Alumni Entrepreneurs 2
With so many alumni choosing a career in the world of tech, innovation and startups, we are pleased to be able to showcase more KAUST alumni who are less well-known entrepreneurs. We begin with Alaa Gharbawi from Jeddah:
Start, Start, and Start Again
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Alaa Gharbawi (MS ’17) is a serial entrepreneur. While still a student he initiated four startups. It seems Alaa has been reading Entrepreneur Magazine: Why You Should Never Start Just One Business.
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In 2009, he started Oilwell7.com, a portal to help Saudi graduates returning from abroad to find jobs in Saudi Arabia; his service helped some 5000+ students find work. This led to him being placed 4th in Forbes Middle East magazine’s awards for Top 100 Entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia, forbesmiddleeast.com.
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Following this, he set up SuhobTech, an IT development company and subsequently the first Pilgrims portal, gatetracker.com. Gatetracker helps Umrah operators track pilgrims, source hotels, and transportation.
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More recently, Alaa has started AG Digital, a consulting firm that helps entrepreneurs and organizations with digital innovation and business strategy.
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Alaa’s advice to would-be entrepreneurs: Focus on your goal and listen to your gut.
Building a Large Database of the Very Small
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Khachatur Julfakyan (PhD ’15) along with Natalya Julfakyan (KAUST's faculty websites content editor) started Scimagine. Khach was working with nanomaterials and found it very time consuming looking for experimental data (hidden in PDFs) or material of specific properties, e.g. Silica nanoparticles 20 to 50nm.
Further, he wanted graphics to enrich his reports. Khach and Natalya (who helps scientists edit and present their information) think existing sources and photo-stocks are small, poorly categorized and unsuitable for academics.
Scimagine aims to revolutionize the way nanomaterials scientists find and analyze experimental data. It is a web-based platform that extracts and categorizes literature data on nanomaterials and acts as digital marketplace for graphics relating to nanoscience and nanotechnology.
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In 2016 Scimagine gained support from KAUST’s accelerator program and received the Kingdom Impact Award as 1st Runner-up. Later they developed a business plan that helped to raise $85,000 for the prototype platform. Currently, they are setting up the company in Saudi Arabia, preparing for a market test, hiring, and raising more funds.
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Khach’s advice to would-be entrepreneurs: ‘’Find a difficult problem and think how you can solve it. Get to know your customers and the market very well. You need to be willing to dedicate a lot of time. If you think that you can multitask along with your academic work, you may be mistaken.’’
The Sultan of Sustenance
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We are all familiar with KAUST alumni start-up companies Sadeem, Falcon Viz and Sin Acqua, but you may not have heard of Tubatay. Sultan Safin, MS ’13 is CEO of Tubatay, has 17 outlets with 14 franchisees selling halal compliant fast food in Russia and the CIS.
Sultan, who studied Earth Sciences and Engineering, swapped his lab coat for a hair net when he started Tubatay back in 2015. With its visually strong branding, Tubatay is ​​the first Tatar fast food chain. The name, Tubatay comes from the national head-wear for Tatar men.
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Tubatay offers home-style treats prepared according to traditional Tatar recipes, some similar to foods found in the Middle East. Staff wear Tatar-styled uniforms, and packaging design includes quotes from great Tatar thinkers. Sultan likes to promote the Tatar culture in a contemporary manner, and this is evident in the design elements in his packaging, uniforms and restaurant design.
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Whilst fast food (at least many western brands) is often associated with unhealthy food, Sultan tries to counter this with events such as free lectures on nutrition.
You can hear more about Sultan’s remarkable success in the Alumni Lecture Series at WEP on Thursday January 18, 2018 from 2pm. tubatay.com
