The business world is continuously changing and the resources are becoming scarcer day by day. Also, as the business trends keep changing, there evolves a need to always bring something new and innovative to the market. Consequently, this contemporary corporate world needs creative change-makers who can come up with a new idea and bring them to life. One such innovator is Ali Kassab, who has made his mark as a successful leader in the corporate world. Ali is the Founder and Chairman of Centurion & Co, a leading incubator and accelerator for companies through technological transformation.
Ali is a serial entrepreneur and senior executive with 20+ years of experience helping start-ups and tech companies grow from ground zero to multi-million-dollar businesses. He built his corporate expertise across multinational cloud software companies, digital payment, and blockchain companies by nurturing and building entrepreneurship ecosystems globally.
Entrepreneurial Journey of Ali
Ali launched his first startup at 25 years old, a software company in France that has sold a couple of years later to a multi-national CRM Editor in 2008 where he was in charge of developing the MEA and GCC regions as a partner and CEO. After covering successfully a couple of countries in Africa and MEA he reached Dubai where his works have successfully impacted smart governments and large institutions between 2011 and 2015. Within that period Ali had managed to grab the attention of private equities to invest in the company to grow its footprint and venture into other digital projects.
In 2015, Ali launched sky telecom in UAE to become a leading digital distributor for Etisalat and DU organizing the sales and reach to consumers. Sky Telecom became the leader in digitalizing telecom consumer services in a couple of years. He also took over MBME under centurion management in 2017, where the company was an under trapped company aiming to digitalize on self-service and payments for governments and large corporations in UAE.
After restructuring this company which was experiencing heavy losses due to lack of operations and vision, Ali was able to expand its portfolio and footprint with more than 800 digital-kiosks and more than 70 government services (police, transport, courts) efforts that have been awarded by the government of Dubai as CEO of the Year 2018.
Ali created Centurion & Co to be the leader in transformative technology with a dedication to harnessing and boosting market concepts through the adoption of Blockchain, Digital, and Fintech solutions. The company manufactures, invests, and incubates innovative ideas and start-ups in the EMEA region focusing on use cases leveraging Digital, Fintech & Blockchain Transformation for corporate and governments.
Incepted in 2016, Centurion aims to empower entrepreneurs to reach leadership and scale their business by benefiting from centurion all-in-one business kits that include marketing, technology, processes, and methodology.
“In other words, I have been always passionate by designing innovative solutions to improve people’s lives in a sustainable world and economy while empowering employees towards a common vision,” asserts Ali.
A Passionate Leader
Ali’s persistence and determination to solve the most challenging problems whether in his personal life or professional life is a part of his DNA. He always found that it is always a great challenge to find the right people and communicate the vision in an aligned way in addition to finding the right business partners and investors who believe in the project’s visions and not only seeing investments as a short-term ROI. He goes on to say that being selective and always aiming high with a sharp clear focus on the vision journey is a key element to solve such challenges.
According to Ali, “Success is when you achieve a positive change and impact on an existing ecosystem by bringing innovative concepts and ideas that mark the story with your footprint.” He also believes that success is when one can generate a lot of positive attitudes and think about the people surrounded by pride, accomplishment, and recognition. He adds, “Success is when you fight all your fears and overcome challenges that lead you to achieve your goals.”
Pushing the Limitations for a Better Tomorrow
The increase in confidence in technology, technical performance, and online payment sectors is causing a change in consumer behavior, away from traditional methods. Keeping this in mind, Centurion adapted to new trends such as working from home and move towards a future that could be free brick-and-mortar offices at large. As an individual, he looks forward to a long-term decrease in business travel due to the emergence of video-conferencing tools, with High Net worth Individuals preferring to travel via private jet as opposed to first-class air travel.
As a business leader, Ali looks forward to governments, business leaders, and companies to allocate more budgets for investing in healthcare and healthcare products after discovering the gaps in the global system while fighting the corona virus. More tech startups will emerge with creative applications.
“We think the world is shifting towards a new economic order which requires a new way of thinking where Centurion as a digital and Fintech factory will play an important role to build a strong ecosystem for consumers,” concludes Ali.