Entrepreneur: Mansour Mansour
Company: Javna
Industry: Wireless Software Solutions/ Mobile Media Services
Selected: September 2008
Website: www.javna.com
Mansour Mansour is a visionary entrepreneur with a passion for mobile wireless technology. The first entrepreneur selected by Endeavor Jordan, Mansour is the Founder and CEO of Javna Wireless Software Solutions, the leading Arab firm in software solutions and wireless applications, and the first company in the region to develop proprietary software for the mobile market. Launched in 2001, Javna has been jointly built around Mansour’s steadfast belief in innovation and his ambition to develop a global company in his native country of Jordan. With an impressive list of partners – including major mobile operators in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – as well as exclusive regional agreements with both Al-Jazeera News and CNBC Arabia, Javna is well positioned to continue its regional leadership in the fast-growing mobile media space.
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Entrepreneur: Imad Malhas
Company : IrisGuard
Industry: Biometric Technology
Selected: May 2009
Website: www.irisguard.com
Jordanian entrepreneur Imad Malhas is seeking to be the leading provider of iris recognition security solutions and services in the world. In 1999, Imad launched IrisGuard, a company which offers commercially-proven, turnkey solutions in the fast-growing biometric field of iris recognition - a mathematical system that uses the iris, the colored ring that surrounds the pupil of the human eye, to determine identity in real-time. Building complete identification solutions by manufacturing and producing hardware (eye-scanning cameras), proprietary software, and the middleware that ties it all together, IrisGuard has already sold applications for border security, residency tracking, and even banking. Having caught the eye of the world media, including Newsweek and the BBC, IrisGuard’s breakthrough technology has the ability to place a small country like Jordan at the forefront of global innovation in biometrics.
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Entrepreneur: Dr. Widad Akrouk
Company: Al Masar Child Development Services
Industry: Healthcare Education
Selected: October 2009
Website: www.almasar.edu.jo
As one of the country’s first occupational therapists, Dr. Widad Akrouk envisioned a center that would serve special needs children beyond the basic treatments offered by government-run programs. In 2006, she founded Al-Masar Child Development Services, the Middle East’s first and only comprehensive development center for special needs children. With the aim of helping these children develop the skills needed to lead more mainstream lives, the center offers three services: a day school program, specialized evaluation and therapy sessions, and an early intervention program. With an estimated 8.5 million disabled children living across the Arab World, Al-Masar represents a promising private model to deliver care and hope to an underserved group.
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Entrepreneur: Amin Amin
Company: ASK
Industry: Capacity Building Professional Development
Selected: October 2009
Website: www.ask-arabia.com
Amin Amin believes that the investment in human capital is the vehicle to sustainable economic and social prosperity. For him, this is done through empowering Arab youth and equipping them with the needed Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge to become proactive critical thinkers, decision makers and above all knowledge workers. Amin established ASK in 2011 with a vision to become the leader in human capacity building in the Arab region through providing comprehensive and professional development services in education and employment. Amin operates in Jordan, with the ambition to establish offices in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Palestine in the next couple of years.
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Entrepreneur: Thabet Al-Nabulsi
Company: Challenger Team
Industry: Training Adventure Tourism
Selected: October 2009
Website: www.challengerteam-jo.com
Thabet Al-Nabulsi is a passionate entrepreneur with a Boy Scout’s values. “Captain Thabet”, as he is known to his staff, founded Challenger Team in 2000 with the goal of inspiring individuals to become productive and responsible leaders. Challenger Team has developed an array of leadership training programs and adventure camp experiences, which teach life skills to youth while promoting adventure tourism. In doing so, Thabet has created a market for youth outdoor education in Jordan. Challenger Team now trains over 20,000 students each year and has extended its offering to include corporate executive retreats and customizable adventure and training tours.
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Entrepreneur: Dr. Amjad Aryan
Company: Pharmacy 1
Industry: Retail Pharmacy
Selected: October 2009
Website: www.pharmacy-1.com
Dr. Amjad Aryan has a vision to make his company, Pharmacy 1, the CVS of the Middle East. In 2001, Dr. Amjad spotted the opportunity to modernize and standardize the Jordanian pharmaceutical industry, which was then characterized by poor quality of services, low levels of technology and inconsistent management. Eight years later, Pharmacy 1 is the number one retail pharmacy chain in the country, with 45 branches employing 350 people. Dr. Amjad has also begun to expand regionally, with pilot branches in neighboring Saudi Arabia, where the pharmaceutical market is valued at over US$1.5 billion. With ambitious expansion plans and the potential for revenues to increase exponentially, Dr. Amjad is on the right track to make Pharmacy 1 the leading pharmacy chain in the Middle East.
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Entrepreneurs: Mohamad Haj Hasan and Yousef Shamoun
Company: Akhtaboot
Industry: Online Recruitment
Selected: March 2010
Website: www.akhtaboot.com
Since founding Akhtaboot in 2007, Mohamad Haj Hasan and Yousef Shamoun have quickly made a splash in the online recruiting market. With a user-friendly interface, superior functionality and searching capability, and a charismatic brand, Aktaboot can now match its 14,000 unique daily visitors (job seekers) with over 500 registered employers – including international players such as Google, FedEx, and LG Electronics. As the Middle East works to create over 200 million jobs by 2020, Akhtaboot has both real potential for growth and an opportunity to have a significant impact on the region. The combination of surging internet penetration rates and high unemployment in the Middle East has yielded a promising environment for Akhtaboot to become the industry leader, linking internet-savvy youth to newly created jobs in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, and beyond.
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Entrepreneurs: Omar Koudsi and Laith Zraikat
Company: Jeeran
Industry: Web 2.0
Selected: June 2010
Website: www.jeeran.com
Nimble and savvy entrepreneurs Omar Koudsi and Laith Zraikat started their website, Jeeran, with a vision to make the web relevant to the Arab world by empowering people and giving them the tools to generate their own local content. Over the years Jeeran continued to evolve, and what started as a blogging service became one of the most established content portals in the region ‐ ranking among the top websites in the Arab world, generating over 25 million page views per month, and cultivating a community of more than 1.5 million members. Year 2010 marked the next phase in Jeeran’s evolution through the launch of the Jeeran “Places”, a new service that empowers Arab users to rate, review, discuss and discover places in their city. Jeeran Amman was launched first and other cities in the GCC followed. The new proposition showed a marked impact within a short period through a surge in traffic and community members, and adoption and engagement by those living in the cities. As leaders in user-generated Arabic content, Laith and Omar are well positioned to ride the rising tide and become the next huge web 2.0 success story.
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Entrepreneurs: Ramzi Halaby and Zafer Younis
Company: Modern Media
Industry: Social Media Services
Selected: October 2010
Website: www.modern-media.me
Ramzi and Zafer are revolutionizing the way businesses in the MENA region talk to their customers. With their creative approach to social media advertising, these first movers are helping multinationals optimize their social network presence in the Middle East. Modern Media was founded when they started Jordan‘s first independent English-language radio broadcast Play 99.6 FM in 2004. In the last year their experience in brand promotion led to the development of a new business line called ―The Online Project (TOP), the only service in the region to offer comprehensive social media management in Arabic. Their combination of marketing strategy, process analysis, and content creation has improved their clients’ advertising and marketing ROI dramatically. Ramzi and Zafer have developed a valuable product in a rapidly growing field and they could go from being national role models to a regional or global success story.
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Entrepreneurs: Firas Al-Otaibi, Mohammed Asfour and Wael Attili
Company: Think Arabia
Industry: Animation and Design Services
Selected: October 2010
Website: www.kharabeesh.com ,www.untitledstudios.com
There are more than 344 million Arabic speakers worldwide, yet less than 1% of all online content is in Arabic. Cartoons and videos are dubbed with Arabic voices, and websites are roughly translated. In 2010, Firas, Mohammed and Wael along with other partners founded Think Arabia to fill this gap. Think Arabia is a one-stop-shop for Arabic animated content and multimedia design that comprises of three businesses: Kharabeesh (an animation studio), Untitled (a design studio), and Wikikiwis (a web technology company). They offer a wide array of Arabic media products and services from animated cartoon shorts, to mobile phone applications, to branding and multimedia design services. Think Arabia has the potential to become a leading developer of original and creative Arabic content and possibly the Cartoon Network of the Middle East.
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Entrepreneur: Fadi Al-Atrash
Company: Amman Pharmaceutical Industries (API)
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
Selected: May 2011
Website: www.ammanpharma.com
Born into a family of pharmacists, the pharmaceutical industry was a natural choice for our entrepreneur Fadi Al- Atrash. After gaining eight years of experience working in multinational pharmaceutical companies, Fadi joined API in 2006 as the Deputy General Manager and gained a seat on the board in 2007. Since its launch, API has become a leading regional manufacturer of niche branded generics, including eye drops, ointments, nasal sprays and topical preparations. Fadi has been a driver in this leadership story. He added new product lines and export markets, introduced license manufacturing into company strategy, implemented HR and finance policies and procedures, and rebranded the business. API has tapped into Jordan’s export market, which counts pharmaceuticals as its second largest contributor. Nearly 75% of API’s 2010 revenues came from exports to 25 countries. As API expands and transitions from a family business into a corporate company with institutionalized policies, procedures, and operations, API could become a global story for Jordan and the region.
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Entrepreneurs: Hussam Hammo, Sohaib Thiab, Afif Toukan
Company: Wizards Productions
Industry: Online Gaming
Selected: October 2011
Website: www.wizardsproductions.com
Afif, Husam and Sohaib met and discovered that they shared a passion for gaming and lamented the lack of MMO games catering to Arabic speakers in this part of the world. Together they established Wizards and have been providing gamers throughout the Middle East free access to its MMO browser-based English games, localized foreign games, and original games via its gaming portal (www.wizardsgaming.com)and social networking sites. Over the past two years, Wizards has localized three online games and developed ten games of its own, serving more than 700,000 registered users and becoming the first MMO browser-based game development company in the Middle East. The company caters to a region with an estimated 45 million gamers and a US$1 billion gaming industry.
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Entrepreneurs: Ramez Kalis, Zeena Majali, Ibrahim Seksek
Company: CrysTelCall
Industry: Contact Center Outsourcing
Selected: October 2011
Website: www.crystelcall.com
Ibrahim, Ramez and Zeena introduced Jordan’s first free-standing, independent contact center in 2007. The center provides high quality, cost-competitive contact center outsourcing services, primarily for MENA region clients with mostly Arabic-speaking customers. CrysTelCall has earned a reputation for utmost quality as one of the region’s few third party-certified outsourcing providers. Already responsible for 75% of Jordan’s domestic outsourcing business, the entrepreneurs have the experience and drive to lead a renaissance in the MENA region’s customer service.
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Entrepreneur: Ammar Sajdi
Company: RealSoft
Industry: IT Solutions
Selected: October 2011
Website: www.realsoft-me.com
Ammar has been an active participant in Jordan’s increasingly vibrant tech community since the early days. In 2002, he founded RealSoft which provides data-gathering, management, and analytics solutions for governments and businesses seeking to implement state-of-the-art information technology solutions in order to improve technical platforms, operational processes, and overall company performance. As the first mover in this niche market, RealSoft services governments in eight countries and has established offices in the UAE and Oman, where it has turned one-off contracts into long-term institutional relationships.
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