JEDDAH, 6 September 2006 — The Yalla Business website (www.yallabusiness.com) caters to the needs of young business executives in Saudi Arabia. The founder, Maher Bundakji, a young businessman himself, recognized the need for a portal that provides information on various business and economic news and developments at the local and international levels.
Despite the fact that the young generation constitute the largest percentage of the population and small and medium businesses make up around 90 percent of all businesses in Saudi Arabia, most financial institutions and private industries still prefer to deal with larger, established businesses rather than try to tap into this reservoir of unappreciated talents and ambitions.
“It is one of the reasons I ran in the last year’s elections for board of directors membership in the last Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry despite knowing the odds. I wanted to bring forth the problems and issues of young businessmen and work at addressing them through the chamber,” he said.
Although he lost, he continues to be a member in the chamber and advocate the rights of young businessmen for better opportunities, representation and fair competition.
Bundakji created Yalla Business website last year as a step toward better communication between the young businessmen in the Kingdom and to provide support for each other. It was a success and today it is expanding and improving. A few days ago, Bundakji, president of the company, signed a contract with Isam Al-Ahmadi, general manager of Al-Sarb Technology Institute, for the latter to develop the website. Al-Sarb will make the website compete with the international websites that cater to the issues and concerns of young businessmen and women. The website will provide financial, economic and real estate consultations especially to new comers to the field.
Future projects for the website include an economic forum, a television program and other surprises on the website itself.
“We already began working on preparing for the economic forum, which will focus on young businessmen, through agreements with sponsors and working with the JCCI,” said Bundakji. The forum is expected to be in mid 2007 for five days in Jeddah, and if successful it will be held the following years in Riyadh and Dammam. The television program on one of the Arab satellite channels is also in the works. “After Ramadan we will launch a campaign for the Yalla Business website after it has completed its renovation,” he said.