VILIRSA RAJADURAI
Dubai
Project Brief
MY ROLE
Develop social impact innovations applicable to the Arab World.
Ideation, Build POC, Project roll-out
TYPE AND TIMELINE
Consulting
March 2015
TEAM
Vilirsa Rajadurai (Me)
Simba Wakatama
Carol Xie
Shanghavy Karunakaran
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TECHNOLOGY UTILIZED
Figma, Photoshop, Power BI, Sketch
Understanding the Target Audience
Youth in the GCC lack access to the resources, funding, technology, and mentorship required to execute a viable social venture.
THE PROBLEM
“Almost 92% of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) in Saudi Arabia find it difficult to secure funding for their ventures,” (Jeddah Chamber, 2016)
Educational System
Funds can be invested into the educational system to fix the fundamental issue, but revamping the curriculum may be only be treating the symptom of the underlying problem.
Empowerment
The challenge of encouraging young people to engage and continue building their skills persists.
Lack of Govt Funding
Due to lack of govt. funding, we were in search of creative financing to support SME's.
Solution
Radius is an online platform that connects Saudi Arabian entrepreneurs with local and international (Canadian) mentors of Saudi Arabian decent, access to seed and early stage funding, business resources, and innovative ideas.
My Responsibilities
Work with the Canadian University of Dubai (CUD) to collect a pool of angel investors, VC"s, private lenders, and profile them by categories. We used the same profiling with techniques with startups from CUD. To test out the functionality of our POC, we created an interactive web platform, that was able to display financial profiles of an existing startup.
Research
Attended 5 incubators in the UAE, to see how startups are being incubated, and figure out what kind of startups they were seeking. Shadowed 15 SME's to discover how they access funding, and resources.
Prototyping
Created an interactive web portal where entrepreneurs and investors were able to apply to be a member. After selecting our first cohort, we were able to set up a dashboard for investors to view an entrepreneur's financial profile. Investors, then got the chance to select whom to invest in.
Business Model
Radius will consult with the startups and set up a data mining infrastructure to extract certain data to create easy to read reports that will measure key metrics like momentum that is unattainable with competitors. These reports will be given in real time to our investors which will help them determine the performance of the startup periodically so they can invest smartly.
Data Points
Through the Radius platform, investors can track KPIs over multiple investments during early stage, through which our data analysts will customize based on the investor’s personal needs. In addition to this, our momentum tracker reduces the lack of trust and risk involved in early stage investing as the startups now have a tangible record of success before they even hit revenue creation.
Media Coverage
