Samih Toukan is one of the founders of www.Maktoob.com, the world's first Arabic e-mail service and most popular Arabic language website, with more than four million subscribers. He tells Lorraine Chandler how the internet is revolutionising the Middle East.
You would think an up-and-coming internet tycoon would be nerdy and bespectacled, somewhat along the lines of Bill Gates of Microsoft or Jerry Yang of Yahoo.com.
So it's surprising to discover that Samih Toukan is an Arabic version of Nicholas Cage. He's tall, good-looking and well-built and there's something edgy about him, a mixture of keen intelligence, a wicked sense of humour and barely disguised passion.
Relaxing on the sofa, he exudes charisma and charm, yet behind this lurks the sharpness of a man who knows what he wants, and will make sure he gets it.
This is what has got 37-year-old Toukan to where he is today - as one of two partners who run the world's most popular Arabic website, while also acquiring some of the best Arabic websites for the Maktoob group.
After completing an engineering degree at University College, London, in 1990 and a master's degree in business from the Hautes Etudes Commerciales at Jouy en Josas, France, in 1992, Toukan worked as a trainee for Ecco employment agency in Paris for about five months.
Ecco asked him to set up an office in the Middle East, but in the meantime he had been offered a position with Anderson Consulting Group in Amman, Jordan.
Toukan had always intended to return to his hometown eventually, so he decided to try it. He loved the job, working with different businesses and showed his skill in enterprise. It was then that he ran into Hussam Khoury, an old friend who'd grown up with him in Jordan. Khoury was working for Anderson in Canada.
After two years at Anderson, Toukan persuaded Khoury to return to Amman with a plan to start their own company. In 1994, the two opened Business Optimisation Consultants (BOC).
Their first project was for Fadi Ghandour, the CEO of Aramex, a Jordanian global delivery company. They re-engineered the company's concept of teams so that each team
was responsible for separate clients. They also upgraded Aramex's IT facilities.
It was a tough field offering programming and systems consulting.
"Management consultancy wasn't mature and, in fact, it still isn't," Toukan says. But the company grew and after four years, it had 30 employees.
The internet had meanwhile come to their attention, although it was not available in Jordan or the Middle East at the time. Toukan and Khoury had to dial up long distance so that their phone bill would sometimes come to $4,000 (about Dh14,700) a month.
I express shock at the figure, but Toukan explains, "Those early investments were well worth it because we learned all about the internet well before anyone else."
Khoury and Toukan looked at the success of hotmail.com and asked, "Why isn't there an Arabic language e-mail?" Most successful ventures - and many unsuccessful ones - seem to start with a question and the pair worked hard to provide a solution.
"We wanted to create a new brand in the region, something that would add value to the Arab world. Everyone else was just importing from outside," Toukan says.
Even though the internet had not yet taken off in the region, it was clear to them that it was only a matter of time and that e-mail would be the vanguard of the technological revolution. They launched Maktoob.com in 1998 as a project within BOC, providing the world's first Arabic e-mail service.
By 1999, Maktoob.com had garnered 10,000 subscribers. It attracted Arabic speakers who either could not or did not want to use English language websites and e-mail services and were keen to use a website where they could communicate in their own language - maktoob means message.
By 2000, this figure had grown to 100,000.
Toukan and Khoury had kept BOC going as their bread and butter, but Maktoob.com had become their passion. At the time, Toukan made contact with EFG-Hermes, an Egyptian investment company. EFG was excited about the website and decided to inject $2.5 million (about Dh9.19 million) into BOC.
Toukan and Khoury then opened a new company, Maktoob, which bought out BOC. They were able to pull out of the consultancy business while transferring its skilled workforce to work on Maktoob.com.
The investment enabled the company to grow and Khoury set up an office in Dubai Internet City in 2000. By 2001, Maktoob.com had one million subscribers and in 2003, the company started returning a profit and now has $8 million (about Dh29.4 million) in capital.
Seven months ago, they decided to get more funding through UAE-based Abraaj Capital, as they are on the acquisition path, snapping up smaller Arabic websites. In addition to its flagship website, the company also runs Souq.com, Strategiy.com, Adabwafan.com and CashU.com.
You may not have heard of Toukan before reading this article but you'll be hearing about him many times in the future. The public face and business mind of Maktoob.com, he's going to have a big impact in the Middle East.
I
I'm really happy with what we've done. It's a great achievement but there's still a lot to do. The internet is a new media. I don't like it when people think we're an IT company, because we're actually a media company. The internet is like satellite TV. Our audience is bigger than the population of some countries in the region, but it's multicultural and multi-ethnic.
I'm very stubborn and I don't give up easily. But of course every trait has a good and bad side. If I see a fault in myself and recognise that it's a problem, then I work to change it.
I'm now less stubborn than I used to be, but that's probably Hussam's calming effect on me. I used to get very worked up about problems, but now I've learned that any problem can become an opportunity.
I'm a Pisces and a very warm, emotional person. At work, I try to be democratic and sell my ideas rather than enforcing them on others. I'm quite serious in the office but I like my employees to be relaxed; our office [in Amman] is based in my grandfather's old house so there's a homey atmosphere and we even have table tennis there.
I love the fact that we have created a brand name. Even in Malaysia they have heard of Maktoob.com.
I am younger (in mind) than my real age. [I feel and act younger than a 37-year-old.] While I'm serious at work, I really know how to enjoy myself in the evenings. I believe in working hard but also playing hard.
Me
Me and my family:
I came from a very academic background. My father, Abdel Rahman, did a PhD in economics in the US and went on to head Jordan National Bank until he retired. My mother, Suha, graduated from Oxford and worked in the semi-government sector.
My sister, Joumana, is a lawyer while my other sister, Randa, is a banker. I thought of going into banking but I figured we had enough bankers in the family.
Me and growing up:
Coming from such a background, I was bright but never studied more than I had to. Instead, I was always outdoors playing football. I liked maths and logic and hated literature with a vengeance until I was older. I hated the traditional way of memorising knowledge and preferred more practical work.
In 1985, my family sent me to boarding school at Sevenoaks in London, where I did my A-levels. Although my father had been educated in the United States, he favoured the UK for [his children's education].
My [older] sister, Randa, was based in London at the same time so she was supposed to look after me. For the first week I used to call them in tears, begging them to take me home. But at the end of two years I was crying at leaving my friends behind. I adapt easily to whatever environment I'm in.
I was always fascinated by electronics and used to dismantle TVs and radios, so I started a bachelor's degree in engineering in 1987. It was a really tough course but I liked the independence of living away from home.
I think that's an important part of education and you can see a difference between people who were educated at home and those who were abroad. Living in the Arab world, you tend to depend on your family a lot. Having to cope alone helps you develop your personality.
After my degree, I decided to do a master's degree in economics in Jouy En Josas, near Paris. Instruction was in English but I loved living in Paris ? it's the most beautiful city in the world.
Me and consultant work:
When I was in Paris, I got a job offer from Citibank but I didn't want to be a banker. Around that time I went home for a family wedding and I happened to meet one of the top guys in Anderson Consulting Group in Jordan who asked me to join, so I did. I loved the work because it was so varied.
We were in a small office of four or five, which really suited me because I didn't see myself in a big company.
Me and my partner:
Hussam Khoury and I have known ach other since childhood, so it was great when we started a company together. We make joint decisions and we really complement each other.
I'm the aggressive risk taker whereas he's calmer, wiser and more cautious. Sometimes I get too excited about new projects and he tells me to take a week to mull them over. I would have made a lot more mistakes without him but he also may not have taken some decisions without me pushing him.
He works more on the technical side of the company, whereas I handle all the business elements, including acquisitions and finance.
Me and growing Maktoob.com:
Even when we got a capital injection of $2.5 million (about Dh9.19 million) into the venture in 2000, we still had a cautious mindset. It was the height of the dotcom bubble and we didn't want do to anything hastily.
[We figured] it was a new industry and we shouldn't overspend because there wasn't really any revenue yet. At the time we had a competitor - Arabia.com. It had received $25 million (about Dh92 million) funding as a portal but ? it eventually went out of business. In fact, we only spent $1 million (about Dh3.68 million) of that initial capital. We didn't do mass advertising but participated in exhibitions and hired good people.
We also invested money in better technology so we could improve our output. As the company grew, we got a second round of funding from Abraaj Capital and started to develop some new products. We started Souq.com in Jordan and the UAE and that's going to be another success story.
It's a strong brand and the media like it, which is always a good indicator. The media liked Maktoob.com because the Arab world is constantly being exposed to bad news and people want to hear something good. The website has been praised for keeping the Arabic language alive.
In the case of Souq.com, the site enables individuals and businesses to buy and sell in an auction environment. Women in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere are able to work from home. In Irbid, Jordan, one of our sellers is a blind university graduate who amazingly uses special software to buy and sell things. The site has only been operating for six months in the UAE but it has a big future.
Me and censorship:
Censorship is an obstacle to the growth of our business, but we have to be stay in the middle. We try to extend the barriers as much as we can.
Maktoob.com was the first Arabic blog provider and there are now thousands of blogs in Arabic. We try as much as possible not to censor, but people also have to comply with our terms and conditions and things such as racist language and insults are not allowed.
At the same time, we have to adhere to the laws in each country. For example, we can't allow Souq.com to sell radar detectors because that's illegal here.
Myself
You've gained a lot of acclaim for setting up such a hugely popular Arabic language website, yet you were educated in Europe. How strong are your Arab roots?
I have a strong feeling of being Arabic. I feel more Arab than Jordanian and I want to help my 'country'. After my education, I wanted to come back and achieve something in the Arab world.
Seventy per cent of Arabic internet users are not comfortable reading and writing in English so our site has enabled them to join an online community of Arabic users. The idea is similar to Al Jazeera. People like to communicate in their own language. People laughed at us in the beginning but we've turned out to be right.
The internet has brought people closer, so that Maktoob.com is not Jordanian, it's Arab. We have a lot of users in North Africa, although we never even marketed it there.
The Arabic language is the biggest unifying force in the region and that has helped us grow. There are a lot of similarities between the different cultures in the region. I think we need to ? create some more of our own success stories. I feel that being educated in the West helps people build a bridge between (the two) cultures.
Many people are hesitant about using credit cards on the internet. What have you done
to combat that?
That's true. Added to this hesitation, few people in the Arab world have credit cards. So we joined up with banks to create a special prepaid cash card called CashU.
Users just have to open a cash account, fill it with the amount they want, buy a CashU card at post offices or supermarkets and then buy whatever they want online. Four hundred merchants are now using it, and there are over 30,000 CashU card users.
What's the future of the Maktoob group?
We are expanding very fast and had four or five acquisitions in this last year. We now want to grow [to] 10 times [our present size] in the next two years. We are looking at more partnerships while also improving our content. We've become a regional group but also need to look at adding more local material. We are even thinking of adding material for Arabs in America.
We're very happy with developments like sportupjordan.com and bintelhalal.com. We're also developing strategiy.com, which is a UAE-based business website and we are working on more Arabic content. Although Maktoob.com has gained most of its popularity for its Arabic language content, it also has an English interface so we want to improve that.
On the other hand, Souq.com is only in English in the UAE right now, so we need to work on the Arabic interface.
We recently completed an acquisition with Aramex of Adabwafan.com. An Arabic version of Amazon.com, it will allow people to buy Arabic books, regardless of where they are in the world.
We revamped the website and now it has a traffic of 400,000. We also recently acquired an 80 per cent stake in Sport4Ever.com, a Saudi and Arabic sports channel.
Is marriage a priority for you at the moment?
Despite a lot of pressure from family, I haven't met anyone I'd like to marry. I like the idea and it would be great to have kids one day, but right now I work hard and I don't think it would be fair to anyone.
We used to have a marriage section on Maktoob.com but we didn't know how to manage it properly, so instead, the Maktoob Group acquired a very popular Egyptian marriage service site, www.bentalhalal.com. It supplements the whole Maktoob philosophy of bringing people together and is very successful and profitable.
