Noor Alnahhas, chief executive of Nybl, an Al start-up that aims to be come the next unicorn in the Middle East. Shruti Jain / The National
Noor Alnahhas, chief executive of Nybl, an Al start-up that aims to be come the next unicorn in the Middle East. Shruti Jain / The National
Noor Alnahhas, chief executive of Nybl, an Al start-up that aims to be come the next unicorn in the Middle East. Shruti Jain / The National
Noor Alnahhas, chief executive of Nybl, an Al start-up that aims to be come the next unicorn in the Middle East. Shruti Jain / The National

Generation Start-up: Nybl looks to bring benefits of AI to Gulf businesses


Sarmad Khan
  • English
  • Arabic

NYBL PROFILE

Company name: Nybl 

Date started: November 2018

Founder: Noor Alnahhas, Michael LeTan, Hafsa Yazdni, Sufyaan Abdul Haseeb, Waleed Rifaat, Mohammed Shono

Based: Dubai, UAE

Sector: Software Technology / Artificial Intelligence

Initial investment: $500,000

Funding round: Series B (raising $5m)

Partners/Incubators: Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 4, Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 6, AI Venture Labs Cohort 1, Microsoft Scale-up 

Noor Alnahhas describes his company, Nybl, as an “Uber of the artificial intelligence world”.

The knowledge-driven machine learning platform that turns mountains of under-utilised data into actionable intelligence, can not only drive efficiencies and help businesses optimise or automate workflows, it can provide real-time analytics and even warn them about impending equipment failures.

In short, hail a Nybl ride and Mr Alnahas and his co-founders believe their platform will deliver your business to the next level of proficiency.

“We are much faster out of the box and much cheaper out of the box”, Mr Alnahhas says of the company's offerings to different industries.

Nybl itself was born out of the restructuring of another company that Mr Alnahhas, a serial entrepreneur with nearly 15 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, started in 2008.

At that time, the University of Houston graduate who went on to get leadership training at Wharton School of Business and INSEAD, was working for a couple of US companies selling monitoring systems for oil and gas, representing them in the Middle East.

He saw the possibility of creating a better product, quit his job and went on to form EnsoSoft.

“I thought it was ridiculous that companies [in the oil and gas sector] were paying millions of dollars just to know if a well has failed or a pipeline is leaking,” he says, adding that, his product was based on taking the information from the systems being monitored and then integrating them together to gain a better insight.

Mr Alnahhas was successful in launching the venture but then came the headwinds of the financial crisis. It took some doing but EnsoSoft survived and managed to expand but when the company’s founder decided to accelerate growth, the three-year oil price slump hit.

“We were doing great as a company operating in oil and gas. We [EnsoSoft] were making money,” he says, but when it started to push for greater growth "we saw $15 million (Dh55m) worth of projects coming to us get cancelled”.

“That was the point when we decided we need to diversify.”

That opportunity came when the government of Dubai in 2018 set a challenge for companies to help it reduce the time and money it spent on planning and purchasing inventory by 30 per cent using technology such as AI and the Internet of Things.

“Within nine weeks of the programme, having never doing anything out of oil and gas, we configured, developed and ran a proof of concept for the government that showed them 85 per cent reduction in time in inventory planning and purchasing,” says Mr Alnahhas. "There was an 87 per cent time reduction in inventory management.

“That was the birth, the switch to Nybl,” says Mr Alnahhas. “Nybl was our idea of how we would get out of the oil and gas sector.”

Mr Alnahhas says he and his Nybl co-founders sat down for a coffee in Emirates Towers in the first week of 2019 and since then there has been no looking back.

Nybl signed an enterprise agreement with Smart Dubai in July to deploy Nybl solutions to every single government entity that has inventory.

“We are in the process of implementing the first system, which is for the most important government entity – Dubai Health Authority,” he says, adding that the project will go live in the last week of December.

The Dubai government is not the company's only client. Nybl is working with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), providing it with real-time optimisation and failure prediction for electrical submersible pumps that help extract oil from wells.

“We joined the challenge at Adnoc where we competed against the MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], IMB  Watson …. some of the biggest names in AI,” he says.

It is now working with a ride-hailing company, predicting when the major components of a vehicle will fail and order parts in advance to minimise their downtime.

Nyble is already working with oil and gas firm Novomet and Vulcan in Kuwait, and Mr Alnahhas says the broader Middle East and GCC in particular will remain key focus markets for the company.

“The target of the company is to be the leading AI tech company in the Middle East. The number one company. That’s what our mission is,” he adds.

The company has created a programme for master licencing, which allows businesses to use Nybl's platform. It is working with Commtel Networks, a communications and surveillance security firm in India, which wanted to develop an artificially-intelligent physical and cyber security system. Commtel master-licensed Nybl's platform to use its engine and software to develop a new system, which has control, command and counter-measure capabilities.

“In India, our partner takes the market. We are chasing opportunities in the US and Africa but our main focus is on the Middle East.”

Mr Alnahhas along with Shriprakash Pandey, one of the co-founders are the initial investors in the venture, putting together $500,000 (Dh1.8 million). The venture is currently raising $5m in the second round of funding and has commitments from high net-worth and institutional investors, he says.

“It is [fund raising] for growth. We started with six people and we are 19 now. We need to, right now, hire another 17 people,” he says. “Our [work load] requirements would need another 20 people in the second quarter of next year, so we are constantly looking at hiring.”

The company, he says, is profitable, but the “goal is to be the next unicorn in the Middle East”.

“We want to be a $1 billion or $2bn company. That means that we [will] have achieved our goal of being the number one AI company in the Middle East.”

Q&A with Nybl co-founder and chief executive, Nour Alnahhas

What successful start-up do you wish you had started?

With the help of my amazing team we are actually achieving the things we dreamed about. Nybl was our dream and we've turned that dream into a reality.

What new skills have you learnt from launching your venture?

The list is almost endless because every day is a learning experience when you are launching your own venture. Financial management, managing relationships and expectations, raising capital, building your team; you have to work your way through all of these things day in and day out. But the two most important are strategy and planning. If you don't plan, you plan to fail. That doesn't mean everything will go as planned. On the contrary, things almost never go as planned. But in sitting down and working out a strategy and a plan with your team, you have set a path that can be modified as things change.

If you could do it all again, what would you do differently?

I would have started off in the UAE from day one. We started in other parts of the GCC and the USA. But it was Dubai that gave us the support and the opportunities that have brought us to where we are today.

What is your next big dream?

For now it's to make Nybl the leading artificial intelligence company in the Middle East, and the next unicorn. Internally we call it our "path to $1 billion". It's not really about valuation, but more about achieving what we set out to achieve, which is becoming the best AI company in the region the provides the highest value to their clients.

The Little Things

Directed by: John Lee Hancock

Starring: Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto

Four stars

Pakistan World Cup squad

Sarfraz Ahmed (c), Fakhar Zaman, Imam-ul-Haq, Abid Ali, Babar Azam, Haris Sohail, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Hafeez(subject to fitness), Imad Wasim, Shadab Khan, Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf, Junaid Khan, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Mohammad Hasnain      

Two additions for England ODIs: Mohammad Amir and Asif Ali

Padmaavat

Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Starring: Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor, Jim Sarbh

3.5/5

ESSENTIALS

The flights

Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.

The hotels

Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.

The tours

A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages. 

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
2018 ICC World Twenty20 Asian Western Regional Qualifier

The top three teams progress to the Asia Qualifier

Final: UAE beat Qatar by nine wickets

Third-place play-off: Kuwait beat Saudi Arabia by five runs

Table

1 UAE 5 5 0 10

2 Qatar 5 4 1 8

3 Saudi 5 3 2 6

4 Kuwait 5 2 3 4

5 Bahrain 5 1 4 2

6 Maldives 5 0 5 0

The five pillars of Islam
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%3Cp%3E%0D%3Cstrong%3EEngine%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E6-cylinder%2C%204.8-litre%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETransmission%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E5-speed%20automatic%20and%20manual%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPower%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E280%20brake%20horsepower%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETorque%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E451Nm%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPrice%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3Efrom%20Dh153%2C00%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EOn%20sale%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3Enow%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
F1 The Movie

Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Rating: 4/5

Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
  • Specialist robotics and science laboratories
  • AR and VR-enabled learning centres
  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Global state-owned investor ranking by size

1.

United States

2.

China

3.

UAE

4.

Japan

5

Norway

6.

Canada

7.

Singapore

8.

Australia

9.

Saudi Arabia

10.

South Korea

ENGLAND SQUAD

Joe Root (captain), Dom Sibley, Rory Burns, Dan Lawrence, Ben Stokes, Ollie Pope, Ben Foakes (wicketkeeper), Moeen Ali, Olly Stone, Chris Woakes, Jack Leach, Stuart Broad

UPI facts

More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions

Specs

Engine: 51.5kW electric motor

Range: 400km

Power: 134bhp

Torque: 175Nm

Price: From Dh98,800

Available: Now

First-round leaderbaord

-5 C Conners (Can)

-3 B Koepka (US), K Bradley (US), V Hovland (Nor), A Wise (US), S Horsfield (Eng), C Davis (Aus);

-2 C Morikawa (US), M Laird (Sco), C Tringale (US)

Selected others: -1 P Casey (Eng), R Fowler (US), T Hatton (Eng)

Level B DeChambeau (US), J Rose (Eng) 

1 L Westwood (Eng), J Spieth (US)

3 R McIlroy (NI)

4 D Johnson (US)

About Karol Nawrocki

• Supports military aid for Ukraine, unlike other eurosceptic leaders, but he will oppose its membership in western alliances.

• A nationalist, his campaign slogan was Poland First. "Let's help others, but let's take care of our own citizens first," he said on social media in April.

• Cultivates tough-guy image, posting videos of himself at shooting ranges and in boxing rings.

• Met Donald Trump at the White House and received his backing.

COMPANY PROFILE

Name: Xpanceo

Started: 2018

Founders: Roman Axelrod, Valentyn Volkov

Based: Dubai, UAE

Industry: Smart contact lenses, augmented/virtual reality

Funding: $40 million

Investor: Opportunity Venture (Asia)

ELIO

Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett

Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina

Rating: 4/5

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%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EEngine%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2.0-litre%20four-cyl%20turbo%20%2B%20mild%20hybrid%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPower%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E204hp%20at%205%2C800rpm%20%2B23hp%20hybrid%20boost%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETorque%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E320Nm%20at%201%2C800rpm%20%2B205Nm%20hybrid%20boost%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETransmission%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E9-speed%20auto%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFuel%20consumption%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E7.3L%2F100km%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EOn%20sale%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENovember%2FDecember%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPrice%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFrom%20Dh205%2C000%20(estimate)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
  • Priority access to new homes from participating developers
  • Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
  • Flexible payment plans from developers
  • Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
  • DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
While you're here
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%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirectors%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Amit%20Joshi%20and%20Aradhana%20Sah%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECast%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Shahid%20Kapoor%2C%20Kriti%20Sanon%2C%20Dharmendra%2C%20Dimple%20Kapadia%2C%20Rakesh%20Bedi%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A

States of Passion by Nihad Sirees,
Pushkin Press

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Airev
Started: September 2023
Founder: Muhammad Khalid
Based: Abu Dhabi
Sector: Generative AI
Initial investment: Undisclosed
Investment stage: Series A
Investors: Core42
Current number of staff: 47
 
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%3Cp%3EBy%202030%2C%20Abu%20Dhabi%20aims%20to%20achieve%3A%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3E%E2%80%A2%2039.3%20million%20visitors%2C%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20nearly%2064%25%20up%20from%202023%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3E%E2%80%A2%20Dh90%20billion%20contribution%20to%20GDP%2C%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20about%2084%25%20more%20than%20Dh49%20billion%20in%202023%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3E%E2%80%A2%20178%2C000%20new%20jobs%2C%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20bringing%20the%20total%20to%20about%20366%2C000%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3E%E2%80%A2%2052%2C000%20hotel%20rooms%2C%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20up%2053%25%20from%2034%2C000%20in%202023%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3E%E2%80%A2%207.2%20million%20international%20visitors%2C%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20almost%2090%25%20higher%20compared%20to%202023's%203.8%20million%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3E%E2%80%A2%203.9%20international%20overnight%20hotel%20stays%2C%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2022%25%20more%20from%203.2%20nights%20in%202023%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
liverpool youngsters

Ki-Jana Hoever

The only one of this squad to have scored for Liverpool, the versatile Dutchman impressed on his debut at Wolves in January. He can play right-back, centre-back or in midfield.

 

Herbie Kane

Not the most prominent H Kane in English football but a 21-year-old Bristolian who had a fine season on loan at Doncaster last year. He is an all-action midfielder.

 

Luis Longstaff

Signed from Newcastle but no relation to United’s brothers Sean and Matty, Luis is a winger. An England Under-16 international, he helped Liverpool win the FA Youth Cup last season.

 

Yasser Larouci

An 18-year-old Algerian-born winger who can also play as a left-back, Larouci did well on Liverpool’s pre-season tour until an awful tackle by a Sevilla player injured him.

 

Adam Lewis

Steven Gerrard is a fan of his fellow Scouser, who has been on Liverpool’s books since he was in the Under-6s, Lewis was a midfielder, but has been converted into a left-back.

How to apply for a drone permit
  • Individuals must register on UAE Drone app or website using their UAE Pass
  • Add all their personal details, including name, nationality, passport number, Emiratis ID, email and phone number
  • Upload the training certificate from a centre accredited by the GCAA
  • Submit their request
What are the regulations?
  • Fly it within visual line of sight
  • Never over populated areas
  • Ensure maximum flying height of 400 feet (122 metres) above ground level is not crossed
  • Users must avoid flying over restricted areas listed on the UAE Drone app
  • Only fly the drone during the day, and never at night
  • Should have a live feed of the drone flight
  • Drones must weigh 5 kg or less
NYBL PROFILE

Company name: Nybl 

Date started: November 2018

Founder: Noor Alnahhas, Michael LeTan, Hafsa Yazdni, Sufyaan Abdul Haseeb, Waleed Rifaat, Mohammed Shono

Based: Dubai, UAE

Sector: Software Technology / Artificial Intelligence

Initial investment: $500,000

Funding round: Series B (raising $5m)

Partners/Incubators: Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 4, Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 6, AI Venture Labs Cohort 1, Microsoft Scale-up