Yasser N Alobaidan, CEO, Jawraa • Interview
Jawraa has doubled its revenue and tripled its net income during the pandemic, with its products in greater demand across the hardware, software, and services lines.
How have you dealt with the new reality, both internally in terms of workflow and externally in terms of your offerings to clients?
In terms of business, the first month [of the pandemic] was particularly challenging , as we did not know how long the situation would continue. We had to find a way to continue our business operations and, like many others, change our strategy to cope with the new reality. However, where there are challenges, there are opportunities, and there are three areas that we performed and excelled in. One is when the Ministry of Education closed schools, which created two new opportunities for us. The first area is devices. We usually sell around 20,000 devices a year, but due to COVID-19 and the introduction of remote learning for students across the country, we sold more than 80,000 devices in 2020. The second area is support functions. In many of these schools, the teachers, students, and parents had to immediately switch to a fully online schooling system, and they needed to know how to use the new technology for education. We worked with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Telecommunications and Information to provide training to education institutes, schools, teachers, and students on how to use this technology. We also helped students manage their time and utilize devices, and we helped parents get the best from the devices to monitor the productivity of their children, and so on. These two areas were extremely beneficial in positioning ourselves as a leader in digital transformation, specifically in the education sector. For the non-education sector, we have developed new tools and discovered new partners that help many organizations to grow amid COVID-19, including automatic queuing systems, automatic air purifiers, and air ultraviolet cleaning with robots. These are some of the products we brought to Saudi and sold to many customers. We have increased our resources by a minimum of 20% in the past 12 months. We have doubled our revenue and tripled our net income, so that was a great achievement for us.
What is the outlook for the MVNO license that you were awarded in the Kingdom, and how does that fit into your future plans?
This goes back to our digital philosophy when we set up the company as a partner in digital transformation. Digital transformation is a mix of three things: IT, telecoms, and media. We have been doing a great job enabling IT infrastructure and IT services with our customers. We have great experience building telecommunications services. We felt the best way of merging these three along with the new media today was not via TV or satellite, but from mobile phones in terms of entertainment, streaming, and how much time one spends just enjoying the streamlines. These are three particular areas that are combining to create a digital journey. Applying for a license is extremely important to connect these three pieces together and build the story.
What changes do you see in a strategic or operational sense in the next six to 12 months to adapt to post pandemic era?
I believe life will not return to what it was before. There has been a huge activation in terms of digitalization. With going online and COVID-19, we have seen a number of challenges such as the logistics system. We have seen huge demand on the logistics system, and that has tested the entire country and perhaps the region. There were many formations in Saudi and elsewhere on how to move the logistics system, make it easier to expand or measure, and so on, and we have seen the results. Most of the local unicorns are either in logistics, fintech, or other services related to the post-COVID-19 situation that will help life continue in a much better way.