Speaker Profiles
15 May, 2017, Dubai, UAE
Ulugbek Yuldashev, Founder & CEO, Awok.com
Kyrgyz entrepreneur Ulugbek Yuldashev is the founder and chief executive officer of AWOK.com, which is, one of the leading online retail platforms in the UAE. He founded the online store in 2013, which commenced operations, by selling electronics and gadgets. The company has grown rapidly since its inception, offers over 50,000 products across 30 plus categories, and employs close to 500 people.
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Yuldashev has had a flair for business since an early age and started his first company in 2004, when he was just 19 years old. It was a retail and wholesale business in Kyrgyzstan named Domashniy (Russian for Home Center).
In 2006, the ambitious young entrepreneur moved to Dubai and in 2008 established the wholesale company Gulf Alabel Technologies LLC. Success in this venture led to Yuldashev setting up another wholesale company called Alifco LLC followed by entering the ecommerce industry in the region with ALIFCA DMCC as the parent company of AWOK.com.
Ulugbek is a business graduate and considers his father to be his mentor who instilled in him discipline and ethics in business at a young age. Hailing from a retail background, Yuldashev is committed to being customer-centric. Customer satisfaction is at the core of his decision making process as much as an acute business sense and boldness.
Yuldashev’s commitment to ‘not quit without winning’ stems from being a dynamic sportsman since school days. He has grown up winning various national and regional level competitions in Kyrgyzstan. Competitive sports that he has trained in and won include martial arts, tennis, swimming and 10km running.
When away from his growing business, Ulugbek enjoys spending time with his young family. He is a voracious reader and speaks English, Russian, Kyrgyz and Uzbek fluently.
Zak Nasser, Product Manager, Dubizzle
Zak is a product manager for classifieds and advertising in UAE. His has covered several themes during his time at Dubizzle. He worked on new business ventures and launching new advertising products. He was responsible for increasing conversions across the product funnel where he revamped search and launched many UX improvements. Prior to Dubizzle, Zak was a product manager at iMena Group supporting their portfolio companies, mainly Opensouq, on their product strategy and execution.
Prior to iMena, Zak was a product manager at Facebook HQ for the Events product. During his time there, the product grew to over 400 million MAU and plans were being set for an independent app for Events which released in 2016. He was involved in the tech community of silicon valley, namely the VR community and the startup community. Prior to Facebook, Zak was a consultant at Roland Berger USA working with Auto clients on product strategy and innovation. Microsoft and Ford were among the client projects.
Zak is a honors graduate among top 5% of his class from Stephen M Ross School of Business at University of Michigan, a top 10 school in the United States. During his time there, he was active in the tech and ventures community where he worked part-time with startups/VCs and won a coding hackathon prize.
Idriss Al Rifai, CEO, Fetchr
Idriss Al Rifai is an entrepreneur passionate about disrupting the Middle East retail market with technologies and customer-centric services that enable the growth of e-commerce in the region. Idriss has developed and optimized a last mile delivery solution specifically for the e-commerce needs and requirements in the Middle East.
In 2012, Idriss founded Fetchr, formerly MENA360, which has evolved to become a full end-to-end logistic solution, backed by technology, for e-commerce companies, regional players, social media sellers as well as SMBs in the MENA region. Fetchr is also the first company in MENA to raise $11M in Series A funding, led by a top Silicon Valley VC, New Enterprise Associates.
Previously Idriss worked for MarkaVIP, a leading ecommerce player in the MENA region, where we headed the operations and built an in-house logistics department for the company to expedite deliveries. Prior to this he worked as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group.
Idriss holds degrees from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris (Sciences Po) and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He is also a Rath and Fulbright scholar and Endeavor entrepreneur.
David Fuller, E-Commerce Expert
David has been involved with digital for over 20 years, specialising in marketing technology solutions for retailers, travel and professional sport.
David has been based in the MENA region for the last 3 years and was involved with several high profile Ecommerce launches for well known retail groups based in the GCC.
He is passionate about bringing world-class technology to the region and supporting home-grown solutions.
Simon Fabich, Founder and Managing Director, MONOQI
Simon Fabich was born in 1983 in Berlin. He studied Strategy and International Management as well as Sinology at St. Gallen, Shanghai, and Singapore. He lived in Asia for three years and speaks Mandarin.
He has worked as a strategic consultant at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, investment manager at Atlantic Ventures. In 2012 he founded MONOQI together along with Felix Schlegel. Founding MONOQI meant turning his passion for design into a business.
With MONOQI, Simon’s aim is to lead home and lifestyle shopping into a new era through staging nothing less than a revolution in the design industry.