How Google Is Spreading Its Influence In The Middle East
BY Melissa Hancock
Forbes Middle East
When Mohamad Mourad got a call from a headhunter six years ago to discuss a potential offer for the top job at Google in the Middle East and North Africa, he was a bit stumped. “To be honest, it wasn’t an obvious choice,” says Mourad, who’s 42. It wasn’t. To outsiders, Google is primarily associated with computer engineers in the mold of its highly original founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who dropped out of Stanford University in 1998 to develop the search engine. Mourad was anything but a blue jeans-clad coder. At the time, he was working at consulting firm Booz & Company in Dubai, advising tech and media clients on acquisitions.
Still, he was intrigued enough to pick up a copy of The Google Story, an account of how the company came to serve as the gateway to the Internet—delivering information in more than 100 languages. It chronicled its quirky Silicon Valley culture at the Googleplex, a sprawling campus in Mountain View, California, where employees get around on skates.“I said ‘I have to join this company’,” recalls Mourad, after reading the book.
Good thing he didn’t pass on the offer. Now part of a conglomerate Page and Brin named Alphabet last August, the holding vies with Apple for the title of the world’s most valuable company. Last year, its net income was up 12% to $15.8 billion on revenues of nearly $75 billion—an increase of 13.6%. Despite Alphabet’s high-profile projects, which range from self-driving cars to life-expanding research, advertising still makes up the bulk of sales.Although the company doesn’t break out revenues for the Middle East, Mourad manages a team out of Dubai, and last year more than doubled the number of employees to 113.
For this interview, Mourad joined FORBES MIDDLE EAST aptly enough via the free video platform Google Hangouts. The connection was unsteady at times, but Mourad, who’s from Lebanon, was not as he beamed onto the computer screen. Laid-back, he wore a light pink v-neck sweater over a white t-shirt.
He ticks off some statistics: There are 400 million people in the Arab world, and half of them use the Internet; the majority are under the age of 25 and they are among the highest users of the search engine in the world.And here’s the opportunity: “The population in the MENA region is a good consumer, but not producer of technology, says Mourad. “All these factors combined make the region extremely strategic. All the stars are aligned.”
He’s determined to sprinkle Google stardust here and there, from teaching children how to code, to grooming a new crop of software developers and backing a burgeoning startup scene. Ultimately, those efforts help bolster the company’s influence. The long-term benefits to Google are numerous—not least helping create local tech success stories, perhaps an Arab Amazon and potential future customers of its products—from analytics software and consumer surveys to AdWords, which serves up targeted ads based on search words.
To back startups outside the U.S., Google launched in 2011 Google for Entrepreneurs. The program provides startups around the world with money, workspace and mentorship. The project is close to Page and Brin’s heart, having started their business in a garage.In 2013, Mourad started hosting at Google’s office in Dubai entrepreneurs Louis Lebbos and Muhammed Mekki. The pair had formed AstroLabs, which offered a condensed accelerator program. Their credentials are impressive; they founded Namshi, one of the largest fashion online retailers in the Middle East.
The Google team helped by providing entrepreneurs in the program with the software they needed to build their business, including digital tools to enhance mobile marketing, data analytics, and user experience design. AstroLabs nurtured 175 startups, which went on to raise a total $50 million, including ride-sharing car service Careem and Souqalmal, a financial products comparison site.
“AstroLabs has a great track record of helping founders grow and thrive,” says Mourad, who then helped Lebbos and Mourad partner with Google for Entrepreneurs to expand into a full-fledged hub for startups. “We had to go through a multiple vetting process,” says Mekki, describing his interviews with the Google team in Mountain View. “We had to present our plan via Google Hangouts.”
In October 2015, with funding from Google for Entrepreneurs and Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), a free zone, AstroLabs opened a 6,500 square foot communal office for startups in an airy ground floor near the Dubai Marina. Among other amenities, it has a café, showers, and a “coding cave.”
Out of 400 applicants, AstroLabs selected 65. (It can accommodate 100 entrepreneurs). “We put an investor hat on, and assess them from that perspective,” says Mekki.
Monthly rent for office space ranges from $200 a month to $950 a month. They have access to 46 mentors, including 13 from Google MENA, who commit at least two hours every month to coaching them. They tutor them on how to make the most out of Google products, from how to monetize a YouTube platform to measuring customer data to mobile ads display.A big draw for entrepreneurs: visits from Silicon Valley venture capitalists, who come to proffer their advice and check out the startups.
“We’re very passionate about AstroLabs and we’re only a five-minute drive from their office so Google employees are always dropping by,” says Mourad. “This is a really important project, as the region needs to do a huge amount of work on creating a conducive environment for tech entrepreneurship.”
One roadblock is red tape—a significant drain on cash-strapped startups. AstroLabs waives license fees to operate in DMCC the first year. It also fast tracks registration, cutting down in half the time it usually takes for a startup to obtain a license. Mekki estimates that AstroLabs saves entrepreneurs $10,000. For all its services, it doesn’t extract any equity.
Tarig El Sheikh, a British national, says he has benefited significantly from AstroLabs. A founder of Beneple, an online platform similar to U.S.-based Zenefits, which manages benefits and payroll, El Sheikh estimates he has saved 50% through AstroLabs. “You face a mountain of legal paperwork and hurdles [in Dubai],” says El Sheikh. He thinks the tech hub has reduced everyone’s odds of failing.Aysenur Guven, who runs Turkish startup Daphne Digital, an online business intelligence platform for retailers is using AstroLabs as a launchpad to expand in the Middle East.
“It’s made a big difference to my company,” says Guven. “They provide training and mentoring, and you can get advice about any products.”The U.A.E. is not the only place in the Arab world where Google supports entrepreneurs. It has backed Gaza’s only accelerator Gaza Sky Geeks, helping Palestinian entrepreneurs overcome their isolation by connecting them with its other startup communities, such as AstroLabs, and mentoring them.We’re committed in MENA to helping enable the next generation of entrepreneurs be successful,” says Mourad.
Another example of how he is sowing Google’s seeds is by partnering with the public sector. He teamed up this past September with the Abu Dhabi Education Council to help teach computer science to 4th, 5th and 9th graders. The company provides curriculum materials, video tutorials and online training for free. Prior to that, many schools didn’t teach coding. “The way we see it…if these children don’t learn how to code, then they won’t truly be able to harness the power of the web,” says Mourad.
To train developers, he helped set up last year a two-year program with the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology that aims to teach, certify and employ 2,000 students in Android-based mobile app development. (Google’s Android is the world’s most commonly used mobile operating system). To date 230 students have graduated, with 75% finding jobs thanks to the program.
“Google is the best company to work for, as its aim is to build for everyone,” says Mourad, who clearly possesses the kind of passion the company looks for when it hires.He describes his first job out of college as a career-shaping experience. After graduating from Lebanese American University in 1994 with a bachelor’s in business and economics, he moved to Nigeria to set up the business of a Lebanese construction company in Lagos and Port Harcourt. “I was so inspired by what I learned in that six-year period that I started to see myself as a business builder,” says Mourad, who left to earn an MBA in 2001 from INSEAD in France.
He joined U.S. candy maker Mars in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia as a business planning manager for the Middle East, before moving in 2005 to Booz, where the culture couldn’t be anymore different than Google’s. At the search engine giant, there’s accountability, but no rigid hierarchy. “I joke that as a leader at Google, I have absolutely no authority over people,” says Mourad—words that ring like the sound of soft power.
Source: www.forbesmiddleeast.com