 From Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Welcome back everyone, it's theCUBE coverage here at Bahrain Middle East, part of AWS Amazon Web Services Summit, it's our second year covering the evolution and the revolution to cloud computing. This year the big news is AWS has a region spurring innovation and entrepreneurship in the Middle East region. Our next guest is Ahmad Hamadhan, CEO and co-founder of Uniphonic, a super hot company. Congratulations on your success, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, Joe. So we were just talking before we came on camera, this API economy that we've been covering in depth. You've been living, this is your world. You have a really big business, not a lot of employees, less than 200 employees, billions of transactions, API transactions. This is the success form that we've been seeing in the public companies, Twilio, among others. Messaging, application integration. This is cloud now, right? This is happening, what's your story? Great, so these times, I would say it's a golden age for the technology in the region and for the cloud specifically. When we started back in 2006, we are very lonely. We're not even in that time in the cloud. So we started just to solve the issue of bulk messaging through writing a script or software that allow us to broadcast message to a group of people. But along the journey, we realized that businesses need tools, especially APIs, that will allow them to reach to a wider, I would say, audience with a seamless integration. And this is how the cloud communication industry emerged. So we avoid our APIs for businesses from all around the region, especially with segments or sectors that have a mass communication need, like banks, M government, retailers, and the e-businesses. The data in this business is fascinating. Before we get into some of those questions, talk about the origination story. How did it all start? Okay, great. So I was at the university at the age of 22, probably. And I lead one of the student clubs. And I wanted to communicate a message to 400 people. And the limitation of the mobile back then, I couldn't do it. It's terrible experience. You cannot send to more than 10 people. The text is not full, all these complication. So being a software engineer and I had an idea there should be a solution that you can write code, publish it online, and then it will do the magic for you. Four months later, I partnered with my brother who's a software geek more than I, and we were ready like... Older or younger brother? Younger brother, for his younger. He was at high school back then. And then four months later, we were live, sending thousands of messages over the internet. It was like magic. Friends and family like it. It's real, it's making money. And for us, it's like when you have 4,000, 5,000, it's a big money for us that we earn each month. And then like moving forward, 2008, I decided this is the dream. We need to scale this and build a venture out of this small experiment. And then I left the job and I dedicated my time to scale that business and I moved the business toward the business and the cloud and communication. Our first move to the cloud was 2010. We used AWS to move most of our infrastructure to the cloud, and by 2013, we completely pivoted into the cloud communication business where the focus is into the ABI, the integration with the applications and the customer systems and then allow them to communicate to hundreds of millions of customers. And then mobile phones, obviously, GPS is built in, applications, tsunamis happening. Exactly. People want to interface with the companies via their phone. Exactly, I will give you an example. You come to my mind while you're talking. We used to have customers back in 2010, they send only, along the year, like maximum one million transactions. The same customers nowadays, like nine years later, they send at least 200 million transactions. So you can imagine the growth in the use cases and the adoption from the customers. They use it now for engagement, for notification, for awareness, for security and authentication, for personalized marketing content, like hundreds of use cases. Like we do some analysis in the behavior of the customers and the consumer and we realize that in a modern society, an individual interacts digitally with at least 50 brands in a day. This is huge. You can do the math. If you multiply this by 100 million population, then there's a massive huge number of transaction and data is being processed. And what are you guys doing now as a mainly targeted application developers or businesses as a turnkey solution? What's the value proposition now? Good question. So two years later, we realize that we cannot target all the market and serve all the customers. We need to focus into the segment that has high potential. Then we identified five segments where we tailored our solution, our value proposition toward those segments. And it's aligned with the trends in the region. Maybe it's not applicable to other regions. So number one for us is the online banking segment. I would see the financial industry with all the evolution of the Fintech and the online and mobile banking. So those are number one. We do integrate our system with their current systems out of the shelf. We don't do much of a customization. We usually provide ready integrable components toward their system and then they hook up their system to ours and then they have the dashboard and platform to orchestrate the communication. The number one is the M government. It's also an industry that is evolving in the region. The number three for us is the e-businesses and they are very hot, very high potential growth. I would say the number one in terms of growth, e-business include the e-commerce, the on-demand delivery, the food delivery applications, you name it. And then the fourth industry for us is the retailer who are moving now toward the loyalty and the engagement more to differentiate themselves in this tough world for them. And the last one is the, I would say the hospitality and the hotels and travel agents. I think anyone building an app would want this of their mobile. So what's your take of the ecosystem entrepreneurship now? Much different just in one year. You have an Amazon region here. What do you think is going to happen? It's going to be like you and your brother all over again with other entrepreneurs. Exactly. When I see fellow entrepreneurs, usually I approach me for kind of mentorship and coaching. We are at the stage a little bit being through difficult situations. You got the scar tissue. Yeah, exactly. So I usually told them, guys, it's been so easy for you at this time. I know that with all this support, the barrier to entry become much less. But at least there are many things you don't need to think how you figure out. It's already there. You just need to have the badge and dedication and then you'll find many people to support you. Especially, I would say there is only one area that's not yet well covered in the region, which is the access to the talents. I think this is a worldwide problem even for folks in the Silicon Valley. But in terms of funding, the ease of doing business, sitting up ventures, access to the technology platforms like the cloud infrastructure. In terms of advice, mentorship and coaching, I would say an abundant of that available today for entrepreneurs. And I can tell the next five years, you will see a huge value being created out of this. Yeah, and instead of riding waves, we'll be riding S-curves. So it's easier now. Still hard to build a company, but you're right. I mean, go back 10 years ago, you had to put it all together. Takes us six months to set up the company legally, back in 2006. Gotta get the infrastructure legally, get servers, get some funding, prototype it, get it launched, get customers. Now they have a partner network. Exactly. These kids are spoiled. No idea how did they happen, don't they? Yeah. But you know, it's difficult today to differentiate yourself because you will find tons of people are either doing or planning to do the same. They gotta build some smart, intellectual property. This is where machine learning is gonna be a great opportunity. That's gonna be a domain expertise kind of thing. You guys have a nice niche and broad market that's growing. Good comps around it. You've got all kinds of systems out there that need this. Exactly, you know. The question today is not if the tools and support is available or not. The question is how you're gonna use those tools to create something unique. I'm great to see you. Thanks for coming on and sharing your experiences. You're an inspiration to the other entrepreneurs out there. Thank you, John. And again, remember entrepreneurship is like a family. It's like a team sport. Pay it forward. The younger generation's coming online. Absolutely. Good job. Congratulations on your success. Cube Coverage here in Bahrain talking to startups. This is going to be a hot market for entrepreneurship. If the capital markets can form around it, the Cube is here covering it here in Bahrain. Stay with us for more at AWS Summit after this short break.