Co-founder / Co-Host
TechSparks
Total years of experience :13 years, 0 Months
Co-founded TechSparks.tv a one-stop online educational platform for entrepreneurs, startup founders and business executives (Formerly backed by N2V)
• Built the product, consisting of a website with a video talk show interviewing distinguished individuals in the entrepreneurial space including
entrepreneurs, VCs, Business Angels, mentors, and more.
• Interviewed and facilitated interviews with over 75 international guests so far.
• Managed the site and YouTube channel as well as its social media outlets.
• Lead TechSparks to form partnerships with leading organizations locally and regionally to help support and market TechSparks.
• Designed various marketing campaigns to help reach more entrepreneurs in MENA, throughout social media campaigns, SEO tuning, Adwords
campaigns, email newsletters, and offline campaigns by being present in local and regional events.
Hired by the COO to join the IPO team. Built systems at a fraction of the cost, using only internal resources and resulting in saving the company millions in outsourcing fees and operational expenses.
Led initiatives and worked closely with the following teams; Finance, Logistics, Treasury, Sales, Legal and HR.
Key Accomplishments
Business Operations & Performance Improvement
Introduced cash out-flow systems which reduced bank interests and charges by at least 10% apart from cycle time for payments thereby smoothening the daily operation for the sales, account management, logistics, and finance departments.
Deployed the HR and personnel system enhancing interactions of over 3, 000 employees thereby improving employee satisfaction and reducing 30% of the admin staff.
Upgraded existing project and procurement systems, which resulted in greater efficiencies in daily operations and reporting.
Launched an innovative Legal Cases System to provide central legal database of all current and old litigations.
Strategy and Change
Developed the first organizational structure for the group resulting in merging, shrinking, or spinning off business verticals.
Designed a full incentive and commission structure for all the sales force to achieve its top and bottom line goals and to maximize key gains by incentivising the sale of emerging technologies and products.
Worked on improving company contractor classification with the government, allowing the group to take on bigger projects.
Launched marketing activities to enhance the group’s image leading to the recognition by the World Economic Forum as one of 2014’s Global Growth Companies.
Business Development
Identified several new and untapped lines of business to pursue such as the top 20% customers for the group and suggested ways to grow the business and relationship with those customers using cross and up selling strategies.
Participated in the evaluation of various joint venture opportunities, laying down the strategy and plan for the JVs.
Trained the sales force to develop better sales kits that highlights the product mix and the group’s strength.
Secretary of the Board
Advised the board of directors on areas of strategic development such as sales and organizational development across the group which resulted in direct improvement on the group's top and bottom line.
Produced various reports and market research for the senior management and the board of directors.
Prepared and packaged financial, legal and business documents requested by an external investor as part of the valuation and due diligence assignment.
Led key initiatives with the global Business Development team, including identifying mobile and tablet apps to license, startups and big sites to conduct JVs with.
Achieved over 100% growth in less than 9 months by implementing the ERP system for EcommerceSea (a leading e-commerce store in Saudi Arabia) including workflow preparation and helped the company, while keeping all operations under control.
Developed and enhanced the in-bound logistics strategy for EcommerceSea, which reduced cost by 13%.
Mentored portfolio companies and helped incubate startups; provided advice on areas such as market research, building go to market strategies, brainstorming on new business models and products, raising new rounds of funds and marketing strategies.
Launched Business Intelligent unit that enabled movement and visibility of data to those who needed it.
Crafted agreements for joint ventures and tender consortiums with big corporations and startups in the US and Europe.
Designed, developed and launched the first Entrepreneurial educational portal for Arab Entrepreneurs called ‘TechSparks’ www.techsparks.tv, and managed to conduct interviews with the over 80 successful entrepreneurs and expert in the digital scene, examples of the guests (Facebook, Google, Twitter, and many more international and local companies). Gained traction in the region with over 320, 000 minutes watched on the YouTube channel.
Managed another non-profit initiative, ‘Discover Digital Arabia’ which provided entrepreneurs and startup founders with infographic and visual content about the latest trends and news about the Internet and digital markets in the region.
Led the project from ideation to implementation, with complete ownership on strategy, execution and budgeting.
• Developed key partnerships with research and media organizations to produce statistics about the technology and Internet industry in the MENA
• Conducted research to gather new information about the region to help formulate new data and infographics.
• Planned and execute various marketing campaigns digitally, virally and offline.
Designed and implemented several advertising products, which was the sole revenue source for the company.
Created the first content policy and guidelines which got implemented across all of Jeeran’s websites, and still being used till date. These guidelines pushed the envelope on how Arab users contribute content online.
Built customer acquisition plans and oversaw marketing, social media, advertising and product activities.