Making Platforms that People Love: The Secret Sauce Behind Home-Grown Successes

[Music] good afternoon everyone how are you doing today it having a great time let let me start with a quick question here and how many of you today do use a platform on like a daily basis and you cannot imagine your life without this platform by raise of hands all right so I can say probably 50% of the room so of course this is the power of platforms that truly truly connect with their users and today we are here to uncover what are these secrets for building these kind of platforms and as we all know of course Abu Dhabi is or has emerged as a tech hub for entrepreneurs for innovators and we are fortunate here here to have with us some of the Brilliant Minds that are bringing these platforms to the city so I would encourage you to think about your own experience with platforms as we dive into this discussion uh it's it's a great pleasure to have with me on stage Omari co-founder and chief growth officer of grapto mu Ali founder of fuse Marwan B Hashim from wo Securities and Roger Rohana from Alaya so gentlemen how about we start with with a short introduction about your companies here great thank you uh I'll kick us off I'm the co-founder of grop tech we are a B2B SAS business so a platform for businesses we provide uh software solutions to the f&b industry and the quick Commerce industry particularly helping them scale their online sales we do this in 22 countries uh for about 9,000 customers thank you Mo hi everyone my name is Mo uh co-founder of f a digital asset infrastructure company we um we basically Bridge uh traditional finance and new um you know um platforms uh we have uh two products mainly um crypto banking as a service and crypto payments uh and we basically uh enable mainly traditional businesses Banks fexs and Enterprises to operate in the digital asset economy thank you Salam alaykum my name is mar bhim uh I'm the general manager of wiu Securities uh the platform is a platform that provides the investment opportunities for our investors and customers and it currently uh has a product that takes you to the US market UA Market as well as it allows you to uh buy and sell through uh cryptocurrency thank you Roger ran I'm the CEO of ala um we're a B2B wealthtech platform um with the goal to transform wealth and trading experiences um we build technology to support financial institutions deliver wealth and trading Solutions um to their clients um based here in adgm we're currently touching something like three million clients um and a little less than a thousand um relationship managers and advisers thank you for having me here awesome gentlemen so I want also to ask you a common question question and in if view in your view today what are the key factors or the key ingredients today when we put them together that can lead to successful digital platforms and probably with this kind of competitive world that we we're living in how can you thrive uh locally and globally let's start with you sure um most multiple things contribute to a successful platform first first thing that comes to mind for us in terms of what's helped us at grup Tech is definitely understanding the customer Journey while they're using your platform what is it that they want to extract from value ad from that platform more specifically how can you start with a blank piece of paper when building that product so that you're not burdened or you're not um uh uh uh confused about what his historically has been done because often times when you're building a new platform the only way it's going to be successful is if you outdo what's existing so that's that's for me the top one yeah I think for us uh we're slightly different so what we do at fuse is we basically enable platforms to offer uh crypto products um so what we look for is we look for large platforms who have the right team who have the right thinking and really what we want to do is understand whether they want to acquire new customers uh increase customer um Revenue retentions those kinds of things and then really work with them side by side whiteboard and identify what are the right types of digital asset or crypto products that they want to launch for their customers thank you Mo Maran so for us it's a we're a service that is provided to the customers and what's important to us is to understand their needs and wants so how can we actually create a service or a feature to take them towards wealth in a secure manner so that's the important thing as well as to to build a technology that is easy for them to execute their demands and reach towards their goals and demands awesome um I'd say look on the one hand you have the very boring product Market fit what problems are you solving for whom um and and what gives you the right to solve them it's a very competitive world out there if you don't nail that one you don't really have a right to to um to to succeed um the second one is probably a little less boring it's I think it's something that I wouldn't have said 5 10 years ago which is are you really leveraging all the tools and and the power that technology today allows you to um uh uh to to enables you to do right so you can now build with AI something with 10 people that you know Legacy companies could need where Legacy company needs 100 people people um and and that is extremely disruptive I'm using AI as an example leveraging the cloud is the same thing um so I think these are sort of like the the two things i' pinpoint awesome um Omar if if I was to think about uh a grop tech I would think that this was born probably after Co but then I looked at your history and you were born just before Co so what inspired grop Tex all in one platform great question um it it was inspired by an investment I made into a cloud Kitchen business I sat on the board of this business it was set up by two of my friends being the finance guy on the board I started looking at the p&l and I started realizing there was really not that much spending on technology there were supposed to be a technology Le FMB business uh when we started looking into the problem I did what any smart investor would do is called in some smarter friends of mine to help me take a look brought in who is my co-founder who comes from the e-commerce world he led Al's digital Army and we basically just saw a very parallel universe said okay retail went through this 20 years ago um FNB is going through it now and this was a year before the pandemic uh once we built it uh it was fantastic because three months later every FNB Outlet was effectively delivery only and needed Solutions so it was a really nice boost um for us but people would think that's only for you know Revenue generation but the reality is it was a big boost for the customer feedback loop we now had many types of businesses telling us what type of solution they needed and none of us came from FMB so it was fantastic we were able to architect a platform um for different types of customers in different markets and it was just very good in terms of contributed to our our Global growth in a short period of time that's great uh uh Omar Mo so most of your business is all about crypto right and as you can see you're wearing something going to the moon and and and just last week I asked a guest on my show that I think we already reached the moon so are we going to Mars as well now with the with the crypto and um but through this journey there was lots of ups and downs and struggles and you know so we had some pain points probably to some CL cents and there's always this future digital Trend uh happening how do you identify these points how do we identify the points of the pain points of your clients the Digital Trends that is happening yeah I mean for us so uh we started fuse back in 2022 and um the idea was we saw that many of the larger Banks and Enterprises in the US and Europe were launching crypto or we looking at it in fact about 43% of Fortune 500 companies are actively doing something in this space and so we saw that there was no B2B provider here in this part of the world uh we started in uh the winter or the uh crypto winter as we call it of 2023 uh of 2022 and and really uh for us we saw that you know um we saw that the financial infrastructure globally has to be has to become better um you know it's slow it's expensive and I don't think that crypto is going to take over banking but I think there's a good opportunity to kind of merge blockchain and crypto technology with banks uh and and so that's we want to be and uh we have lots of great Partners who really want to go on this uh you know um kind of this um a journey with us and right now the main focus for us is on uh crypto investing but if you look at crypto payments really enabling uh Middle East Africa markets to really get into investing into lending into payments with a simple mobile phone and uh and then having a um having a um internet connection you can give uh everyone access to finance and banking services that they would not have had previously so so that's what kind of drives us and that's what we're going towards and in terms of regulatory issues more uh I think this is probably one of the biggest barriers to so many uh new entrance into the market whether it's here or outside but here I think it's it's different how do you find it yeah I think it's amazing right I think one of the things that um uh UI has done amazingly well is that the crypto regulations with the virtual asset regul here have been you know they started to come about in 2017 2018 much sooner than anywhere else you saw in other markets um a m for example just came up in uh 2024 and uh um a us now is still talking about it so I think the UA positioned really well to get the um regulations clear get them transparent and get them out as quickly as possible uh and and that's been um phenomenal for us we're very much a a regulatory conservative company so having uh a framework that's reliable and transparent has really help helped us a lot great Maran you're in the Securities business and this business has been here for so many years now but how are you trying to reshape the Securities business so the most important thing for us is to actually first understand the the opportunities that are not yet proposed or or or or are available in the market right the uh we need to build up a a technology uh platform that allows our investors to get into the market easily as well as they can also invest in a very easy and secured uh way we worked very closely with a lot of Partners to make sure that we provide the investment the investors the right tools and features so that they can reach that goal and uh as you have seen maybe all over the the highways the Billboards the slogan of born tobac you so we are here to back up the requirements and the needs of our investors and make sure that we deliver what they're expecting so we will always build towards creating an easy secure platform to reach that go amazing um if I ask you today what is the biggest probably Buzz world it would be Bitcoin and the crypto but over the past let's say two years what was the biggest buzz word any clue I'll give you a hint CH GPT so it was Ai and I was in the wealth management and asset management field and all what I do is Excel sheets and you know you've been there but now with Alaya you started using AI uh first wealth management platforms can you tell me how does AI enhance your capabilities um absolutely so if you think about it for and and that's the reason why we started wealth management as an experience kind of sucks right you can ask anyone you can ask consumers you can ask heads of businesses um of private Banks indep advisers Etc everyone complains about it and like we try to break it down into sort of like three components the quality of the advice that you get the set of financial products you're exposed to and your digital experience and AI can actually help you um sort of get dramatically better at those three and just for the to be completely um transparent AI currently I would say represents 10% of the added value that you that we bring right we have a full platform that that where where 90% of the features are not AI driven it's it's also like a probably a good representation of where the technology is it's it has phenomenal promises but but today it can only be used for certain specific use cases um and so more specific specifically AI will be able when it comes to advice to have a much more personalized conversation with your wealth manager um that is much more thoroughly researched um where it can either be a relationship manager that got co-piloted with AI where AI synthetized information and sort of like guided him or very soon you'll be able to talk to an agent and that conversation with the agent will 90% of the time be better than a real life conversation if you're the type of digital user that um uh uh uh uh uh that that we're seeing in the market um another example is when it comes to products today you know chat GPT in a good rapper allows you to understand much better the nature of the fund you're investing in and guide you through that process without having to talk to um some sleazy adviser um so I mean these are just two examples okay thank you um but some people still like a little bit of a human touch right I I I genuinely believe that it's going to boil down to preferences and of course the human element is very important you just want to make sure of two things um that the people that are not worth a100 million plus get the right advice right because like today if if you're if you're not big in aums it's not profitable for the bank to expose you to good advice right and that's where AI can really be bring scale and then when you are actually sort of like profitable for the bank um in an analog fashion you want to equip the adviser the relationship manager with the tools and the analytics that make him better that like dramatically enhance his understanding of your needs that's really what you want to do of course um Omar you you've started in the Kitchen business and then you expanded not just geographically but also in terms of of the products so if you can tell me how do you adapt the platform to service different type of clients different geographies how much work does it take a lot of work um but luckily we have talent so a couple of things one we have a very thriving FMB scen out here in the Middle East uh when we first started speaking at trade shows in Europe people didn't believe what we built they say why would you build this it's as if you are powering some super uh FMB operation and we said come and take a look at our customers in the Middle East High Volume they're selling on four or five different online channels delivery is you know less than 30 minutes uh so one of the things that's contributed to us being able to expand globally quite frankly is we were forced to build very good good technology for the sector because the sector here is fast um more importantly if you look at the demographics of who operates in the sector younger generation FMB operators they are going to uh they are more ambitious and they're going to use technology so that helps the other thing that helps is we broke down the problem so we said we're not going to build a product we don't want to build a single product we know from other sectors like e-commerce and Retail that you have different areas that you have to uh address so from the beginning we spent a lot of time investing in the architecture for a platform that was able to handle you know four key elements of e-commerce order management operations uh fulfillment and then data that was a bet uh and a use of money that our investors didn't like that ended up paying off a few years later thank you um more as we probably all know without innovation platform dies and you need to keep encouraging your team to innovate so how do you kind of foster this um uh Innovation within your team this culture within your team yeah so I think we're super blessed I think we have a very very strong team uh you know these guys come to work every day and they have new things that they want to do I think we actually have the opposite problem where we have to uh hold everyone back from doing everything they want to do I'm sure maybe you have the same problem Omar uh you know and also our customers drive a lot of what it is that we want to do you know we have um one of them here hopefully a second one soon if we can get this done uh so I think they really drive a lot of the things that we want to do the opportunity is just so massive um most uh fintech start off with a single Market single product uh our first year we've built out multiple products multiple um countries and it's just about how quickly we can go uh because we're also a local company there's a lot of global companies who are um are coming in so we're we're carefully watching to make sure that we build where the global Market's going but built with like a local market needs um in mind all right uh amazing um Maran how how do you as we your securities today support Abu dhabi's Vision as being uh a Global Financial Hub you know I remember coming here like I don't know six seven years ago into this area and it was empty today they are building a new city similar to here to just you know to accommodate more people so how do you support this Vision the ambition is very promising it makes our job much more harder to be honest uh Abu zabi alhamdulillah has great leadersh and their Vision towards seeing Abu Dhabi as the financial Hub is something something that we are working very closely to make sure that we fulfill this dream uh the uh the goal is actually a collective goal right we've got our own objectives and goals but the end result is to actually benefit Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates so we need to always be clear we to always be close and we need to always deliver what is expected by us uh their support is always there we can see it in The Regulators we can see it in the new laws and and and uh we can see it as well and their support so that's our aim and we always would like to work towards it wealth is something that has high demand has a lot of uh traction so we're working towards wealth and to provide the right products for it great uh so Roger maran's business at wiu is B Toc you mainly B2B how does the vision yeah you know for you as well yeah so look we're we're all in on this idea that um the UA with the UAE at the heart of it you're going to see the region become a Global Financial Center even more so than today right and you're going to see a shift from just just not like from being asset owners to asset managers in a much more meaningful way and we want to be the core infrastructure that enables that Vision right and so we want to we want to play three sort of like roles first of all being the platform on which wealth managers and asset managers to a certain extent come and and build on right to attract assets um number two we want to be an exporter of financial Solutions right through our technology in a very important part of the value chain right where you don't really have players right now in the UAE that are capturing it the tech behind wealth management and then number three we want to be a good citizen from an orchestration perspective we connect a lot of platforms to end clients um and we just want to be a good citizen that connects local platforms like the fuses of the world to um Banks um in a sort of like seamless fashion so what I'm hearing here is as well we don't not just need to export the technology any longer uh sorry I mean import the technology probably sometime in the future we'll also be exporting this technology right 100 actually our first client ever is was in Saudi so we started by exporting amazing great um okay I'm I think we we are about to uh get the time done here but Omar let me end with this question so you started your journey as a private Equity guy so it it was all about Investments and then you get to dig deep inside you know building a platform and a company so for all of those who are coming from abroad to start a business building their own platform what would you tell them um I would say that uh this region is we got a little lucky um this region has a lot of capital to support startups and I I don't mean institutional capital I mean individual Angel Investors they were able to understand our vision quite easily and uh I think it's very important to understand that one of the benefits of being in this part of the world is access to Capital at an early stage I think the other benefit is you do have certain sectors that are genuinely more advanced than they are in other markets uh look we're talking about banking right now we're talking about digital infrastructure we're talking about blockchain yeah uh FNB uh and I think that's great because you will get early adopters of whatever technology you're building so you've taken care of money you've taken care of customers right on and you have a growing talent pool people want to live here right it's not what it was 10 years ago so these three are very important so I would say definitely you know full forward on trying to execute on that Vision Omar Mo YF Roger thank you very much truly enjoyed the conversation I appreciate it thank you hope you enjoyed the thank you [Music] w