Wa’hab Founder and Managing Director Wardah Mamukoya and Burroy Box Co-founder Nour Tabet
There’s no denying it. More women are launching their own start up businesses in Doha each year. To date, the Qatar Business Incubation Center (QBIC), a leading mixed-use business incubator in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, has incubated nearly 160 companies since it was launched in 2014.
The incubated companies have altogether generated over QR54mn in revenue, further bolstering Qatar’s private sector. Over 30 percent of these start-up projects were founded or led by women in the country.
Braving the start-up industry requires two things – having a sense of purpose and being adaptable – successful women start-up owners said in an interview with The Peninsula.
For Wardah Mamukoya, Founder and Managing Director of Wa’hab, ‘knowing your why’ or having a sense of purpose beyond merely earning revenue is one of her core values in launching and maintaining her start-up project.
Wa’hab is a social start-up program launched in 2017 and is aimed at reducing food wastage in Qatar by collecting surplus food and delivering it to people in need.
She said, “We are social beings. We shouldn’t be merely looking for success. That might come along the way. But it’s really about impacting other people’s lives. I grew up in the Middle East and I’ve been seeing large amounts of food being thrown away and the guilt built up, because you know someone somewhere out there who could benefit from free meal”.
Mamukoya, who works full-time on her start-up project along with her husband, said Wa’hab has so far distributed over 80 tons of food which corresponds to more than 500,000 meals to people in need in Doha. The group partners with food outlets and charities here to collect excess food, package it, and deliver them to beneficiaries.
According to Mamukoya, their first ‘food rescue’ began during the Qatar International Food Festival 2017. Their first ‘rescue day’ started with only one volunteer. Soon after, everyone started spreading the word about the group’s noble cause. Today, the term ‘food heroes’, which refers to the Wa’hab volunteers, is being widely used in Doha. The group now has an army of over 400 food heroes, who come from diverse backgrounds and age groups from across the world.
Mamukoya’s idea of reducing food waste in Qatar is relevant. According to a research project conducted by SAFE-Q, about 1.4 million tons of food was consumed and wasted in Qatar, with an extra 14 percent which is equivalent to about 20 million kilograms of food have been thrown away before it even reached the end-consumer in 2012. Also, more than half of the municipal waste generated in Qatar contains discarded food.
Also, in order to be self-sustainable and to keep the business side of the project working, Wa’hab recently started offering composting solutions to restaurants, hotels, and FIFA stadium contractors in Qatar. With the country promising to hold the first ‘carbon neutral’ World Cup in 2022, Mamukoya is banking on the idea that reducing food wastage reduces carbon footprint.
“There’s a huge wave of sustainability awareness right now in Qatar and I think the country is ready for composting,” she added. Meanwhile, aside from being purposeful in one’s start-up business, a woman entrepreneur is more likely to succeed by being adaptable, said Nour Tabet, co-founder of Burroy Box.
Launched in 2018, Burroy Box is an interactive educational subscription box which provides children with age-appropriate bonding activities with their parents on various subjects including Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math and Islam (STEAM-I).
Over the past several months while managing Burroy Box, Tabet has seen firsthand that things don’t always go as planned in business. She said she has learned how to overcome the challenges by being adaptable.
She also said, “It could be something de-motivating a lot of times. In business you should be optimistic all the time, but you should also be realistic. There are many things that are unexpected. In fact, things change. If you want to force things your own way you won’t succeed. Market keeps changing and adaptability is extremely important. In business, people usually go with passion. But passion without numbers is a big disaster. So it’s either adapting to what the current market needs or you change your market,” added Tabet. As a single woman who works full-time as a computer scientist at the Carnegie Mellon University Qatar (CMU-Q), Tabet said she still manages to live a balanced lifestyle by being intentional.
She added, “This is where passion comes. I believe if you really want it. You will do it. Also, I had to sacrifice several things. I had to cut down on my social life. But I would still go to the gym four times a week and do swimming once a week. But I would sleep early enough at 11pm and wake up at 5am to do that. So if you are passionate, you will find that balance that keeps you going and it’s just a matter of being intentional about how you spend your time”.
On the growing number of women opening their start-up businesses here, Tabet also said, “We are blessed to be living in 2019 where resources are crazy and uncountable. In Qatar, you’ve got free training sessions and talks and lots of free programs that give you an insight about entrepreneurship. I would say to those aspiring to start their own business, start with the smallest thing. You don’t have to have a physical shop. Start with instagram or your small circle and experiment. You’ll never know, that QR10,000 or even QR2,000 that you put may bring you a million later. And if you really want to be a businesswoman, stop creating excuses and find reasons instead”.
Both Mamukoya and Tabet underwent training and support programs at QBIC.
