Sarah Toukan comes from a family of entrepreneurs in the middle-east. She attended Stanford for her bachelors and masters in mechanical engineering, post which she worked in real estate and food and beverage industry and currently is the co-founder and leads the product at Ziina. As the UAE’s first licensed peer-to-peer payment app, Ziina is on a mission to simplify finance for everyone. She has been named as one of the Top 10 Women In tech by Forbes. In this episode, we speak with Sarah...

Businesswoman, serial entrepreneur and advisor, Joy Ajlouny is a powerhouse of the startup ecosystem. Born and raised in California to Palestinian refugees, Ajlouny has built a reputation for her success in startups and ventures worldwide, all the while aggravating the status quo of women in business. In 2015 Joy Ajlouny co-founded Fetchr, the Silicon Valley-backed tech company that was created to tackle the Middle East’s “no address” issue, which has been long been a hindrance to growth in...

In 1958, Joe and Jeff left the Foster business to set up a new sports shoe company in an old brewery building in the UK and 30 years later it became the biggest sports brand in the world, Reebok, grossing over $4BN USD in revenues.  This is a special episode where we had the honor of hosting the legendary, Joseph William Foster, the founder of Reebok (1958). Joe lives and breathes Reebok. His stories, anecdotes, the thrill and the lessons are timeless and wisdom in its purest form. Joe has...

This episode features Tal Sharon, Managing Partner, Equitech, a fin-tech consulting organization based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Tal has been leading dozens of engagements between fin-tech companies and global financial institutions, consulting regulators and government bodies in fin-tech transformation and market education, and supporting the growth of these companies.  In this episode, we first look at the broad trends of the year 2021 in fin-tech, the year marking a huge funding appetite for...

After spending over 18 years in the corporate, leading large sales teams at HUL, Airtel and Vodafone, Harish Bali started experimenting with travel and food vlogging. At the age of 42! Used up his life-long savings to document his travels, barely breaking even and worked hard to understand his target audience. Today, Visa2Explore has over 1.2M subscribers and more than 300 videos.  His story is simple yet truly inspiring, a story of sheer persistence! Listen to Harish Bali on this episode of...

Karen Gabriel has had a fantastic career working with high impact teams across the world. She was a part of the team that launched the Windows phone at Microsoft, she lead program design, development and execution at Dubai Future Foundation, ran 7 cohorts with over 150 startups from around the globe with one of the most ambitious governments in the world, the UAE government.  In this episode, Karin talks about why large organisations are moving towards innovation as the driving agenda for...

For this episode, we invited Alaa Bakhit, Founder, B12, a comprehensive education solutions company based in Jordan. Alaa spent over over 14 years in the corporate working with giants like Oracle and Microsoft before quitting to start in the education industry, and is changing the face of modern, hybrid education in the middle east. Alaa is also a professor of practice at the Al Hussein Technical University (HTU) where he teaches programming and mentors young entrepreneurs. B12 has been a...

Paula Newby is the Founder of Predixa, an AI tool for corporations to quickly evaluate the key issues and solve for them using a data driven, objective approach. Paula started her first business in textile e-commerce back in the late-nineties and has been an entrepreneur since. She moved to the UAE and started Predixa, and has been working with some of the leading change programs in the region. Paula is long on diversity and inclusion for companies to succeed. In this episode, we speak with...

The official trailer of Innovators Unplugged by Startup Garage & Microsoft For Startups, Middle East

Anuscha Iqbal is the co-founder of Spotii, a Buy Now Pay Later startup based in Dubai, UAE. Anuscha has been working in the investments and private equity space for over a decade with The Abraaj Group. Spotii has grown tremendously in the past one and a half year and recently has been acquired by Zip, a global BNPL leader from Australia. In this episode, we speak with Anuscha about moving into fintech from a traditional finance background, about the initial days of setting up Spotii, the...

In this second episode, we have with us Gülşah Gülser, Founder, Quin AI. Gulsah is a strategy consultant with over 10 years of experience mainly in customer and deal strategy. She has worked in retail, e-commerce and travel & leisure and has engaged with leading local and global companies. In this episode, we talk to her about e-commerce and the emerging small seller segment in developing economies, about how Quin is solving for them using AI and about the Turkish ecosystem. 

Jose Rubinger worked in the computer-sales industry in Brazil when he identified a global problem: lack of accessible technology for specially-abled children. A few years of research and many MVPs later, he founded Key2Enable, a technology startup that empowers children with disabilities, their parents, caretakers and teachers to accelerate the child's communication, assessment, monitoring, and learning process. In this first episode of Innovators Unplugged, powered by Microsoft For...

Abhishek Goyal has worked at Yahoo and Amazon, joined Accel Partners and led Flipkart's first investment round in 2009. He then became an entrepreneur and started Tracxn in 2013, one of the largest private-market data and deal services platform, globally. Today, Tracxn is used by governments, corporates and VCs across the globe to track innovative companies and access data.  In this episode, co-hosted by Vaibhav and Gaurav, Abhishek talks about his journey from corporate to VC and then to...

Peter Hopwood is an international speaking coach. He travels the world and coaches TEDx speakers, entrepreneurs and corporates on building smart habits for impactful communication and thinking. In this episode, he talks about the foundational aspects of communication, insights on how to share powerful stories and build acute speaking and presence and about how charming founders sway deals! 

The hemp industry in India is one of the fastest growing industries with more states legalising cultivation of industrial hemp. There are a lot of myths and taboos around hemp, cannabis and marijuana in India. For this episode, we invited Rohit Shah, Co-Founder & CEO of Health Horizons, a vertically integrated hemp startup from India. Rohit came to India after working in US real estate and has pioneered hemp product manufacturing and distribution in India. In this episode, we talk about...

Saudi Arabia's PIF - Public Investment Fund is a $347B sovereign wealth fund. It is headed by Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman and has been an investor in Softbank's Vision Fund. In this episode, Vidit Khendry talks about PIF and the gray areas around it. 

Dr. Marc Nassim is the Partner & Managing Director at Awad Capital, one of the top investment banks in the Middle-East region. Dr. Nassim holds a PhD. in Finance and has spent about two decades working and investing across sectors for family offices, sovereign funds and HNIs. In this episode, Kushal and Vaibhav talk to him about the middle east investment landscape, the IB process of evaluating new deals, about getting into IB and crypto-currency. To follow Dr. Marc Nassim: Twitter |...

You'll often hear startup founders talk about network effects. Many businesses use strong network effects as a moat to keep competition at bay. In this breakdown episode, Vishal Mehndiratta aims to explain the basics of network effects and how WhatsApp probably has the strongest of them!

This is the second part of the chat with Robert Hussey (Bob), CEO, Nirvana Water and Founder, POP Radio. Bob started his company in the early 1980s, took it public on NASDAQ, and then faced a hostile takeover bid which he fought. The company got acquired at an above market Cash-Flow Multiple and Bob has since become a private equity investor. In this episode, we chat with him regarding the hostile takeover attempt and life after the acquisition. 

Some analysts are calling the Archegos Capital margin-call failure, the 'Lehman Fraud' of this decade, and the impact it has had on the wealth of US corporations and banks is way more than the current estimates. Prime bankers lending to high-rollers with levered bets on a select few stocks might just be the bubble we're awaiting.

Cathy Guo is a founder-turned VC, currently managing investments at Antler India. She has been a part of First Principles and True Beacon, and has started Dunya Labs, a blockchain startup based out of Bangalore, India. In this episode, we talk to her about how philosophy and entrepreneurship are connected, about her journey in China, US and India and about what she's building at Antler.

You have most probably heard of NFTs and the frenzy going on around these digital collectibles. Christie's recently auctioned a digital artwork, which was essentially a green signal for the asset class. In this episode, we breakdown and explain NFTs and why are the becoming so valuable and popular!

Dr. Srikanth is currently a General Partner at Ventureast, one of the oldest venture capital firms in India (started around 1997), and has raised and deployed about $400 Million USD. In the past, he has held the post of CTO for HCL and Cognizant and prior to that he was an entrepreneur. Srikanth also is a visiting professor at Indian School of Business and IIT Bhubaneshwar among a few other universities. In this episode, we speak to him about the transition from being the CTO of large...