A JOURNEY THROUGH IRAQ’S ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEM

MARWAN JABBAR

This interview was originally published as a podcast episode via Tajarib and has been edited for clarity and length.

Marwan Jabbar is Miswag’s VP of Commercial Development and People. A self-described “avid life-time learner with a proven track record of problem solving and entrepreneurial mindset.”, he is most well known for organizing Startup Weekend and serving as Careem’s Director of Operations, before joining Miswag, with a goal of building the most innovative and efficient tech organization in Iraq.

Marwan is now a key pillar of Iraq’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. This is how he started his journey:

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF?

I think I will start with my current position. I’m currently working as Vice President of Commercial Development and People and also responsible for HR within Miswag. I’m also responsible for building the company itself and transferring it from a start-up to a large enterprise. Most people know me as the former Operations Director of Careem in Iraq, and some people know me before that from Mishwar, the vegetables and fruits delivery company that my friends and I started before Careem. There are some people who knew me even before that, where they had me on their phones saved as “Marwan TOEFL” when I was in charge of the TOEFL exams in Iraq, where I used to work in higher education.

WHERE CAN WE SAY THE STARTINGPOINT WAS ? WHAT WAS THE FIRST THING THAT GOT YOU INSIDE THE WHOLE FIELD?

My first job was in higher education in general. I’m a science graduate, and my work in higher education was honestly by chance. There was an organization looking for a fresh graduate who has good English. I think this is a constant theme in my life that I would like to point out from the start. Most of the things I have in my life aren’t because I am special, and people wonder what’s the secret behind this success. It is not a secret or anything, sometimes honestly, coincidence plays a role, but coincidence doesn’t come out of nowhere, of course. One must have certain things to get the chance like skills, in my case, it was only English and curiosity.

My favorite word is curiosity, I always like to know, look at things, and have a good relationship with people. Sometimes it is as simple as that. I try to tell people, as we were told when we were kids, “Listen to mom and dad and be a good boy.” With people, it is almost like that too. This is one of the secrets: when one becomes a good person to other people, opportunities start coming to them and people nominate them.

I quickly got into this field, and realized there was a gap between higher education and the labor market. During that time, I started to look at these small projects and technologies that started appearing on the Internet and so on. I liked to educate people about this subject through my work in higher education because I thought I would be able to make an impact on higher education and its development.

By chance, and because I was connected to a lot of the universities, I worked on setting up the first event in Iraq about small projects, technology, and Internet-enabled businesses, which was Startup Weekend Baghdad in 2013. I worked alongside Murtadha Al-Tamimi, a software engineer at Facebook, Ali Ismail, who, at the time, started with Fikra Space, and a group of other young people like Saleh Zain, Ali Al-Hilli, and a few others.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS? ESPECIALLY SINCE YOU CAME FROM HIGHER EDUCATION?

All of those people are very young. The experts that came from abroad at that time worked at places such as Microsoft. They were people full of energy, talking about new and innovative ideas. I was very impressed with this world. I wanted to know more and more, and I think that’s where I got inspired. I was very curious at that point. I started to go out day and night, trying to read, learn, and contact people and ask them how to do certain things. I wanted to deliver those thoughts that were happening abroad and bring them here in Iraq. Especially when I realized that these were not stories happening in America, Britain, and such places, but even in developing countries in the region.

I think this was the beginning. I liked history and how changes would take place in countries, and then I wanted to know the impact of the economy on these countries, which is called “Macroeconomics”, the economy that affects countries, conflicts between countries, agreements and alliances, and such. Then, as I got deeper into this field, I learned the impact of start-ups and new companies (like Facebook and Google, and before that, Microsoft, and even before that Dell and HP) on the world and the economy in general. I remember a statistic that showed that in the last ten years, almost 80% of the new jobs in America were from companies that were less than five years old! I was like, wow, the solution is right here. I started reading more and connecting with the people I had in my network and people from outside Iraq. Those people gave me the inspiration and the motive to work in this direction.

YOU STARTED MAKING CONNECTIONS IN THIS ENVIRONMENT. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

I saw that people were interested, which made these workshops happen more and more. We loved doing it. We liked that it was eye opening for the people who were attending. They also made great connections. We started to push young people to go to these places even though there were very difficult circumstances happening in Iraq, including the ISIS crisis. I went abroad for a year, outside Iraq, and I connected with some start-ups and the tech community there. I wanted to do something when I got back to Iraq, so I started to invite people, design content, and give courses. During that time, I saw an opportunity for e-commerce on Facebook pages.

WHEN WAS THIS?

From 2014-2015, this was the outburst of TV ads, digital ads, and promotion via Facebook. At its beginning, even payment cards were very few and most people didn’t know how to use them. The majority of people promoting their pages were women, who were working on handmade items, or paintings, or other things related to handcrafts. At that time, the “Iraqi Touch” was at its peak. I thought let me devise a solution for these people, since, for example, one might have 50K followers and another might have 50K followers that are different from the first. I wanted to introduce one to the other. I set up a platform that is similar to Etsy, the American website for handmade items.

WHICH IS A PLATFORM THAT BRINGS TOGETHER ALL THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE HANDMADE ITEMS.

Exactly. I’m not a technical person; I can’t write code by myself to create a website, so I used a simple service available in the Arab region. I subscribed to it and I started to learn how to do SEO for the website, how to conduct proper promotion, how to deal with customers and so on. I started from home. I was the delivery guy. I was the one who answered. I wrote the content and everything. Of course, it was very difficult to discover some more gaps in the market and in my own field, and at the same time, me and my friend Ali made something called The Week. This may be the first bootcamp in Iraq. I went on to teach courses on “lean start-ups,” a new and fast way of starting projects that ensures you don’t waste a lot of time and money before determining whether your idea works or not. Ali taught, at the time, the tech side of things. We wanted to give the youth something that is Iraqi, something that was like Startup Weekend, but more advanced. So that was the Fikra Store. Afterwards, I saw that there was something called “frequency”, which is the frequency of the number of orders. How many times does the customer buy handmade items from me during the year? It could be one time, like a gift.

I wanted something with more frequency. So I came up with the idea of delivering food, vegetables and fruits in particular. For dealing with fruits and vegetables, you must offer excellent quality that is better than the rest and speed of delivery. And honestly, when I look back at my decision and how I got into it, it was a very hasty decision, but at that time I saw a golden opportunity, and it is normal. I mean, we did not succeed in it as we were expecting, and it is a very difficult area to make an investment in, especially in a country that does not have a postal address or a delivery company.

YOU ARE BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE YOURSELF.

Yes, the companies that sell vegetables and fruits are not the ones who buy everything and fold it in their stores, I mean, we were putting it in our stores and dealing with the issues of electricity and canning. That was the issue with Mishwar, but I was passionate, I didn’t know that it was a matter of time until this market emerged and its potential came out. It was only a matter of time, no more, no less, that it happened in all countries [during the COVID-19 pandemic]. Later on, coincidence played a role again with my opportunity with Careem. A friend of mine approached me out of nowhere and told me that I had to join this company.

DID YOU HAVE FAITH IN CAREEM AT THE TIME?

A little less than a year before Careem came up, a foreigner who had invested in Mishwar asked me, “If Uber came to Iraq, would they succeed?” I remember the moment he asked me because I didn’t know how to answer, and I felt like I failed because I didn’t know the answer to this question. I mean, if Uber came to Iraq, would they succeed or not? And why would they succeed and why would they not? I was indifferent when Careem came up. I mean, I wasn’t interested, but I applied and when the interviews started, I met very smart people.

The interviewing method was nice, and the test that I had was very challenging. I realized I could gain experience from those people that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. In addition to that, With Mishwar, like all start-ups in Iraq, I had limited resources, whether in the form of human resources, financial resources, and/or expertise. The question was, if the money came in and the right technology was available, would it work? Let’s try and take the risk. It’s a very difficult decision that took me a month to make. I was very stressed during the process of making that decision. I thought I had to see if this thing would work because curiosity was killing me, I wanted to know, and because time is the most precious thing, I wanted to rush it and see if this is something that would work or not, so I joined Careem.

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES, STORIES, AND THINGS YOU GOT FROM CAREEM AS THE OPERATIONS DIRECTOR?

Careem is called a marketplace. In the framework of start-ups, a marketplace is a platform that connects the service provider to the service customer, both of whom are considered customers of Careem. What we, as a platform, offer is to bring them trained and technologically equipped captains and to ensure the tech is working smoothly, the map is accurate, and the time that the customer is going out is the same as the captain’s arrival, etc. We balanced the supply with the demand among people. You have to calculate how much growth there will be in the number of customers and the number of trips, so you have to prepare for the number of captains needed. The challenges that we faced were many. Let’s say in Ramadan, for example, people went to work in the morning but the captains were fasting, so no one was up in the morning.

YOU HAVE TO GIVE THEM SOME KIND OF INCENTIVE.

Exactly, then they all go out before Iftar because they want to kill some time while they are fasting, but people don’t go out before Iftar because why would you go out before Iftar when you just came back from work? There was a little resentment from the captains that there was no work. So, balancing these things, planning what’s next, like, for example, opening up in new cities, if you want to launch the service. We started in Baghdad, then we went to other cities, attracting captains in those cities and building a fleet of captains, making sure that they are offering the same quality of service we are offering to the people. Other things that fill the process of operations inside Careem I mean, everything within the company except marketing and finance.

Whenever you reach a new level, you ask, “What’s next?”. This question is always there. What is next? Why did I join Careem? The question I answered was that start-ups can succeed in Iraq if the right money comes. Our budget was nice, so we were allowed to spend good money to build the company. Would an Iraqi start-up succeed if it was established and provided with resources for marketing, for hiring the right people to scale up and become a real company? This question is even harder than the first, and I consider it to be my current challenge and the real challenge and ‘do or die’ mission which I must succeed in, or I consider all of this to be just a waste. That’s the real task. To be honest, we had good support in Careem. It’s true that we had to do everything by ourselves, but there were always those little things that one doesn’t feel but when they look back they think, “Oh how lucky I was!”. So here’s the question: can I start something from scratch and build it? Miswag is not from scratch, but it represents something that I love; it represents this story that I have told you; it represents me. My passion was to do an Iraqi thing, which is not difficult, it is not impossible as some people make it seem.

YOUR JOB IN MISWAG WAS TO MANAGE HUMAN RESOURCES, BUILD A TEAM, AND CREATE A CULTURE THAT REPRESENTS MISWAG. WE CAN SAY THAT YOU HAVE SOME EXPERIENCE WITH THAT FROM CAREEM. HOW DID YOU START THE CULTURE OF MISWAG?

I didn’t start the culture. It is not like I brought a new religion to the company. I just focused on the strengths. I mean I can’t go and put something new just because I believe in it and no one else believes in it. For example, we all agree on teamwork, so let’s see how we can make teamwork work between us and develop it so that everyone is satisfied with it. Our management is mostly about making plans and developing processes or ways of working and communication channels, so let us improve the channels of communication because 99% of the disagreements are the result of miscommunication. Let’s all agree that we understand that our dealings are going fast, the market is new and all the things that we are doing are all new and we have different departments, so there will definitely be misunderstandings, so let us agree that we have one goal

and organize our work accordingly. This was a small part of my role. I sometimes try to explain to people that I was doing HR things this way. They call it “articulating”, which means trying to find practices or exercises or things that help people to remember the values. It is always necessary to repeat the values over and over again. This is something that I saw in Careem, because if they hadn’t done this, no one would have remembered what the values were. The other role is commercial. I was very excited about doing this. I had to build this e-commerce and make it grow as soon as possible, and it must be done in a way that contributes to the success of the business and what suits the Iraqi market right now. The Iraqi market emerged after Careem made a turning point. Even the applications for ordering food emerged and became a thing because of Careem. Careem has created a whole new culture for applications. Iraqi people have become aware of applications as it wasn’t like that before. Iraqi people used to think that doing things through applications was hard. I remember a time where you’d tell someone to install an application and they’d say no. Or, for example, the promo code. The promo code has become a very ordinary term, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. It came after years of talking about it, marketing, educating, and raising awareness.

SINCE 2013, YOU’VE SEEN A LOT OF START-UPS THAT HAVE EMERGED. THE QUESTION I HAVE IN MIND IS, WHAT SECTOR DO YOU THINK WILL GROW IN THE UPCOMING FIVE YEARS, OTHER THAN E-COMMERCE?

Education 100%. When COVID-19 came, some companies started a few things. I mean, like private lessons and such. Education will be one of the most important sectors that will be affected by this technological revolution that is now taking place with all those applications and websites.

LET’S SAY I AM A YOUNG PERSON WHO’S A UNIVERSITY STUDENT OR A FRESH GRADUATE. I WANT TO ENTER OR I’M THINKING ABOUT ENTERING THE PRIVATE SECTOR. I THINK I MIGHT GO TO A COMPANY TO WORK IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR OR START MY OWN COMPANY. WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Whatever field you enter, don’t overthink everything. I think you should just start, enter the field, and don’t worry about failure. Failure is very normal. Since higher education doesn’t give any advantages, the person must invest all their time and learn something. This is a curiosity. I have seen a lot of interviews, small pieces of information, and simple things that settle the interview for work. There is this obsession that I am now starting to work on. I want to depend on myself, so I work on two things. Well, you work two things. If you do a simple job at night and a simple thing in the day, what will you learn? This is not something to be proud of. There are people whose families depend on them, and they need the income from two jobs. But there are people who feel that they need money, but if they think it through, do they really need this money? If they invest in themselves-

WHEN YOU WORK TWO JOBS, DO YOU INVEST IN YOURSELF?

No, because you are working two jobs that don’t teach you. They might teach you very classical and

simple things. For example, if you are a cashier in the morning and a cashier at night, or even if you are a photographer, a photographer in the morning and a photographer at night, or you are a presenter, or anything. You’re doing the same thing. You’ll get better at it, but not when you go to another field or try to learn something else. If you don’t have to work two jobs as a young person, try to invest in yourself. Even if you are a student, try to invest in yourself through other things. This is an investment that you put in yourself so that you get X amount of money. Even if it seems nice now, you can have it 10 times more later if you invest yourself in the right places and learn to develop yourself. This is not an exaggeration. You must sacrifice. This is part of the sacrifice. If you sacrifice that amount for certain things to take advantage of it, then you’ll be different from the rest. Investing in courses and workshops, there are a lot of people that will say “Why is this course that much?” This course is the best place to put your money if you want to gain something. It is necessary to know the trainer and the value of the course.

Tajarib is an Iraqi podcast that aims to document the experiences and stories of Iraqi entrepreneurs, founders, and changemakers. You can listen to the original podcast episode here.