Voti gets warm Saudi welcome
Montreal company’s Gulf office doing brisk business, including with royal family
Quebec notwithstanding, Voti’s acceptance is growing internationally.
Voti founder William Awad opened an office in the Gulf state of Qatar, in one of the fastest-growing regions in the world and the base of operations for Bader Al-Othman, Voti’s exclusive representative for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
“I was the very first customer for Voti,” said Al-Othman from Riyadh, the Saudi capital of five million souls.
In less than three years, Al-Othman has managed to place 34 Voti 3D scanners — and two Mercedes vans equipped with scanners — in Saudi Arabia, or more than a quarter of the roughly 130 machines installed by Voti worldwide.
His list of clients is short — the Saudi government almost exclusively. But the events and applications for the machines are not.
“We had the hajj (in October, the pilgrimage that Mus- lims around the world are called on to make to Mecca once in their lifetime), and about three million people came. We had to scan all of them — and their luggage, boxes and anything they had with them.”
What were the scanners trying to ferret out? Drugs and alcohol, mostly, Al-Othman said.
“Imagine,” Al-Othman said, “a bottle of vodka, you can sell it here for $600. So it’s a great thing if you bring in three or four bottles.”
His main customers are government departments, banks and hotels, some of which scan people and luggage before they enter the lobby.
But his most high-profile clients are the Saudi royal family, in whose offices and palaces Voti’s machines are installed.
“We face very stiff competition from companies like Smiths Heimann and Rapiscan Systems,” Al-Othman said. “They try to cut deals to shut us out of the market by lowering their prices to get rid of us. But we sold 34 so far, and I think that’s a good success.”
No Saudi official was available for comment.
But Al-Othman insisted that the royal family and government departments “are very happy with the services.”