Souad Al Hosani, the founder of Nexus Business Services, is hot property as a speaker on the UAE conference circuit. Last December, she sat on a panel at the SME Congress and Expo in Abu Dhabi discussing how to succeed in a male business environment. Then in January, she spoke at the Abu Dhabi International Business Women's Group. And in March she delivered a presentation on International Women's Day about her journey as an entrepreneur. There have been many other invitations in between — and not just in the UAE.
“We receive millions of invitations a day to go and speak to conferences abroad,” she says, with a touch of exaggeration to make her point. “Before, I never used to say no, but now I’ve started saying no. It’s taken me five years but I’ve started prioritising.”
Ms Al Hosani is an engaging speaker, delivering her thoughts at a hundred miles an hour and cracking jokes. Dressed in an abaya, she wears a trademark flourish of bright red lipstick.
Her audiences walk away impressed by her energy and youth — she is 25 but has gathered a wealth of experience in her short career. She jokes that by the time she is 30 she will be ready to retire.
That is unlikely as the businesswoman is gearing up to expand her enterprise, both geographically and in terms of the services provided. Nexus assists foreign individuals and companies setting up in the UAE by helping them to secure licences and visas and providing government liaison services.
Ms Hosani realised there was a demand for assistance from foreign businesses who wanted to establish a presence in Abu Dhabi when she interned at the British Embassy in 2009. Her firm expanded naturally as the organisations she helped — including the technology giants IBM and Xerox — started asking for other services such as obtaining visas for staff and relocation.
She also managed, at the age of 18, to talk herself onto the board of directors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Abu Dhabi. That position, which she continues to hold, has been invaluable, she says.
“Being on the board, learning from other people, looking at all these different committees and meeting people from diplomats to business people and [being exposed] to different ideas that early gives you the opportunity to do a lot,” she explains.
As a consummate networker, she is also an associated member of the British and Canadian business groups of Abu Dhabi and the Abu Dhabi Business Women’s Council.
Two years after her business launched in 2009, she also enjoyed a stint at Mubadala Development, the Abu Dhabi investment company, but quit in June last year to focus her efforts on Nexus.
Since then, business has flourished, prompting her appreciation for priorities. “I touched the pause button and then I said I have to take things easy,” she recalls. “Going too quickly is not healthy.”
Her next goal is to establish a holding company, gathering together a number of new subsidiaries. These include a recruitment agency, a trading company, IT consultancy and an oil and gas consultancy. She also wants to move into Qatar and Saudi Arabia this year, and set up in Dubai next year to profit from new businesses setting up in advance of Expo 2020.
“The stock markets went higher, rents went higher, people are starting to move here now,” she says. “There will be a lot of changes.”
She says she has noticed an increase in enquiries from abroad since Dubai won the bid to host Expo 2020 and the development in Qatar as it prepares for the World Cup in 2022.
Morphing into a holding company has been challenging as under UAE law a holding company must have a at least two partners, and Ms Al Hosani is understandably being cautious about who to link up with.
“I have interviewed a lot of partners,” she says. “But this is my baby, and I don’t really want to share. I feel very protective.”
She will also need the new partner to be able to inject some capital because, like many small business owners, securing funding is not easy.
Diversification is important because if the Department of Economic Development, for example, changed its rules on foreign companies needing a local partner, her business as it is would flounder.
Looking ahead, she is also taking her personal circumstances into account.
“People ask when I will get married and I tell them that Nexus is my baby,” she says. But at the same time “you don’t want years to pass and then realise you are too old to be a mother.”
In the meantime, she is happy to spend time with her family — she has 12 brothers and sisters — and travel.
“The more you see people abroad and the more people you meet, you realise [the different way in which] people are very successful.”
lgutcher@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter @Ind_Insights
