanon with 10,000+ products from 300+international brands. We offer competitive prices & fast free delivery anywhere in Lebanon. We have shipped 12,000+ orders in 2017 and are looking to expand regionally by end of 2018. We also offer beauty brands an array of digital marketing solutions to reach the digitally connected consumer as well as consulting, data & research.
• Ecomz is an advanced ecommerce website builder, with smart tools and built-in features, helping every merchant build and grow an online business. The user can create the store with a click of a button, easily customize it through the theme and code editor, seamlessly add the products, and start selling in just a few hours.
• Dox is a software as a service (SaaS) startup providing a battery predictive maintenance platform that will help fleet owners eliminate inventory costs and site visits while improving the reliability of their batteries with the use of a cutting-edge machine learning algorithm.
• Dentiflow is a cloud-based management platform that allows dentists to manage every aspect of their clinic. Dentiflow acts as ERP to organize clinic data and a CRM that helps dentists retain and acquire new patients.
• Jaleesa is a web application that connects families with a trusted babysitter or nanny. Our technology makes it easy for parents to find a trained, vetted child carer. We’ve delivered 9,000 hours of child care, trained 80 child carers and registered over 300 parents across Beirut and the Metn. Our mission is to help women work, by building a business with a social impact that scales with our success.

Applications for the 2nd Cycle of TIP are now open. For more info click here.