Being “delusional” and “passionate” led Rabih El Chaar and co-founder Reem Khattar to set up their first entrepreneurial venture to address a “very hard to solve” problem.
Their brainchild, clean technology company Nadeera, was established in Lebanon to tackle a major waste crisis in the country.
“But then, very quickly, we realised that waste mismanagement is not a mechanical problem, but rather it is a behavioural problem,” chief executive Mr El Chaar says.
“Our focus is on changing behaviours and ensuring the right infrastructure is there to ensure that waste is diverted from landfills, and we're able to maximise value from that.”
Six months after setting up the company in Lebanon with support from a grant from the Netherlands government and an accelerator programme, the founders shifted their base to Abu Dhabi Global Market.
“We chose Abu Dhabi as it offered a lot of advantages for us,” Mr El Chaar says.
They were part of an incubation programme that is focused on social enterprises backed by Ma’an, the government's authority for social contribution. The start-up was also accepted to the Ignite programme, sponsored by Abu Dhabi holding company ADQ, which is run by venture capital company Flat6Labs.
Nadeera uses technology to “change people's behaviour”, with the process involving digital engagement with end users – providing information on how and where to recycle and providing cashback to those who participate.
The company also provides a smart bin that is access-controlled, with only residents of the community who sign up for the service able to put their recyclables in it.
“It [the smart bin] speaks to us. It tells us when it's full, so we dispatch trucks to come and pick it up accordingly,” Mr El Chaar says.
Nadeera also has a patented technology on traceability, “so we're able to trace end-to-end to know that this household has been recycling with us on this day. And that's the quality of research in the data”.
The UAE has been focusing heavily on promoting sustainable economic development, and last year approved 22 policies aimed at accelerating the country's transition to a circular economy.
A circular economy is an economic system that focuses on reducing the extraction of natural resources, minimising waste and regenerating natural systems. Raw materials, components and products keep their value for as long as possible, while renewable energy sources are used to fuel economic activity.
Are biofuels about to be sold at UAE petrol stations?
The current annual opportunity cost in terms of recyclables that are being disposed as municipal solid waste stands at Dh3.4 billion ($925.8 million) in the UAE, Mr El Chaar says.
“We are working towards attempting to recover a large part of that in collaboration with waste collectors that we work with,” he says.
“So, we don't own trucks, we don't own the equipment ourselves. We empower collectors that already have an established network of such systems.”
While about 6.75 million tonnes of total waste is disposed per year, recycling can lead to carbon dioxide equivalent emissions reductions of about 24 million tonnes annually, the start-up says.
As a social enterprise, Nadeera is obliged to link its profitability with its social impact and its business model is structured accordingly.
“So, we charge the bare minimum to set up our system,” Mr El Chaar says. “We only charge the direct costs associated with setting up our system.
“Whenever we set up in any new community ... recyclables are collected and then they are sold, and the revenue from these recyclables are then split between us and waste collectors.”
While the company, which has grown in size from four to 12 employees, is not yet profitable on a corporate level, it does not launch a project unless it is “operationally profitable”.
“The nice thing is we don't have to grow a lot from where we are once we achieve maturity because we are an add-on product,” Mr El Chaar says.
“So, once we achieve maturity, then we're able to become profitable quite quickly, which we think is going to happen either by the end of this year or early next year.”
Nadeera has received about $1 million in funding so far between grants and investments.
“All of that went into building our product … we have pivoted a lot,” Mr El Chaar says. “We have refined it a lot. And today we build everything in-house, our hardware and our software.
“We have a very mature product that is being scaled up. And we have a big, aggressive pipeline on the additional products that are going to be added over the next 12 to 18 months that will empower that system and allow us to do this at an even larger scale.”
A major boost came last year, when the start-up received a $100,000 grant from PepsiCo's Greenhouse Accelerator Programme for the Mena region, which was launched in partnership with the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment and Food Tech Valley.
Nadeera was recognised for its Yalla Return trash-for-cash system.
The start-up also became a member of Food Tech Valley, the Dubai-based centre that develops sustainable farming methods to boost the UAE's food security agenda, was included in the Arab Youth Start-up Marketplace and got access to partners of the Arab Youth Council.
“For us, that was kind of where we went from like a nice, young start-up to somebody that is being taken seriously across the ecosystem,” Mr El Chaar says.
“We got the funding from PepsiCo, but that was only a small part of the benefit … we had the collection companies reaching out to us almost immediately after the show.”
PepsiCo also “opened doors” for Nadeera to seek expansion opportunities globally, he says.
“So, that has been transformational for us.”
Meanwhile, in February, the company also raised $200,000 from Bahrain-based Hope Ventures and Kuwait-based Rasameel Investments.
The company has projects in 14 communities in the UAE, with six more planned. It also operates in 16 locations in Lebanon and four in Saudi Arabia.
Projects are planned in Oman and Egypt, and it is seeking further global expansion.
“I would love to be able to be anywhere because … we're building a platform that is very scalable and we don't have to be there physically, ourselves,” Mr El Chaar says.
“We just have to empower local players to actually use that platform and do it successfully. Realistically, in the next five years, if we're able to be in five to 10 countries, then that will be a great achievement for us.”
Nadeera will also be participating at the upcoming Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, where Mr El Chaar hopes its “compelling story” will further aid its expansion.
Overall, the driving force is more than the money, he says.
“For me, the social impact is what matters the most.”
Q&A with Rabih El Chaar, co-founder and chief executive of Nadeera
Who is your role model?
I really admire what Steve Jobs has done.
And his quote is really nice, it says: “Your time is limited. So don't waste it living someone else's life.”
If you could start all over again, anything that you would do differently?
I would have not picked such a hard topic to be my first start-up. I was very naive, but I took it on board. But then, we're kind of baptised by fire and now let's say, after a few years, if I move on from Nadeera and it's growing on its own and I want to do something different, we've learnt really the hard way all the different facets of it. And doing it as a social enterprise and with a social mindset is not very straightforward. And now we've done it, so we have a lot of learnings.
What is your advice to other entrepreneurs?
One is to formulate a very clear vision of what you want to do. Like for us, since we started with being part of a hackathon until today, our vision has not changed. The product has been pivoted like a million times. But the vision is very clear. So, spend a lot of time articulating your thesis and what's your vision and what you're trying to do and how you want to do it. Because that will stay with you for a very long time.
Number two, it's not an easy journey. It's not rosy, it’s going to be very hard. You're going to be waking up every day and … doubting yourself if you're actually doing the right thing. So you need to have a very strong belief in what you're doing.
Number three, which is the most important, is to build a good team around you that is able to execute what you need to execute. It's impossible for one person to do everything or two people to do everything. So you need to have a team that believes in that story.
What new skills have you learnt when setting up the company?
A very important skill is being able to work with different team members that have different skill sets. Because I worked in big corporations before and I was surrounded by people that have the same or similar skill sets as me.
The other part is the whole marketing business, which was something that I was not exposed to before – how to do marketing, how to build a brand, how to build loyalty, how to crystallise your messages. It's something I've learnt on the road here.
What is your vision for the company?
A world with no waste. Being able to waste is a notion that people have created … and it's in our hands to actually undo it. So a circular economy is something that is attainable. And we believe that where we are positioned and what we are covering is a very core element of being able to take back these materials and circulate them and be able to create a world with no waste.
