Aftab Arif - Founding Partner

Aftab has a decade long experience of working with various startups across MENAP region in diversified roles. He is known for helping startups during 0 to 1 journey and beyond. Aftab co-founded Health at Hand (www.myhealthathand.com) the MENA region’s first regulated telehealth business, which was scaled to >1million patients across 5 countries (including the UAE, India and Egypt), before selling the business to Allianz in Q1 2021. Aftab is also part of the internal management consulting team at the world's leading pharmaceutical company, Novo Nordisk, where he is contributing towards the Open Innovation engagements with various internal and external stakeholders across the world.

Over the past few years, Aftab has worked with over a dozen startups in the region helping them in the areas of product strategy & management, team building, joint-ventures, and strategic partnerships. He has sound experience of listening to Founders talking problems and challenges, and then working with them on developing commercially viable and scalable solutions. 

Junaid is an MBA graduate with 15 years of product driven technology experience with 7+ years as a CTO in some of the largest scale ups in the middle east. He has an end to end understanding of omni-channel implementations that ensure technology as a key driver of growth. Junaid has built and managed teams of up to a 150 people in geographies including UAE, Kuwait, India, Pakistan and Romania forming yearly budgets of several millions of dollars.

His recent engagements include:

• ThePetShop, the largest omni-channel pet food retailer in the Middle East
• Boutiqaat, the 2nd largest e-commerce company in MENA
• Elabelz with operations in Saudi Arabia and UAE.

His areas of expertise are Web and Mobile Apps, ERP, WMS, POS, PIM, OMS, OFS, LMS, CRM, TMS, and BI.

Bassaam has 15 years of experience in investment banking, private equity and turnarounds in Pakistan, UAE and the USA. He has deep expertise in aligning key stakeholders (investors, management, creditors) around a business plan to develop support and comfort around valuations and investment decisions. Additionally, Bassaam has top tier experience in turning liquidity tight businesses around from both inside and outside of the CH.11 (bankruptcy) process. He understands how to bring structure and common sense to a business struggling with cash flow by providing leadership, strategies and processes to maximize access to cash as the business executes a turnaround and charts a path to profitability.

Key highlights include:

• Built the financial model and valuation leading to Russia’s Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works’ successful $362M (75% stake) bid for Pakistan Steel Mills
• Conducted commercial diligence on K.E.S.C (now K-Electric) supporting Abraaj’s investment of $361M (~36% stake). Subsequently as General Manager of Distribution strategy at K-Electric developed turnaround strategies leading to sustained profitability (the utility was suffering $15M of cash losses per month at the time of investment) – Turnaround covered in the HBS case study – Abraaj and the Karachi Electric Supply Company
• Ensured vendors continued to supply key products to a chemicals company with ~$3B in revenues despite non-payment while it went through a successful CH.11 turnaround. Transaction was recognized as the transaction of the year (2015) (USA)
• Analyzed cash at a large retailer that had less than 2 weeks of liquidity runway; worked closely with management to stretch liquidity while keeping the business operational; recognized as Large Turnaround of the Year (2018) (USA)
• Led business plan development, cash flow modeling, vendor negotiations at a distressed gifting and delivery service with ~$1 billion in revenue – leading to a successful sale to a private equity sponsor. Recognized as the Restructuring Deal of the Year (2020) (USA)