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(MENAFN - Khaleej Times) Samih Toukan could easily pass off as a friendly computer nerd but look closely and you will find curious eyes, a steely determination, an easy demeanour and a lot of pride and satisfaction in what he has achieved in the past decade since he launched what is now considered the region's first Internet success story.
As a child Toukan — the only son of a Jordanian banker — always thought about what he could do to become successful. He wanted to invent something that would make a difference to people and ended up dismantling and re-fixing radios and televisions because that to him
resembled advancement.
"Obviously I failed to invent. But this is what we need to instill in the culture of the Arab world: If you do not fail, you do not succeed. Failure is something good," says the former chief executive officer of the Maktoob group, as we settle down for a sushi lunch at the Capital Club. He considers himself a rebel because he broke the family tradition of becoming a banker in his the footsteps of his father.
Toukan did show signs of inventiveness and entrepreneurship when as a student in London he Arabised a computer football game.. "I remember demonstrating it to my teachers and classmates. I visited the software developer in Southampton and I signed a contract when I was 16 or 17 years old. But it did not fly."
Toukan's model is high-impact entrepreneurship with a strong dose of Arabic nationalism and Maktoob was a good example of what he was aiming for. "We wanted to create something in the Arab world promoting the Arabic language. So I mixed the two together. A lot of people tell me that I could have made the same kind of money if I had bought real estate, but it is not about money," he says, adding that Maktoob was about promoting Arabic-language email, Arabic language and Arabic content, which
were suffering.
"I thought if it was successful, it will serve me well but will also have high impact on the society," says Toukan, who realised while studying electrical and electronics engineering in London that what he wanted to do was set up a business. After completing engineering he moved to Paris to study business administration and then returned to Jordon to work with the then Anderson Consulting. He and a friend later started their own consulting business, but things changed when they were introduced to the Internet in the mid-1990s and Maktoob became a reality in 2000, the unfortunate year the dotcom industry went bust.
Toukan tells me that there was a lot of opposition - even from the family — to the idea. "'What are you doing, you are an engineer, and you are an MBA, what if the Internet fails? Everybody will use English, the masses are not going to use Internet', was the kind of stuff we were told. So we went against the tide, if you like," he says, adding that Maktoob probably survived the rough, post-dotcom bubble days because it was working on a smaller funding base than larger, ambitious competitors such as Arabia.com arabiaonline.com .
"We decided to focus on email as we believed in the vision. Our strategy was to focus on emails, grow that and expand once the financial crisis settled down. The first few years were really, really tough times. Revenue models were non-existent. I remember when we installed the first air conditioners in the office; we had a party! We were very cost conscious," Toukan said.
The Yahoo deal took time to brew. The first time Toukan met Yahoo officials was in 2005 when he accompanied the King of Jordan on a visit to Silicon Valley as part of an information technology delegation. He was the only Internet entrepreneur in the team and he introduced his company to them. "We wanted them to come and set up Yahoo Arabia. They said they were focussing on China and they asked me how many users I had. At that time I had three million subscribers and they said the number was too small but let us stay in touch," Toukan recounts. Today, Maktoob has 16.5 million users.
He later got in touch with the Yahoo team in Singapore and they met in Dubai to discuss cooperation rather than acquisition. By early 2008, when the two sides began getting serious about an acquisition deal, Microsoft tried to buy out Yahoo and talks froze until six months ago when the US Internet company contacted Maktoob again and the deal went through.
Did he feel sad about the decision to sell what he created through hard work and determination, I ask. Not really, says Toukan, as the deal has created a buzz that would bring more opportunities in the technology sector, he says, reminding me that most people were willing to invest in the booming real estate sector since there was no regional Internet success story. "I think after this deal it will change because there is an example."
While Maktoob has been sold, the other businesses — e-auction (souq.com ), e-payment (cashU) e-marketing (ikoo.com ) and the search engine (araby.com ) — will move to a new company called Jabbar Internet Group. Toukan will be its chairman and chief
executive officer.
Toukan feels there is a lot of space for e-commerce business in the region, but it won't work if ideas are merely copied. "You have to customise, localise and know the culture. We have 22 countries in the Arab world, each one thinks differently and each country can block maktoob.com at any point. We learnt with time what content is allowed and what is not. Unfortunately, censorship is one of the problems we have in the Arab world, but at the same time we cannot censor as you want to be democratic so that people come to your website. We knew how to do it and this is why Yahoo felt comfortable,'' he explains, adding that every government in the region has different rules.
There is no Facebook or Google coming out of Arab countries because of the lack of a right environment. There are no venture capital seeders and investment companies have traditionally looked at later-stage profitable companies. The need, according to Toukan, is to focus on models that work worldwide and make them suit the Arab world. "I hope this deal changes the landscape for entrepreneurship here. A lot of entrepreneurs called me after the deal and said you have done the best thing for us. At least they can meet investors or convince family with an example in hand."
Toukan said that the net faces huge challenges in the region, but he was positive about the future given a low penetration of about 13 per cent and a very young population. "The good thing is that growth rate is high. Can you imagine a high school kid without Internet? We grew 70-80 per cent this year. People cannot believe us, but it is true."
There are a few times during the day when Toukan says he does not think about work, but he sure does not have a normal work day — he could be checking his mails at 2 a.m. And he enjoys the world of the Internet. "That was also part of the success because I was very passionate and I am still very passionate. It is part of my genes, I just enjoy it. And that is what I look for in entrepreneurs — passion."
By Rahul Sharma
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