UNICEF Announces Investment in RedCrow
RedCrow is a startup that helps people point out dangerous incidents and places through a mobile application and an online platform. The information that people receive helps them decide whether it is safe or not to move from one point to another, and help decision makers mitigate risks on a tactical and strategic level. The system is supported with maps that show the locations of various real-time incidents, which include but not limited to, explosions, air strikes, shootings, clashes and it could also warn of extreme weather like floods and sand storms. The company currently operates in Palestine, Egypt, and Jordan and will be expanding further in the MENA region during 2018.
Such research and analysis is typically done by teams of people aggregating information from social and mass media, determining credibility, and manually sending it to their users. The algorithm RedCrow has developed is fully automated and does not rely on human intervention. This means that the system itself constantly collects information from social and mass media, analyzes it, and sends it to the end-users as alerts, charts, and predictions. This cycle takes less than two minutes from the minute data is collected until it is delivered, saving time, money, and decreasing the margin of error.
With UNICEF’s investment, RedCrow will be one of the first to develop and integrate Arabic Natural Language Processing to their platform. They will build features that can classify data into different categories, i.e. security, politics and crime. These developments will also include identifying different Arabic dialects and the countries they belong to, enabling RedCrow to efficiently accelerate the system and enter new markets in the Middle East and North Africa region.
“UNICEF’s investment will help us perfect our Arabic Natural Language Processing technology, making RedCrow one of the few companies focusing on such technology. By mastering this technology, RedCrow can work in any sector, not only security, and throughout the MENA region,” said Hussein Nassereddin, RedCrow’s Chief Executive Officer.
About RedCrow
RedCrow’s systems automatically collect data from multiple mass and social media sources, analyse that data, and based on historical trends and an in-depth understanding of the environments in which it operates, provide risk-mitigation solutions for international organizations and individuals operating in the MENA region. Data is delivered in various forms, including a real-time feed and geographic map, and is also collected to develop longer-term historical analyses. For more information, visit www.redcrow.co. RedCrow has received investments from Ibtikar Fund and has participated in the FastForward acceleration program; the PeaceTech Accelerator, in partnership with C5 Accelerate; and Black Box Connect, funded by Google for Entrepreneurs. It was also selected by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as one of the top 100 startups in MENA.
About RedCrow
RedCrow’s algorithms automatically collect data from multiple mass and social media sources, analyze that data, and based on historical trends and an in-depth understanding of the environments in which it operates, provide risk-mitigation solutions for organizations and individuals operating in the MENA region. Data is delivered in various forms, including a real-time feed and geographical maps, and is also collected to develop long-term forecaste based on historical analyses. For more information, visit www.redcrow.co.
About the UNICEF Innovation Fund
UNICEF's Innovation (Venture) Fund is a newly established, non-thematic, pooled fund which has been specifically designed to finance early stage, open-source technology that can benefit children. The core motivation of the Innovation Fund is to identify "clusters" or portfolios of initiatives around emerging technology - so that UNICEF can both shape markets and also learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children. For more information, visit www.unicefinnovationfund.org.
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