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Melita Delos Reyes began her career early, as she worked as a clerk for a big real estate company in Manila, Philippines, but Milet’s ambition pushed her to leave her job to pursue a Degree in Business Administration at Philippine Christian University in 1996.

After graduation Milet worked in the field of Marketing and Sales in several companies. In 2006, she decided to travel to Dubai to work for Alpha UK Training. She worked mainly in the Admin and Operations Department and proactively supported the Marketing and Sales Department. She was in charge of coordinating training logistics and documentation, database management, supplier management, admin tasks and safekeeping of office documents, accounts, and liaising with coaches and various speakers around the world.

The Swiss-Arab Entrepreneur Platform: The massive spread of social media platforms put entrepreneurs in front of an opportunity to choose the best way to market their products through it, but the multi-channel marketing process is very expensive. In your opinion, is working on all platforms the best option, or choosing one channel?

Melita: Entrepreneurs leverage on the impact of Social Media to their business. A robust social media marketing strategy is crucial to drive traffic to your website, build brand awareness and community. While it’s good to increase visibility on different social media platforms, you have to consider what kind of products or services you’re offering and where your target market usually hangs out. Example, if you are an Ecommerce Business, the best way is to be visible on Facebook and consider FB ads.

If you’re into coaching or consulting business, Linkedin is the best platform to boost your online presence and build your brand. Linkedin is the best social selling platform for B2B and B2C companies. Content Marketing Institute found that 63% of marketers rated LinkedIn as the most effective B2B social media platform.

According to Sprout Social “With the exponentially increasing popularity of digital media channels, traditional lead generation is becoming a thing of the past—creating more opportunity for B2B and B2C businesses to drive leads and increase sales now than ever before.”

Using Linkedin, it is easy target your ideal market and create a lead generation system. professional people, decision makers, entrepreneurs and high level executives.

Swiss- Arab Entrepreneur Platform: With your project, you focus on digital marketing on LinkedIn, why did you choose this platform over others? What defines the LinkedIn platform?

Melita:

• Linkedin has over 600 million + users across the globe.

It is a pool of professional people, decision makers, entrepreneurs, high level executives, influencer and affluent people.

• Linkedin is well suited for personal branding and creates more opportunity for B2B and B2C business.
• It is considered the number 1 platform for lead generation. It is built for business networking, a goldmine if utilized properly. :)
• Linkedin has robust search and targeting features to help you find the right people and businesses.

Swiss-Arab Entrepreneur Platform: How Do You Plan On Growing Your Business?

Melita: Consistency is the key to grow your business. Need to maximize the use of Social Media especially Linkedin Marketing to grow my business and followers.

I’m planning to add more services to serve my clients such as Email Copywriting or Email Marketing to nurture leads and better serve my clients.

Swiss-Arab Entrepreneur Platform: Can you tell us more about the digital marketing services provided by your (project?) team?

Melita:We are a complete 1 stop Marketing Agency because we have huge network of Marketing Professionals. We can help you stand out from your competitor, get more leads and clients and scale your business fast.

We have Brand Strategists, Graphics designers, Virtual Assistants, Social Media Managers, Facebook Ads Experts, Website Designers, Copywriters etc. 

Our team is passionate in helping entrepreneurs grow their business by crafting a strategy plan that solves business challenges.

Swiss-Arab Entrepreneur Platform: What advice can you give to new entrepreneurs to make their personal pages appear better on the LinkedIn platform?

Melita: If you’re a startup company or a new entrepreneur, it is best to build your personal branding in Linkedin. In the first few months, you have to build your credibility so that your ideal clients can trust and like you. First step is to optimize your profile so that you will rank higher in search engines and to generate more profile views.

Remember that your profile is your online business card that could be your asset in generating appointments, quality leads and high-ticket clients.

Have clarity on what you offer and think how your service can solve your target market problems.

Second, growing your business in Linkedin must be a priority and not a hobby. Remember that Linkedin is a Social Selling platform so you have to build and nurture relationships.

Let me share my Linkedin growth hacks that could help new or existing entrepreneurs.

(عربي)

During its last session, the Kuwaiti Council of Ministers approved two new laws for the residency of expatriates, according to which a continuous residency period of ten years was granted to investors and property owners of expatriates and 5 years to ordinary expatriates.

The articles of the new law stipulated that it is permissible for a foreigner to reside for a period not exceeding 10 years for both investors and real estate owners, provided that the Council of Ministers issues a decision specifying the areas in which expatriates can invest and the amounts that they must invest, as for expatriates who wish to own real estate in Kuwait, they must obtain approval from the Kuwaiti Council of Ministers, after submitting the required documents to the Ministry of Justice, to review the legal situation of the expatriate and his family members, as they must have their records free of any criminal case or misconduct, and the expatriate should hold a valid residency and should not have any violation of the residency regulations. The purchase of the property should be for own residency and not for renting purposes.

The distinguished residence is considered a temporary residence, that is, it is not automatically renewed. The conditions of the residence may be modified in the future; also the Ministry of Interior reserves the right not to renew the residence for an expatriate based on valid reasons.

This law also allows expatriates subject to a deportation order, to have a grace period in order to be able to liquidate their business, determined by the Ministry of Interior, while not allowing them to return to the country without permission from the Ministry.

In addition to that, the new residency law gives Kuwaiti citizens the ability to obtain a residence permit for their husbands and members of their family, provided that none of them work for a governmental or non-governmental entity, also its citizenship should not be obtained through naturalized by a marriage with a Kuwaiti citizen.

The law stipulates that the maximum period for a domestic worker, wishing to reside abroad, should not exceeding 4 months compared to 6 months before.

It is expected that the new law will revive the real estate sector in Kuwait, and it will also make it easier for expatriates to deposit their money in banks and invest it, instead of transferring it abroad, which will benefit investors, expatriate workers and the Kuwaiti economy.

(العربية)

Mohamed Shaker is a Syrian entrepreneur, born in Damascus in 1990. Mohamed has shown an interest in painting and engineering since his early childhood. This interest, which soon became a passion, crystallized into a major academic pursuit starting first at the university of Damascus. Here, he excelled for several years and received a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and artificial intelligence in 2013, before attending the University of Joseph-Fourier in Grenoble, France, where he received a Master's degree in human-machine interaction in 2015.

He has published a number of scientific papers in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which were published between 2013 and 2015. He has also spent time as a visiting researcher at the design laboratory of the technical university of Copenhagen. During the same period, he designed and deployed three games that were generated automatically without a designer, based on artificial intelligence.

Mohammed moved to Amsterdam in 2016 to work for the educational company Squla, which is concerned with transforming scientific content into an interactive activity.

Mohammed Shaker's scientific and professional work received attention from the TechCity UK Foundation in Britain, classifying him as an extraordinary first-level talent in 2018, after which he moved to London.

During his career, Mohammed has also been credited with running the technical side of NFX company in Britain, a medical professional company that helps stroke patients.

From London, where he has been living since 2018, Mohammed launched his first Arab startup company Al-Meta, which specializes in understanding and analyzing Arabic using artificial intelligence. At the beginning of 2020, he launched the “Mind Phrenology” educational platform for junior high school students. Both he and his team are additionally currently working on launching a new educational platform, called Alphazed, an artificially-intelligent educational platform for unconventional education of Arab children.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: In a postmodernism age, with the results of the communication and information revolution, today's world is flooded with contradictory information and news, often coming to intercept facts approved by scientific complexes, such as the hazards of smoking, the necessity of traffic signals, and the denial of proven and documented incidents and facts at a high level. The process of obtaining knowledge and information-building has become a selective process that is subject to the person's desires and ideological orientations, how do you think “The Meta” can help to solve this dilemma in the Arab region?

Mohamed Shaker: This is a very important question. There are two important points I would like to talk about here.

1. The problem of opinion from one point of view is that we are all born in a certain environment with a certain background and beliefs. All of this shapes who we are, and why we hold on to a particular belief. Our instinct is to agree more with opinions consistent with our ideological background and to attack and rebut opinions that are different from our ideological background. This is very common among us.

Therefore, our first goal in Meta was to be an unaffiliated platform, and to be a platform for showing all views to all Arabs. This is why, in Meta we have worked for four months to develop a system that automatically works to identify and consolidate articles on the same topic in one place (what we call in AI "one cluster" or "cluster"). Within each cluster, we automatically identify the views of each article and compare them with the views of other articles. We also automatically summarize these articles under "the most important thing to know about this news." All of this is then shown to the user to be aware of different points of view and to be aware of the importance of understanding them. See appendix:

We recently added the "News related to this topic" feature to any article. For example, you might see that in this article:

You'll see articles from other news sources on the same subject directly below them, along with the quality rating of their content. All of this is to give the user the right tools to dive into content better, more consciously and more deeply, whenever he or she wants.

We humans don't like absolute things, we like comparisons. A way of evaluating the quality of content and comparing several articles with similar content is the best method to achieve that outcome.

2. We use a non-human unguided agent to examine the content. I think the human factor is always skewed toward one viewpoint even if he or she doesn’t want it to. The existence of "correctly-controlled" industrial intelligence makes this process more reliable. You will find that we have dedicated our services to artificial intelligence. Anyone can enter any link to any Arab article and immedaitely understand the quality of its content. This service is also programmed using an API interface for any Arab or foreign company that wants to measure the quality of any given content. You can look at the appendices.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: Google's search engine has been criticized for its work in selecting top stories on the basis that the highest payer will appear on top of the search results. Although Google's top news application was launched in 2018, which gave priority to reliable news at the expense of the "client experience" model and the most push sites, the problem remains. What are the criteria of selecting news on the Meta application? Do you have contracts of some kind with news sites, newspapers or news agencies?.

Mohamed Shaker: think that statement is quite right. It’s the "ethical AI" or "ethical intelligence" problem, which is a problem in any system that uses artificial intelligence. I will give you an example. In the area of autonomous vehicles, if for some reason the probability of an accident is 100%, will the "smart system" decide to crash into a child, an old man, or a wall (and cause the driver's inevitable death)? Will the intelligent system choose to save the driver and cause the old man to die because he is old or it will choose the child? All of these are questions we must ask, know their answer, and set controls. I think that in “Al-Meta” we are very much highlighting this concept. That is why we are among the very few Arab companies worldwide that publish how they build their artificial intelligence systems for advertising. For the simple reason that we want our audience to know how our systems work, to be available to all, and to add or request a modification. Despite our very small team size and the very high cost of these documents, we’ve done it from the first day of the platform. We now have over 100 articles on our blog – http://almeta.io/blog

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: The launch of a new application or platform needs at least six months, as industry professionals say, but with your six-member team, you can launch the Meta app and two educational platforms within a standard period (3-4 months), can you tell us what this success is all about?

Mohamed Shaker: It's best if I break this down into two points.

1. Team effort. Our team members are very carefully selected. My two main requirements for their recruitment were that they had designed or completed a perfect project from 0 to 100 themselves before. Second, they can take any idea from a mere concept to a final software product themselves. I think that when you set the hiring criteria bar so high, you will always be pleased later down the line. I met with 200 people to eventually choose four technical people. The hardest step in defining them as an engineering structure was switching them over from what they were used to in Arab countries. All of them surprised me with their willingness to learn and their ability to adapt very quickly. That's what I love about our team.
2. I think my previous experience working with Western start-ups was beneficial. In addition, I experienced the transition from being specialist in artificial intelligence to becoming more of a generalist, which means I constantly want to know more about everything. After I moved to the UK, I joined an emerging company where I was the only tech person, which helped me to learn a lot. This is because the process led me to employ everything I had learned in the past to create, design and implement a product from the idea stage to creating a complete platform by myself. It gave me the understanding of how to build complete products and projects from scratch without fear. It’s something I’ve gone through four times so far. In each case I went from nothing to a full product. This process would give any entrepreneur great self-confidence, since very few programmers are now generalists who can build complete systems themselves. My reading of books in different fields (including non-technical literature) has actually helped me within technical fields. I try to read 70-90 books a year. I think it has changed my thinking completely within the last ten years. It made me think differently to the conventional wisdom about the world of work (and outside of work too).

The Swiss Arab entrepreneurs: the spread of the covid 19 epidemic has affected all economic and social life, and the education sector has suffered most of the damage caused by the epidemic. You have had an impact on facing the effects of the epidemic on the education sector in the Arab region by launching the Alphazid and Mind Phrenology educational platforms. What can you tell us about these platforms? Where do you find the medium-term future for digital education in the Arab region?

Mohamed Shaker: We started about four months before the COVID outbreak with the launch of the “Mind Phrenology" platform for secondary and tertiary students and their psychological support, which is a completely overlooked aspect of the secondary "signs." If schools and universities continue to be closed, we will focus more on the "Mind Phrenology" and within two weeks we will have launched an integrated learning application that also incorporates the educational aspect of the secondary grades. Its simple function is to provide all educational videos from the best teachers and schools in one platform and to make search and web services available to everyone. The application is free for everyone and is available to any secondary or tertiary student. Then we’ve also focused on an app for younger kids 6-12 years old with "alphazed." We could have launched it on May 5, 2020. But I eventually decided to delay and build up it to provide an educational environment for children that is completely different from any other educational application, Arab or foreign. The application delivers content in the same way we learn as we are young, which is in a conversational and the anecdotal style rather than the conventional learning style (you can see some prototypes here: https://thealphazed.com/). I wanted it Arabic with a new creative Arabic sense, so applying Al-Fazid takes a lot of my interest at the moment and will be available in July of 2020.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: Twitter recently announced that it would allow its employees to work remotely permanently even after the (COVID 19) shutdown is over. Can twitter's actions be considered an indicator of a telecommuting model of the business landscape in the near future, Or will the expansion of the adoption of the tele-business model remain a casual issue that retreats with the end of the virus-related closure (COVVE19)?

Mohamed Shaker: I think we can reshape the question, will COVID affect only the business sector or life in general? Here in the West, there is a great concern, for example, about public transportation. I think those concerns are legitimate. You can ask the question, when will you feel safe riding on London's public transport? In most cases that won’t be until there is a vaccine and it is available to everyone. Because it is impossible to imagine being in London Underground without the rush-hour crowds of 8:30 a.m, I think that this will shape our overall lives for the next of the year, at least in the West. I think that will lead us to be more dynamic as human beings. Not only due to COVID, but how we are aligned with any other future habits. As Darwin says: The species that will remain is the most adaptable species, not necessarily the strongest. So I think that same concept applies perfectly to today’s Arab companies, including those of foreigners.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: Through your experience in the remote working environment, what challenges and benefits do you have from adopting this model?

Mohamed Shaker: I think it is a process that can be measured from three points of view.

1. From the company's point of view: The freedom to choose the most efficient methods without hindrance from geographical locations.
2. From the employee's point of view (called the word "abday" in Meta): Having the freedom to plan their time and choose how their day is divided. They have more time for themselves to learn new things or to spend time with their family.
3. From the point of view of the country where the employee lives: I think the economic recovery is very good in this case in the Arab countries, which have competent young people who want to learn and work on efficient projects. This is a very important point at this moment in time because of the current situation of the Arab countries.

Arab-Swiss entrepreneurs: Projects that you have launched are self-financing, and so far there have been no profit yeilding through these projects, what is your future plan to achieve financial gains through these projects?

Mohamed Shaker: Although I have reservations about the behavior of Elon Musk recently, I will always remember him saying what I have always thought of since the beginning of these projects: "When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor." Its meaning is that: "When you work on things of importance, you make an effort for their success even if the circumstances and opportunities are against you."

With reference to our learning application, I think the current situation in the Arab region (outside the Gulf region) for education and content projects is difficult and unprofitable in the short term and, therefore, will be difficult in the long term. Arab startups are moving away from the main problems in our country and are focusing on many unhelpful apps at the expense of useful apps. Unfortunately, useful applications are not profitable and have little audience because of the country's difficult situation, most app users are looking for something that distracts them, putting their mind at ease.

But, I like to do this because it is important for my people and nation and I think I can do a lot in this aspect because of my background in engineering, education, and design. I think it is a background that makes it incumbent on me to bring experience to my people. This is what many Arab expatriates in the West overlook when they forget things that tie them to their homeland.

At the same time, I do not think it is a good thing to see that the project is not profit-making and far-reaching. Because if we can't afford it, we won't be able to deliver our products as originally intended.

Thinking 100 years forward changes your view of things. I like to think at the start of a learning project like Alphazed about what the world will look like 100 years from now. Its impact will not be visible until the current generation expands and I won’t even be here by the year 2100. But if we start it now, we will have added and improved the education of generations to come. Not just one generation, but every generation from today to 2100 and beyond.

Thinking now about the financial return, if we can deliver the most useful and best learning experience 100 times but at one tenth of the cost of others, and make it available for 100 million users instead of 10,000, then we have achieved a financial return that is sufficient to achieve a long-term vision for the next 100 years. We can also reap a financial dividend that will drive us to change generations to come, not just a single generation. This is my idea for an educational project like Alphazed.

For the Meta, the subject is similar. What can the Meta do? In 100 years? I think the Meta is much bigger than that. There are no limits to the amount of creativity and growth that can occur, for Arab minds in particular and for the wider human population in general. If we can change from Arab reality based on a one-view theory and if we can provide services to other companies to use this tech in new applications, our influence will not be limited to 300 million Arabs, but available for any human being and person who believe in the cohesion of ideas.

(العربية)

On May 18, Wamda Foundation and the ArabNet website released a special report titled "The Impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in the Middle East and North Africa", which highlighted the situation of startups in the Middle East and North Africa in light of the Coronavirus pandemic in both the region and the rest of the world. The report aimed to identify the impact of COVID-19 on the region's entrepreneurship sector as well as measures that can be taken to relieve financial pressures on startups.

In the introduction, the report presented the macroeconomic conditions in the Arab region. It noted the negative repercussions of the low oil prices that led to major tremors in the economies of the oil-producing Arab countries, the worsening economic crisis in Lebanon, the high prices in Egypt, and the increase of the value-added tax in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
These conditions have driven to the push towards embracing the digital economy for the sake of continued economic growth. For startups in the region, the situation is either catastrophic or a stimulus for growth, in the words of the authors of the report. In the following summary, we will cover the most important points in the report.

Where are startups located?

The United Arab Emirates is still at the forefront of countries in the MENA region in embracing startups and new entrepreneurs. It’s home to 24% of startups in the region, followed by Lebanon, where startups have enjoyed remarkable growth. They account for approximately 18% of the total startup population in the region, followed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt with 14.7% and 13.1%, respectively. By contrast, Iraq and Yemen ranked last with 0.4% each.

What sectors are startups active in?

Perhaps the most prominent repercussions of COVID-19 on the business world are the effects on the fundamental structure of economic activity. Work prospects are temporarily blocked in the face of the lack of demand, whereas new horizons have been opened within other areas that were less active before the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic. The figures reflect these market shifts, with data showing that 6.5% of emerging companies active in the Middle East and North Africa are working in the field of digital medical care, and 6.9% of them are working in digital learning. Both sectors that have witnessed significant growth since the onset of the pandemic. The data also shows an increase in the software solutions sector. This segment accounted for 13.5% of emerging companies active within the region, representing the largest slice of the overall market. Software solutions were swiftly followed by electronic commerce (e-commerce) with 11%. This sector, in particular, has always been at the forefront of a number of emerging companies in the Arab region over the last few years. Lastly, the financial solutions technology sector took third place with 9.4%. It’s tipped to become the fastest-growing business sector over next few years.

The stages of development of startups

According to the life cycle of startup financing in the MENA region, the first phase, known as the Seed stage, accounts for 31.4% of companies, which is the highest percentage of those seeking funding in the region. The second highest proportion of companies were in the initial financing stage (29%), followed by the first financing round at 18%. Those in the second and third rounds of financing represented 4.5% and 2.4% of startups respectively. Those financed by angel investors was about 14.7%, and this percentage perhaps indicates the increasing number of emerging projects reaching the first round of financing. With faster access to financing, startups can scale quicker and compete with established players in the market.

The impact of the epidemic on startups

The COVID-19 pandemic forced people to stay in their homes, directly impacting the travel and transportation sector. A third of the companies active in the transport sector within this region suspended their activities. Consequently, their revenues suffered a loss of around 75 to 100%. Furthermore, 25% of startups in the travel sector stopped operating completely, and 50% of them have subsequently suspended their business activities.

The lockdowns, uncertainty, and negative outlook for the economy have had a negative impact on 71% of startups, with 22% suspending their activities altogether. A further 21% of startups have witnessed a decrease in demand, which has led to large losses. On the other hand, most of the emerging companies in the field of delivery services (e-commerce), digital education, and digital health have benefited from a significant increase in the demand for their services, which has reflected positively on their revenues, particularly in the e-commerce sector.

Financing startups in light of the epidemic situation

The spread of the global pandemic has put a great strain on demand in international markets, which has led to a decline in oil that, in turn, has reduced the available resources of financing for startups. Most of the regional financing operations come from the oil-producing countries, especially the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which were affected by the drop in oil prices. The pressure on financing opportunities exposed most emerging companies to the risks of poor cash flow management. On the subject of financing rounds affected by the impact of the pandemic, the answers of the respondents to the questionnaire can be summarized as follows:

• 6% said that the epidemic affected their financing rounds.
• Of those 49.6% above, 44% said that their financing rounds were either stopped or canceled.
• 8% of the respondents said that their investment environment had improved.
• 1% said that their financing rounds were not affected by the epidemic.
• 5% of respondents said that they are not looking for funding, so they were not affected by funding from the epidemic.

In answering a question about whether investors were involved in the day-to-day operation of their business, the answers were as follows:

• 4% were unsure of the answer
• 1% answered no
• 5% said yes

Emerging companies respond to the epidemic

This section of the report discussed how the emerging companies responded to the pandemic, as the founders of the startups rapidly reassessed their priorities. The discussions were focused on how to expand and grow their products in view of the current situation, as well as adapting the work environment to ensure the continuity of the company’s work.

On the question of how to respond to the pandemic, most of the responses indicated a multifaceted approach, the most important of which was changing the work environment to become remote. Almost two thirds of respondents said that they moved to work from home (WFH) setups in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Other popular responses included taking the option to postpone expansion plans, reduce prices and introduce special offers. By contrast, a number of startups chose the option of reducing the number of workers, reducing wages and reducing working hours. Many other companies had a more positive response by exploiting the situation to launch new marketing campaigns, establish new partnerships with suppliers, and recruit new employees as part of their pandemic response.

When the authors of the report asked about the type of support that could help startups in continuing their businesses, it was found that more than half wished to obtain new investments or grants. The founders (who were included in the questionnaire) expressed their desire to obtain investment, loans, or assignment invoices to support the ecosystem of the startups within the region. The report concludes its findings in two axes, namely the affected sectors and then focusing on the conditions of three countries, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. But we will leave our analysis here, and let the reader download the full report from the source.

However, to conclude, we will summarize the three general points contained within this report.

The first point relates to the exaggerated pessimistic view of the macroeconomic expectations, which has been coordinated by many media outlets and local economists. It’s expected that badly-affected companies that have suffered great losses during the pandemic may decide to surrender and sell their shares to major companies at a very low price. The negative expectations for the future of economic growth in the world depends on incomplete data such as the drop in oil prices. Many felt the drop in oil prices would continue; leading to a situation that threatens the whole global economy. However, oil prices have risen since the beginning of May and reached 35 dollars per barrel after the oil producers agreed to reduce production. There’s also been major economic restoration to mitigate the widespread closures, as has happened in China and European countries recently.

The second point relates to the growth in various economic sectors such as the pharmaceutical sector, medical supplies, and the software sector. With the potential for further growth within other sectors, such as the educational sector and the electronics production sector, many investment theaters will continue to expand rather than decline. There are also a number of underdeveloped economic sectors that are expected to have a leading position in the future, stimulated by the achievements of the fourth industrial revolution.

Third and finally, the startups in the region are built on fertile ground, full of investment opportunities and in which competition is weak and startups are encouraged by local governments. All of this leads us to conclude that the negative repercussions of this situation, due to the continued spread of COVID-19, also constitute an opportunity that can be exploited. Companies can use the ongoing scenario to learn how to adapt to the unusual conditions that are associated with low funding and weak demand. For example, many will benefit from the experience of crisis management while observing and learning from other startups that have managed to keep their business running, and in some cases, continued their expansion operations.

By Ayman Abualkhair

(Francais)

We are experiencing very special times, given the fact that the COVID-19 outbreak has reached 177 countries and regions and its spreading all over the world at an unpredictable pace.

This crisis has revealed our weakness as human beings, the imbalances that exist in many areas of our life, and the need to make serious reviews of our way to live. It shows more particularly the invalidity of the principle “every man for himself” should not lead to the well-being for anyone.

This crisis shows the unity of mankind's destiny and human brotherhood in an unprecedented way. The risk facing an individual or a community can affect everyone regardless of places, ethnicities or national and religious affiliations.

Coronavirus has completely changed our way of life, it is no longer as before: shopping queues, no more gatherings at school, there are no more children who play at the playgrounds, no more meetings at work, no more mass celebrations, no more physical contact with friends or even with relatives ... Coronavirus has banned all kinds of humans gatherings!. Everyone must fear for his own person, we are living hard times. But this pandemic disease also offers the opportunity for everyone to think deeply about his/her life, what he/she did and what he/she should do today and tomorrow. Above all, we must ask ourselves, why we are not prepared for such pandemic virus, when we have accumulated unprecedented scientific knowledge in many fields?!. Bill Gates said in 2015, during a TEDX conference, that the real danger to humans is not an atomic bomb but rather a virus! It is without doubt that we have to invest more resources into health protection and the well-being of human being.

The catastrophic consequences of Coronavirus on the world economy require immediate actions from decision-makers around the world, to protect the local economies, mainly SMEs, from collapsing.

I hope this worldwide crisis will be a catalyzer to a collective work in order to achieve a better future for everybody.

Stay safe, stay home!

More than three months on since the emergence of the coronavirus, talking about the high demand for products of the digital economy is no longer a predictive matter, but rather a reality. Since the first half of February, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has displayed huge gains.

It’s not only Chinese companies active in the digital economy who have made gains, but also the shares of digital companies situated around the world. All of this is quietly sneaking under the radar of global news outlets who favor darker news. Those unhelpful bulletins initiate a sense of "panic" that limits the ability of startup owners and small businesses to think about the possibility of adapting and exploiting opportunities presented by these temporary conditions.

Nationwide lockdowns have led to the necessity of searching for alternative services that can be provided through smart phone applications and online platforms. Economists have tried to explain away the gains of digital companies, as a result of these new realities. However, since the coronavirus pandemic is not the end of the world, the emergency situation will soon disappear, just as is the case in China. Life in the Chinese province of Hubei (which was the initial epicenter of the spread of the coronavirus pandemic) is returning to normal, so does this mean that the markets will later suffer a correction within a few months, at the least, within a year? As far as equipment and medical clothing companies are concerned, the most likely hypothesis is that demand for their products will decrease with the decline of the virus spread. As for digital companies, it is likely that they will continue to grow. This hypothesis can be adopted for the following three reasons:

First: the growth of unconventional services via Internet

During the last few months, a group of online services that did not exist before and others that were less common in lower-demand markets for digital services appeared. One such service is provided by Peloton for home training bicycles, which has the advantage of communicating with other trainees via the internet. Demand for this service has increased by more than 50% during a record period, as well as the group viewing service launched by Netflix as an alternative to the cinemas that have closed their doors. We’ve also noticed a huge growth in telemedicine services. In this regard, it is expected that coronavirus will push people towards digitization at a rapid pace, which will lead to a shift in the health sector environment to become more digitized. Telehealth in a number of countries, especially Western ones, may not be new. The United States, for example, is already advanced in the process of digital transformation in the field of healthcare. But what’s changed is the speed and comprehensiveness of this transformation. The concept of digital health care is now spreading to new markets, such as across the Arab peninsula where telehealth is still an unconventional service.

Second: Investing in digital transformation

Despite the digital transformation underway at many companies around the world, the vast majority of companies still rely on the traditional work environment which lacks the flexibility to continue working under the current circumstances. This has forced the companies to accelerate their process of digital transformation, such as transferring the work of their employees to homes, the adoption of cloud computing technology, remote meeting technologies, the adoption of electronic stores and digital marketing, and many other digital transformation measures. Of course those services are not free of charge, and it requires companies to bear the brunt of those costs. Universities in Australia provide a perfect example of this. Many universities that receive international students from China have been forced to equip their facilities with distance education programs for international students who have been forced by ongoing circumstances to return to their countries. By making this rapid investment in digital transformation – after the cessation of the coronavirus pandemic – companies cannot simply abandon those investments. They will continue to use them, which is also another reason why digital products will continue to grow in the future.

Third: The experience of changing the work environment and consumption

The experience factor is related to the previous two factors, as companies now discovering the benefits of the digital business environment will continue to develop their digital business model and abandon many traditional business methods. As for consumption, the change is manifested by changing consumer behavior. Millions of consumers did not have any previous experience with the products of digital companies, such as learning, telemedicine, delivery services, and electronic products. The fact that consumers have now experienced consumption through the internet will enable digital companies to enhance their customer base. "The economy of quarantine," (as it is called in China) will develop new consumer habits, as people who have to the opportunity to experience digital services today may become permanent customers in the future.

In spite of the pessimistic news about slowing global growth, the Chinese experience so far shows more positive signs. After the COVID-19 pandemic receded in China, shops are witnessing an increase in their sales volumes above levels recorded in the same period last year. This is an early indicator of the possibility of markets auto-correcting in the period immediately following the end of the health emergency. As the Chinese experience indicates, companies that are now adapting their businesses through digital transformation will achieve future gains, by exploiting the “pent up demand” caused by the period spend under lockdown conditions.