Date: June 26, 2016
Zubair Small Enterprises Centre (Zubair SEC) has facilitated for one of its members “Let’s Go Company”- an Injaz Oman graduate – , an incubation and support opportunity for product development, prototyping, and manufacturing by Zubair Building Material LLC, a subsidiary of Zubair Furnishing.
This facilitated cooperation between Zubair SEC member and Zubair Furnishing comes in alignment with Zubair SEC’s efforts to support small enterprises through business development, and also is part of the collaboration agreement with Injaz Oman to host and adopt some of its outstanding Sharikati Programme graduates who have designed and initiated innovative products and solutions during their membership at Injaz Oman and who wish to take their business concepts further towards actualization in the market. Zubair SEC has signed up so far 15 Sharikati members of the 2015 and 2016 Sharikati Programme rounds who are now enjoying a variety of services and support at the Centre.
Ali Shaker, Business Advisor at Zubair SEC, commented: “This kind of support aligns with the strategic direction of Zubair SEC to provide its members with valuable services that they cannot attain easily as start-ups. Many start-ups come with brilliant innovations and product ideas but they struggle later with the prototyping and manufacturing, which usually require high budgets and industry-specific expertise.”
He added, “We managed to help our member Mazen Al Hadhrami, Executive Director of “Let’s Go Company”, overcome this challenge by establishing collaboration with one of the Zubair Group companies, Zubair Furnishing. We requested them to adopt and fully support our member in prototyping and manufacturing, which they agreed immediately and promised all levels of cooperation.”
“Let’s Go Company” specialises in developing camping equipment using environment-friendly material and technology. The company aims to be a leading Omani producer of such top-notch products inside and outside the Sultanate. The company aims at providing innovative and modern solutions for tourists. Their first product ‘Go Adventure’ is a multi-purpose chair that has a solar power point for charging a power bank that provides electricity to charge electric appliances such as mobile phones. The innovative chair comes with a sun shade, sleeping bag and can be turned into a bed.
Appreciating the member’s passion for innovation, Vivek Pai, Executive Vice President at Zubair Furnishing LLC, said: “We are impressed with the dedication and commitment of Let’s Go Company to work on creating something original. Zubair Furnishing looks forward to collaborating with these young minds. We would like to acknowledge the supportive role Zubair SEC has been playing in the growth of the SME sector. This sector needs all possible support and nurturing since it will be a key future driver for socio-economic growth.”
Pai added, “SMEs tend to be drivers of innovation and change, so they are extremely important for the economy. We are happy to put our knowledge and expertise in the service of Mazen Al Hadhrami who has shown tremendous enthusiasm to develop his product. We are ever willing to assist Oman’s talented youth and provide insight to the industry updates which they can take back and use.”
Expressing his gratitude for the support, Mazen Al Hadhrami, Executive Director of Let’s Go Company said, “Zubair SEC has been providing utmost support to SMEs in terms of industry and market exposure, capacity building, and developing opportunities for its members to work closely with big companies such as Zubair Furnishing. The incubation opportunity with Zubair Furnishing allows us to interact, learn and better understand the business and market we aim to penetrate. We will benefit from Zubair Furnishing’s deep market and industry expertise towards developing and perfecting our product and company’s performance.
Explaining the challenges the company faced and how they overcame them, the Al Hadhrami said: “One of the biggest challenges that we faced was that we could not find a manufacturer to prototype and produce our product. We got in touch with a company in China but it was very difficult to communicate because we had to speak Chinese to make them understand how the product looks like. While we were looking to get support to start our business, we heard that a furnishing workshop can manufacture our product in Oman. We thought of Zubair Furnishing which was one of the major companies in the Middle East, India, Europe and the USA in furniture manufacturing, and we managed to raise their interest. We joined Zubair SEC and with their support we reached a final agreement with Zubair Furnishing to manufacture 10 prototypes and produce the end product.”
Throughout the past two years, Zubair SEC has facilitated a number of collaboration and business agreements and contracts between some of its members and Zubair Group companies as part of the general corporate culture and policy amongst the group to extend all possible support to SMEs in the Sultanate.