 from Bahrain, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Bahrain for Amazon's Web Service Summit in the Middle East, really built around the big announcement around their region coming which should open up in Q1 2019 and Amazon full force here and really bringing together a combination of cloud computing, cloud native, together with the community and entrepreneurship here and of course we want to save the best for last of the day interview, the entrepreneurs themselves are going to tell straight scoop what's happening because it's a lot of action here, Alahari Alatari who's the CEO of OneGCC and Zaman Zaman founder and CEO of Skip Lino. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. So I got to say I was watching you guys yesterday and you're a little in the Bahrain, you're in your best behavior, you didn't chirp too loud but I can see the energy in the entrepreneurs and you know there's real entrepreneurs in the room when you can see the energy, right? And all the executives are in there and you got the Amazon, you're in your best behavior, banging your fist on the door. Guess we're doing some good work. So congratulations. Thank you very much. So what's the real deal? What's it like here? I mean, I know it's tough to get access to capital but the government's bringing some capital to the table. This momentum, there's opportunities. What's the straight scoop here? So in the past two years, when Bahrain started, there's been tremendous support from the government because they really want to see this, what they're calling the fourth industrial revolution. They want it to happen. They're pushing for it. They're pushing technology startups. And we were really blessed to be, I mean to have started just a few months before that. So we're really riding an amazing wave. They've been, we've been getting a lot of support from Tanki, a lot of legislation support from the government. The EDB obviously have been doing a massive job in trying to support us, getting us business. And I mean, since we started till today, we've at least doubled or even tripled the amount of clients we have. And there's a lot of attention now to technology startups. And I think as a growing sector here in Bahrain, we're really reaping the fruits of- And what is your start, 1GCC? Just take a minute to explain what your startup's doing. How many people you got going on, stage of the opportunity? So before I founded or co-founded 1GCC, I was in an investments firm. And one of our investments was in Saudi. It was called Amiga Recruitments Company. And what we were trying to do is we had 500,000 work permits. We had to bring a bunch of people and start outsourcing them to companies. But the Ministry of Labor still wanted us to maintain sadization within these companies that we're working with. And it was a very tough challenge trying to find the right GCC nations, the right Saudis. I mean, 40% of them hold degrees in humanitarian and Islamic studies. So how do you place all of these when most of the jobs that are being offered are in construction, retail, and other services? So that's when we started 1GCC. We said, you know what? We'll hire people based on skills rather than, I mean, their job titles or academic background. And that's really where we started 1GCC. You solved your own problem. Exactly. You had a little pain there. Well, today it's our own problem. Yeah, now you have a bigger problem, growth. Yeah. But tomorrow is going to become a global problem. Yeah. AI and smart machines wiping out almost maybe 70% of... So how many people involved in the startup? What's the stage? Would you call it? What's the... So today we have 18 employees. We're still early stage, but we're growing as well as we can. Great. Tell us about your story here. Well, Skaplina was a multilingual intelligent Q management system. So we realized there was a gap in the market. They first explained what a Q management system is. Remember, Q is not an American word. That's an English word or international word. Q is line, they call it in America. Let's say line management. But that's what we're talking about. Physical standing in line at the bank, you know. When you go there, you actually take a token and wait. So we realized that it was a problem, not only in Bahrain, it was a global problem. What we did was we went to investigate the issue. Because how it started was that I went to a bank a day before I traveled and I had to wait for one hour and 45 minutes just to clear a check. So I found that not acceptable. So what we did was go study the market and we realized that there was like three or four players controlling the market for the past 30 years. Some people tried to do it cloud-based, but they didn't get it right because they didn't cater to those segments, which is the large B2B clients that need to scale or have a large number of branches. So when we decided to go and build it on the cloud, we realized that there is no performance management on each agent that is live and well-streamed. So when we built the reports, we realized that most of it is bottlenecks that can be solved with AI or machine learning. So we incorporated that into Skaplino. Now Skaplino has around 2,500 companies from around the globe in 196 countries and it's now in 69 languages. That's amazing. How many people in your opportunity working with you? Including founders, we're around 15. 15, great. Well congratulations. And one of the things I wanted to kind of get here while we're broadcasting around the content around cloud is, I live in Silicon Valley, so everyone's got the entrepreneurial bug going on, but you have successes and fails. It's the way it works. You've got to try something and hit the home runs once in a while, but you've got to get a couple base hits. It's really, it's hard. I mean, people don't understand how hard it is. They've never done it. It's hard as hell. So, but having the ecosystem support is key, let's start up Bahrain and do some good work with EDB. What is the key requirement? What's the need? Where is it working? Are you guys seeing on the ground here? Because, you know, the community's there, that's a check and that's hard to do. I mean, you know, robust entrepreneur community's good and there's money. So now you just got to fill in the blank. What is the cloud going to bring you guys? What are you guys hoping for? What do you want to see? Of course with cloud, the best thing that comes with cloud is scalability for us. We don't have, because in effect we're removing the on-premise thing for the on-premise key management systems, businesses. But the good thing that's happening in Bahrain and around the GCC too is ministries and governments are more receptive for additional transformation and they know that's the only way to keep up. So, actually we're the first cloud based service the Bahraini government used. And you're using Amazon now? No, we're actually a Microsoft CoSel partner. Oh, okay. We're the first. Are you using Azure? Yes. Okay, so. Makes sense. Yeah, because we usually deal with banks and telecoms. Microsoft always has a foot in the door there, but we are thinking of having an AWS structure too. We can say here. Structure too. That's what it is. I mean, the multi-cloud world we're living in. How about your solution? So actually we are, we were in the first cohort of C5 Accelerates, which is a program supported by AWS. So we are on AWS. And obviously, I mean, for us as a startup, setting up in the beginning, we have limited resources. And I mean, setting up on the cloud just makes it so much easier for us. Not a decision. Exactly. If you do a startup and you're not in the cloud, you're spending too much cash. Exactly. That's the way it is. It's the dumbest thing you'd ever do. Unless it's a prototype and you want it next to you like a puppy and a dog or whatever, that kind of thing. It's security issue. Other than that, there's no reason. As fast as set up. It's easier for us to reach a wider audience. When we do reach the wider audience, I mean, baby, baby, baby. What do you think about the show here? What was your walk away? Obviously, you guys are in the middle of the community. We're here for the first time. I was really impressed. I learned a lot. And some observations that I didn't expect to have that were really positive. I thought it was a good experience for me. But you guys live it every day. Amazon's in town. There's good dynamics going on. What's your impression? Impression on lots of things. Show, Amazon's presence. I mean, the community coming together. And everyone came here from the Gulf. I think one of the main things that we needed to happen in the ecosystem is that mind shift. So for corporates to start adopting startup technologies and for investors who are used to investing in traditional investments and real estate to start actually investing in startups. So I think AWS really helped in that mind shift. I think the work that EDB is doing also is helping that mind shift. Now we're seeing more angel investors who are interested in getting into the tech startup space. And more corporates are willing to adopt our technologies even though they're fairly new. Your thoughts on the show. Definitely trying to spotlight on Bahrain. Getting AWS, Amazon to open AWS in Bahrain is an enormous. First of all, we're getting a lot of talent that's going to come in and be trained to set up. So it's a big, it's huge. It's like you guys like are standing around. It's like the metaphor. I imagine you're kind of standing around. You're working on some things. You're hustling, you're scrapping, smart. And all of a sudden, a big resource generator just pops down and says, hey entrepreneurs, I was built for you. And you're there and you're going, now you're president at creation. And when you're president at creation of a movement that has this much growth, because let's face it, this is going to be growth. You guys are going to be the leaders. So you've got to pay it forward. You have big responsibility. And you can make some money along the way too. Don't get, I mean, you know the expression. Hang around the barber shop. You'll get a haircut. So this is hanging around the cloud. You're going to create some value. So you've got to capture it. So this is the dynamic that I see as an entrepreneur. I was like, damn, if I lived here, I'd be setting up shop. I'd have five companies going on. I'd be telling all my friends, come on in. You're on the ground floor right now. You're president at creation. You guys, well, we're going to start covering you guys and do some work with you guys. I'm already convinced my- It's a big wave and we're happy to be riding with you guys. We're going to collaborate with you guys. I think it's a really, a unique thing. I mean, at this scale, it's unprecedented. I mean, this is Amazon. So, I mean, the U.S., everyone's jockeying for where Amazon's next headquarters is going to be. And literally people are freaking out. Like, they come to my state because they know with it will come jobs, services. It's like putting up a sports stadium. And all of a sudden there's all these new things around it, right? It's going on. So this is going to be a big opportunity for startup. So you guys are going to be reaping the rewards. You hungry? We are. They have no idea. I'm from California in America. It's like we call the wave, you know. Get your surfboard, you know, get out there. A lot of sets coming in. So congratulations. Thanks for sharing. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming to Bahrain. We appreciate it. Looking forward to working more with you guys. Hopefully. Yeah, great job. Okay, we're here in Bahrain. That's a wrap. We're wrapping up with the founders and CEOs. This is the entrepreneurial action here and the signs are all pointing towards growth. Amazon Web Services is going to bring cultural revolution, economic, society, people, all going to be coming here for the region, not just Bahrain, but all around the region. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.