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00:18
Q: -pleasure of having Mr. Naber Sabry, who is CEO of Timez5.
00:24
A: Thank you very much for the interview. Timez5 is the world’s first health and wellness
00:31
company for Muslims. Our first product is the world’s first physiological prayer mat. It’s been a
00:37
product in the making for about five years worth of research and development. It’s birth starts.
00:43
with ex NASA scientist who’s worked with us on the research and development team. He had
00:48
started in about the ’70s, I would say, working on astronauts suits and dealing with specialized
00:53
high-performance materials.
00:55
So he’s worked with us on our team, and the remaining of our R and D team did develop a
01:00
the product that will help Muslims who have physiological problems. So physiological problems
01:05
extends not just to those who have some form of an actual illness. But it goes to people, could
01:09
be perfectly young and healthy like yourself. So this comes from one of the very early studies.
01:15
that we found that 92% of all products around here are
01:18
not ergonomically designed for your health.
01:20
So that’s everything from your table, your chair. Whether at home, in the car when you’re
01:25
commuting could be at a friend’s place. So most of these products are not designed.
01:30
ergonomically for your health. So whether you’re young and healthy, you will still face some.
01:34
ergonomic or some physiological problem. It may not be very severe; you may take it very lightly.
01:39
because you’re still young and healthy. You have a bit of a light back pain, a bit of knee pain but
01:43
you say, “I’ll get over it, and I’ll continue the day.” Which is a good way to go about it but these
01:47
things accumulate with time.
01:50
And we work with two consumer segments. One of those who are proactive, those who lead
01:56
proactive lifestyles, who want to basically take charge of their life and have a more comfortable
02:01
experience with prayer but also would like to avoid physiological problems.
02:05
On the other side, we have reactive consumers, which is actually a large part of our consumers.
02:09
base, where people who have either a diagnosed or a non-diagnosed physical ailment of some
02:15
nature. They can range from diabetes, arthritis, or chronic knee pain. About 52% of Muslims that
02:23
we’ve talked to have knee pain, and 78% of them have chronic knee pain. Meaning chronic by
02:29
saying that it’s continuous and has been diagnosed to be a continuous knee problem.
02:34
Q: Right. So these prayer mats are made to fit for these people who have all these ailments?
02:42
A: Absolutely, absolutely. Exactly. It helps people who have knee problems, back problems,
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ankle problems, foot problems, posture problems, even energy problems. So we have a range of
02:52
cases. Just last week we ran, we launched the first Muslim physiology workshop, which is
03:00
basically, us taking our research and development and putting it into a workshop to help Muslims
03:04
understand how to exercise better and have a proactive lifestyle to deal specifically with the
03:10
ergonomic problems they face but how it impacts our prayer, and it was a fantastic event.
03:15
So one of the outcomes was one of our customers, she bought her product nine months ago, she got
03:20
up and just put her hand like this and said, “I started using this product nine months ago,”
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because she had a knee injury, a severe sports injury, and she has no knee pain today, thanks
03:29
to our product.
03:30
Q: Great.
03:31
A: We have extremely touching cases. Like we have one lady, she’s in her 70’s in Abu Dhabi.
03:36
She was unable to prostrate and touch the ground, and her son bought it for her was a gift and the
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the day she started using it, she started crying. She was telling me, “You’ve given me the gift of
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I hope.” And that’s what our product is about. It’s about getting into that intimate feeling where
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you give inspiration, hope, and love to those that you give it to. About 85% of our sales are
03:56
actually gifting, and about 80% of our customers are women. They seem to understand
04:00
technology, quality a lot better than men, so it seems.
04:04
Q: So here at GIES, you won an award for innovation, is that right?
04:08
A: That’s right. We won an award for innovation in the area of Halal Travel and Tourism. And
04:13
that’s largely because one of the key segments we target is Muslim tourism. The first part is we
04:19
launched a program called the Global Jag Inom Agency Program and that basically works with
04:25
Jag Inom agencies that help pilgrims from their native country to the destination of Mecca and back
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and forth. So we work with them to provide the product for their elderly and those who have
04:34
physical elements within the group of those who are traveling for pilgrimage.
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The other part is we also work with other providers in innovative ways to reach Muslims.
04:43
consumers who are on travel. So one of our early findings with one of our consumers. She’s
04:49
actually, a journalist bought the product, used it for several months, had traveled to Germany for
04:53
about three, four days, came back and said, “I can’t live without it. I was praying on the ground.
04:58
and I was in so much pain. I need to travel with it. I need it with me.”
05:01
And so we recognized the need that those who start using the product need to be consistent.
05:05
being used as they travel as well. And it would be great to find the product, and we’re working.
05:09
on things like that. It will be available in airports and other areas of convenience where Muslims.
05:13
would have to stop and pray and would need a nicer experience.
05:19
Q: It’s really a large and vast area out there, innovation especially for the Muslim market but can
05:25
you share with us what would be the main challenge in trying to achieve that?
05:29
Can you share with us?
05:31
A: Well, there are technical challenges, and there’s a sort of marketing challenges. The
05:35
technical challenges took us five years to over. How do we make it thin enough and light enough?
05:39
that someone can carry it? But at the same time, it can achieve all the functionalities it’s been
05:44
actually designed to do.
05:45
On the marketing side, because it’s a new product, so what happens is we deal with a wide range.
05:50
of, let’s say, traditional mindsets. To one extent, very extreme, where they don’t want to use a
05:57
prayer mat at all.
05:58
Q: Oh, okay.
05:59
A: To another side where they completely embrace it and say, “Oh, this thing is so cool.”
06:03
Q: So very extreme on both sides.
06:04
A: Exactly. And having to work within those fragmented early adopters across several markets
06:09
is very, very, very challenging. One of the things that we had learned, very interestingly enough,
06:14
as I mentioned, about 80% of our customers are women, and one of the drivers was actually a
06:18
cosmetic driver. Now we thought it was actually the design of the product itself, but it was the
06:23
the fact that when women pray, they get black spots on their knee, on their ankles, and so when they
06:28
use the product they don’t have anymore, and so they love that fact. So they just said, “We like
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it because it keeps us looking nice.”
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And we didn’t quite get it initially, but we started to understand a bit deeper.
06:39
Q: How about funding? Was that the main challenge as well?
06:41
A: Well, we’re a privately funded organization, and we’re well funded. It’s a set of private
06:45
investors who have invested in countries that I’ve started in the past, so we have a bit of history.
06:49
Q: So that wasn’t much of a challenge?
06:51
A: Well, I think fundraising for anybody is always a challenge. Depending on which part of the
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the world you go to. We were just having a fascinating conversation now with a Muslim startup.
07:00
a company trying to raise funding. People don’t understand their market; they’re risk-averse, they
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I don’t want to put money into it. So it’s challenging, I think, for all startup companies. We’re
07:10
lucky, we’ve been very fortunate.
07:13
Q: Great. Finally, Nader, can you give us a comment on the fact that GIES, at this summit and
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all the awards that are given to achievers such as you. How do you feel about that?
07:24
A: I feel very proud that I have an A list team behind me, which helped us get this award.
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If it weren’t for them, we would not be on the stage today. And it’s the hard work where my
07:36
the team works until midnight for days on end. We don’t have weekends for weeks on weeks and
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it’s an amazing dynamic where our team just gets in and just does the job, and that’s how we win
07:48
awards. We just work really hard at what we do and
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help Muslim consumers have a better lifestyle.
07:54
Q: And it makes #[7:55] such as this actually more significant.
07:57
A: Totally, I mean one of the greatest things is forum is that Sheikh Mohammed is cementing
08:01
Dubai as a center of innovation for the Muslim world. And, to us, that is just refreshing and
08:07
liberating. That it’s no longer about money and meat or money and food, for that matter. There
08:12
are little tiny companies like us who are squeezing through the money and the food to innovate.
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So it’s great to see that we can get recognition, and other companies like us will get recognition.
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for the different innovations that they try to bring to Muslim consumers.
08:25
Q: Great. Congratulations to you.
08:27
A: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And hello to all our friends in Malaysia.
08:30
Q: Great.
08:31
A: Thank you.
08:31
Q: That was Nader Sabry, who is CEO of Timez5. A winner of the award right here at GIES
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