Is Corruption Good for Business?

Posted on 9 December 2010 by Andrzej Zwaniecki

Believe it or not, corruption can help entrepreneurs in some situations. Some research points out that bribes can grease the cogs of bureaucracy in highly regulated economies and make it possible for entrepreneurs to achieve their goal of starting a business. But make no mistake: in general, corruption is a deterrent to potential entrepreneurs, and countries should strive for less regulation rather than more corruption.
In sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and other regions with widespread corruption and difficult business climates, the entrepreneurial spirit is often stifled, and when it is not, entrepreneurial energy is channeled into informal sectors outside formal legal and financial systems. Unregistered firms may thrive: in some countries the informal sector makes up around 40 percent or more of economies. But such businesses don’t contribute much to the public welfare as they don’t pay taxes and sometimes pose a danger to the public. Informal businesses themselves rarely if ever are capable of reaching their growth potential because of impediments of an informal economy: “higher capital and transportation costs, more storage problems, greater difficulty hiring quality staff and less ability to enforce contracts”.

Countries that want to tap entrepreneurial energy start with relaxing their regulatory regimes. This reduces the potential for corruption. For example, according to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2011 report, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Hungary have made significant progress in deregulating their economies, thereby improving conditions for starting a business. This promotes much stronger economic growth than the opposite strategy – increasing regulation and counting on entrepreneurs to make the system work by greasing the wheel.

From Humble Beginnings to Recognizable Brand in India

Posted on 23 July 2010 by guest

America.gov asked businesswomen in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India about their accomplishments. Then we asked their male employees or business partners to describe working with a woman.

Sandhya Volety, 35, is founder and co-owner of Wonders, an interior/exterior design firm in Hyderabad, India. Since opening the firm in 2005, she has turned into a readily recognizable brand.

Jagannath Kuppa is owner of construction company Rajdeep Builders. Initially, Kuppa, 39, was hesitant to partner with Volety. Five years later, the pair work in tandem to build, design and furnish properties.

Sandhya Volety

Sandhya Volety:
I wanted to do what would give me satisfaction and a chance to give back to the community. I wanted to create jobs and opportunities for others. In this country, when you create employment for one person, you’re feeding an entire family. Of my five full-time employees, three are male and two are female. I also employ about 35 contractors.

Initially, the male contractors couldn’t accept that a woman would be heading the team. They didn’t know how to communicate with a woman in a managerial position and wondered whether I could deliver results. But I showed them that I had the dedication and passion that they thought only men have.

From day one, I realized that I would be dealing with men at every stage of every project. I made sure they knew I was learning from them. Eventually, they began regarding me as part of a team, but it took me a year to earn their trust and respect. Often, men think that because women have too many other concerns, like family and housework, they can’t deal with professional duties. But they saw I was able to manage a good balance between my personal and professional lives.

When we decided to expand outside of Hyderabad, I realized it would be useful to offer our own product line. We worked in partnership with small manufacturers and rural artisans designing decorative house wares to achieve that. We’ve helped them grow by giving them a platform to market and sell their wares. It has been generating business for them and for us.

I also run a mentoring program for women. We teach them management and business skills, marketing, branding. It’s a forum for women to exchange ideas with one another on how to improve their businesses. This program is helping them start or re-start something for themselves — a professional career or small business.

I believe in teamwork and an open working environment. We discuss every issue, and everyone has a chance to initiate a project, as long as it’s in line with the company objectives. Everyone should share the same vision and invest in it. If I come up with an idea and my employees don’t agree with it, they say so. Because it is they who have to deal with its implementation or consequences.

Jagannath Kuppa

Jagannath Kuppa:
She’s involved from the moment we start conceptualizing a project. She’s actively shaping it, along with the architect.

For a woman to become an entrepreneur here is almost impossible. There’s a huge familial and societal resistance. There is almost no one willing to support financially a woman-owned business. Banks only recently started to lend money to women-entreprenurs, but an initial trickle is growing. It also is difficult for a woman here to balance personal and private lives.

Neither she nor anyone in her family had any previous business experience. She started on her own, with a meager budget. That she has come so far, that she has turned herself into such a good entrepreneur in five and a half years, it’s amazing.

The most surprising aspect of working with her was finding out how much women in India have to struggle to put things together on their own. Through the Ativa brand, rural artisans, mostly women, can sell their products. In tribal areas, they often make good quality products but have no way to market them. She’s an inspiration to these women and their single link to the investors and manufacturers.

When she approached me about working together, I first was apprehensive. I wasn’t sure how long she could survive, and if she could deliver results on time. And I didn’t know what kind of support from her I could count on. Now, her firm is an asset to my business, without a doubt.

Learn about women’s contributions to economies in South Asia.
Learn about how microfinance gives women opportunities.

Homeless Children to Human Capital

Posted on 28 May 2010 by guest

Ikuemonisan Banabas Ayobami recently attended the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington. Ayobami, 27, is president of Glimmer of Hope Foundation, an organization that empowers youth and improves adolescent health in Nigeria.

Paul Romer is a senior fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He specializes in economic development.

Ikuemonisan Banabas Ayobami

Ikuemonisan Banabas Ayobami:
I am the first of five children, all boys. We lived on $200 per month. My high school was so bad that we were taught English in Hausa — a local dialect. However, I was blessed to have a great father. He always told me I can be all I want to be. His words helped me to become a doctor, which was a long struggle.

In my country, Nigeria, years of corruption and bad leadership caused many to lose faith in the “Nigerian dream.” But my work as a social entrepreneur facilitates young people gaining the life skills to become self-reliant, make right choices and pursue their dreams. That eventually brings economic growth and less crime.

The work I describe began five years ago, when I, with others, started the Glimmer of Hope Foundation, while I was in medical school. We had an idea but no financial muscle. People thought our dream – to help Nigerian youth to be healthy and also to empower them to succeed in life – was grandiose. But today, we talk of spending close to 10 million naira this year on youth-funded projects.

The foundation helps homeless young people, some of whom have been involved in anti-social behavior as a means of survival. In South West Nigeria, we are bringing kids, between 9 and 15 years old, who are on the streets right now, back to school. We also give them vocational training. We have to keep young people from following bad leaders.

I see young people who do not believe they can amount to anything. A few years ago, one young man told me he could never go to the university. Now he’s in his final years studying for a degree in economics.

The young people in our country are intelligent and want change. They just need a push. They need to see someone like themselves, someone who came from poverty and became something. When they do, they follow that lead.

Paul Romer

Paul Romer:
Your blog post addresses an important issue. Human capital – the skills and knowledge embodied in the workforce – is central to economic development.

Unlike those who focus on specific job skills, you recognize that human capital also consists of important character traits. For example, the right education can instill in young people a sense of possibility instead of passivity.

Social norms – each person’s learned beliefs about what is right and wrong – are also part of human capital. Social norms influence our interactions with others. If the only available role models are the bad leaders to whom you refer, young people will internalize social norms that undermine Nigeria’s prospects. Your organization provides a much-needed alternative, offering a different standard of what is normal and right.

In the pursuit of human capital and economic development, changes in social norms are driving forces, not incidental side effects. Societies can get trapped by outdated or counterproductive norms that hurt everyone.

But societies can change. In the 1970s, Hong Kong dramatically reduced corruption in its police force partly by changing social norms. The government convinced citizens that police corruption is not normal or tolerable. As a result, ordinary citizens helped fight it by reporting requests for bribes to a special hotline.

Entrepreneurial organizations like yours play a role in the diffusion of more just and socially constructive norms within existing social settings. (With my new research non-profit, Charter Cities, I hope to convince people that newly chartered cities offer complementary opportunities to establish desirable norms in new social settings. In a sense, new cities can be like startup companies that establish new cultures.)

Working from both directions – reforming existing social systems and forming new ones – we can move all nations toward rules and norms that unleash everyone’s potential instead of holding them back.

Telecom Business Makes Money, Brings Peace

Posted on 18 May 2010 by guest

Nasra Malin is one of many entrepreneurs who recently attended the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington. She is co-founder and chief financial officer of NationLink Telecom, a phone company in Somalia.

Jennifer Bunting-Graden works as an associate attorney with a multinational law firm in Atlanta. She was born in Sierra Leone, where she is trying to set up a joint venture.

Nasra Malin

Nasra Malin:
I was one of six entrepreneurs who, in 1997, founded NationLink Telecom in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia… and the center of violence in our country. We were not sure if we would survive, first because there were three established telecom companies and, second, because the security challenge was tremendous.

But we invested in the business hoping to make profits and bring stability to our country.

NationLink has become a major telecom operator in Somalia, offering wireless and fixed-line services to 300,000 customers. It employs 1,500 people. With two other companies, we formed Global Internet Company, to provide Internet access.

Still, the fast-growing telecom industry in Somalia is fiercely competitive — competitors are hostile at times. Also, in a country with no strong central authority, we must protect our business. We have more than 600 security people, which is not the ideal solution. We know that someone somewhere will try to extort money if we need work done. We usually pay, because if we fight them, someone may get killed and, at the end of the day, the work may still not be done.

As the only woman among company executives, I face unique challenges. (In Somalia, women are rarely in business circles; you hardly see them at the executive level.) I was prepared though, because, when young, I worked at my family’s businesses and learned to think independently. At NationLink, I have tried to achieve the same or better results than my male co-workers. I led a middle-management team with little difficulty. This helped me to bring more educated women into the company.

I and other successful women want to be role models. We hope girls and young women in schools and universities, seeing us succeed, dare to search for new opportunities and feel empowered to seize them.

Jennifer Bunting-Graden

Jennifer Bunting-Graden:
Ms. Malin and other founders of NationLink Telecom have it exactly right that entrepreneurship, investment and job opportunities within a community can serve as a catalyst for peace and development. NationLink is an example of the new breed of homegrown entrepreneurial ventures in developing countries, which not only seek profits, but also embrace the responsibility for driving the development of their respective economies. Although NationLink has a profit-making purpose, its business by its nature helps facilitate peace by creating jobs, providing access to information and improving the quality of life. And just by being there in the middle of a chaotic environment in which the company operates may provide some measure of stability.

But dealing with challenges of security and poor infrastructure in countries affected by conflicts is no small feat, and adds to business ventures the dimension unknown to entrepreneurs in our country. As Ms. Malin indicates, basic institutions and processes vital to the success of any business such as the rule of law are less often the norm in countries that lack stability.

Ms. Malin’s personal story of success in a male-dominated environment and the positive impact her career has had on other women in her country illustrate another value of homegrown entrepreneurship. Women generally form the backbone of society in developing countries, and it follows that developing countries will be successful when local women are given the opportunity to reach their full potential.

From Libya to USA, Boosting Business Opportunity for the Blind

Posted on 17 May 2010 by guest

Omar Abdelaziz Abdelati al-Obeidi is one of many entrepreneurs in Washington recently for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. He directs the Vision Center, in Benghazi, Libya. He opened an Internet café for the blind in Benghazi and plans to open another in Tripoli.

Thomas Panek is vice president of National Industries for the Blind, the largest employer of blind people in the USA. He earlier served as president of the Chicago office of the World Trade Center and senior trade specialist for the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service.

Omar Abdelaziz Abdelati al-Obeidi

Omar Abdelaziz Abdelati al-Obeidi:
I have been blind since eye cancer took my sight when I was two years old. When I was nine years old, I intended to invent the world’s first car for the blind. (I have not realized that ambition yet, but I have not forgotten it.)

I have always believed that a blind person can function as well as a person with sight because his brain is as good as anyone else’s. But that view is not held by many in the Arab world, including the blind themselves. I graduated from high school at the top of my class in 1992 but was denied entrance into university because of my disability. This led me to go abroad for six years to study.

I have owned and operated several small businesses.

Now as director of Vision Center in Libya, I’m engaged in the business of training and providing computers and other resources to people with vision disabilities. Vision Center has achieved a number of things already, such as starting the first computer laboratory in Gaza and the first online library for the blind in the Arab world. This library is located in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. It enables the blind to read thousands of books, which were unavailable to them in the past. In 2009, Vision Center opened the first Internet café for people with impaired sight. We’re planning to open a second café in Tripoli in 2010. I am also on the board of directors of a foundation that supports a business incubator for the disabled. At present, I am seeking financing for a business project that was fostered by the incubator. I have been looking for a loan of $160,000 for ten months now.

Thomas Panek

Thomas Panek:
I am proud to learn of your Internet cafés that cater to the blind in Libya, Omar. Your experiences are not only the very definition of entrepreneurship, you are a “social entrepreneur,” creating social value through the improvement of goods and services offered to the community.

When it comes to businesses and blindness, the Arab world and the United States are not that far apart.

As a businessman, like you, I have worked in many countries, including the UAE, changing perceptions about the capabilities of the blind, but we have most of our work yet to do. My last trip to Dubai, my white cane was confiscated at the airport for lack of understanding. Recently, in Washington, I was prohibited from entering a business because of my Seeing Eye Dog. In the U.S., seven of ten working-age Americans who are blind are not employed.

Many Americans who are blind are gaining independence by joining the National Industries for the Blind (NIB), whose mission is to enhance opportunities for the blind by creating jobs. NIB is part of the AbilityOne Program, which helps more than 45,000 blind or disabled people find employment. The program coordinates with nonprofitts to provide goods and services to the federal government at fair-market prices.

Finally, it is not too late to realize your childhood dream to invent the world’s first production car for the blind…but you better hurry! Earlier this year, a university here, Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, created a vehicle that can be driven by blind people.

You and I are a world apart, but we both have courage gained from business experiences. Keep the ambitions you had when you were a child and apply them to your new venture.

Upstart from the West Bank Ponders Her Next Startup

Posted on 12 May 2010 by guest

Waed al Taweel is one of many entrepreneurs in Washington recently for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. When al Taweel was in high school in Ramallah, she started Teen Touch, a company that organizes special events. She has since sold the firm.

Before becoming chief executive of online shoe store Zappos.com, Tony Hsieh co-founded and then sold an advertising company to Microsoft Corporation.

Craig Newmark is founder of Craigslist Inc., an online classified ads company that is private and for-profit.

Waed al Taweel

Waed al Taweel:
When I was a high school student in St. Joseph’s School in Ramallah on the West Bank, I started my own business, named Teen Touch. It convinced me that entrepreneurship offers a way to relieve the hardships in the lives of Palestinian youths.

I speak from experience, although I am only 20 years old. I hired 28 classmates to staff the Teen Touch business. We specialized in organizing social events, such as birthday celebrations. We took care of all arrangements, from sending out invitations to renting the facilities to catering the food. In addition, we sometimes decorated buildings on holidays.

I entered Teen Touch in a competition for young entrepreneurs sponsored by the INJAZ organization, which trains young people in business skills in 12 countries in the Middle East and North Africa. I was named “best student CEO in the Arab world,” and Teen Touch was named “the best student company in the Arab world.” What great honors!

My next business plan – on hold until after I finish my university studies – is to build a recreation and entertainment center for Palestinian youths. The center will have a bowling alley, a skating rink, a miniature golf course, and a library with books and magazines from many countries. There is a big need for this kind of a center. Palestinian young people don’t have many places to spend their free time. It is usually in the streets or in their homes.

I know that launching this kind of a center will not be easy because it is difficult to get access to capital. But I have confidence that I can succeed through proper planning, adequate management and perseverance. (See profile article on Waed al Taweel).

Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh:
I love the idea of building a recreation and entertainment center for youth. My suggestion would be to have the young people help build it, which will give them a sense of ownership and accomplishment once it is complete.

In my upcoming book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, I write about one framework for happiness that consists of four elements: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (the number and depth of your relationships), and being part of something bigger than yourself.

Involving Palestinian teenagers in the design and construction of the youth center would hit on all four of these things. They would have a sense of control over what the youth center eventually looks like, which would cause them to be more likely to use the center once it has been built. They would be able to see the daily progress of their work. They would feel more connected to the other young people working on the project. And they would all be involved in building something that was bigger than just
themselves.

Their involvement doesn’t have to be limited to just design input and construction help. They could become part-owners of the business, or it could be set up as a co-operative. Over time, they could learn various skills such as fundraising (sales) and managing day-to-day operations.

Craig Newmark

Craig Newmark:
This effort to build a recreation center for Palestinian youth sounds really good to me. I don’t know much about the field, but I know part of the solution will be to start connecting with other folks, particularly in your target market in the West Bank. Start connecting with people via Facebook, Twitter, whatever works for you. In particular check out ArabCrunch.net.

If you want, email me at craig(at)craigslist.org, and I’ll do an e-mail introduction between you and Gaith Sager, who runs it. Anyone can e-mail me. If I don’t respond in, let’s say, 36 hours or so, e-mail me again. That should work.

It doesn’t hurt to try to reach out to a possible mentor. Most people will be understanding. If someone is not, he or she is probably not a good mentor.

A Woman’s Power Fuels an Electrical Company

Posted on 1 May 2010 by guest

Masooma Habibi is one of many entrepreneurs in Washington this week for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. Habibi is a co-founder of Check Up Co., an electrical engineering consulting business in Afghanistan. She shares managing the business with two other executives.

Kenneth P. Morse is founding managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. He also teaches at ESADE business school in Spain and the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Masooma Habibi

Masooma Habibi:
My family lived in a refugee camp in Iran when I was born. My father earned only little, so my mother, I and all my brothers and sisters wove carpets to survive. Our hands cracked and bled from the work.

When we returned to Afghanistan in 2008, I had hoped to study at university, but had to postpone my plans to help support my family. Yet, as a woman, I couldn’t get a job in the traditional community of Herat, where we settled. It wasn’t because of Islam – I am a Muslim – but because men look down upon women.

When all doors shut for me, Allah helped me.

From Herat, I went to Kabul and learned from people there of an international business-plan competition. The experience gave me self-confidence that many Afghan women, who are frequently ridiculed, lack.

I knew that no electrical power was a major issue in the country, so with my two brothers I started a firm providing consulting services in electrical engineering. It is called Check Up Company. Check Up provides consulting services to large customers, including international companies, and employs 22 people. We haven’t broken even yet, but eventually we want to be the Number 1 power company in Afghanistan and create more jobs.

At the beginning, we didn’t have money and were hampered by Afghani businessmen who didn’t want to work with me. But I have a strong will to achieve something better for myself, my community and my country. Today I am 23 and co-run Check Up with three male executives. I study international trade at the Dunya Institute of Higher Education. I run a nonprofit called My Hope, which aims to create jobs for 1,000 women in the provinces and help their children in the process.

My dream is to see fewer children with hands bleeding from weaving.

Albanian Fills the Shoes of a Successful Exporter

Posted on 27 April 2010 by guest

Donika Mici is one of many entrepreneurs at the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship from countries with sizeable Muslim populations, April 26-27. Mici is founder and chief executive of DoniAnna, a shoe company based in Tirana, Albania.

Bogdan Pukszta is executive director of the Polish American Chamber of Commerce in Chicago.

Donika Mici

Donika Mici:
When communism collapsed in Albania, the economic conditions were as bad as business opportunities were great. State-owned companies were going bankrupt, workers were losing their jobs, credit was unavailable, market regulations were still taking shape, and corruption and incompetence in the government were endemic. At the same time shop shelves were empty, labor was extremely cheap and competition was nonexistent.

When I took over a failing, state-owned shoe company 1992, I knew I had to be tough to survive in such an environment. I was one of the first Albanians, and certainly the first woman, to set up a private business.

As an economist, I knew that only exporting made economic sense at that time. However, Albania had been cut off from the outside world. Its telecommunications infrastructure was so outdated that identifying and getting in touch with potential buyers was a formidable challenge.

By hook or by crook, I managed to find and persuade Italian buyers, that, yes, Albania still existed and, believe me, Albanians could make quality shoes cheaply. My company, DoniAnna, hired 120 workers (including former engineers, professors and doctors) and started making shoes. We hired Italian specialists to train our employees and improve manufacturing operations so that we could meet international standards. Within a few years, DoniAnna was exporting hundreds of thousands pairs of shoes a year.

Most Albanian competitors manufacture at least part of their shoes in Italy to gain the cachet of a “Made in Italy” label. But I wanted to prove that a “Made in Albania” label isn’t an impediment to international success. Last year, I launched my own brand of shoes and today Macy’s, Bata, Aldo and Kenneth Cole are among my clients. With more than $20 million in sales in the first half of 2009 and 1,400 employees, DoniAnna is among the largest exporters in Albania.

I strongly believe in, and am proud of, the business I’ve created and opportunities it has brought to others, particularly in poor parts of Tirana, where my manufacturing operations are located. I look ahead with a desire to strengthen my business and improve the product.

Bogdan Pukszta

Bogdan Pukszta:
Donika’s story is beautiful, optimistic and encouraging. It is also familiar to me.

I met similar women in Poland about 20 years ago now, when the country was transitioning from state control to free markets and democracy. Although conditions in Poland and Albania at the end of the communist eras were quite different, entrepreneurs in both countries faced tremendous challenges, some of which Donika mentions. These entrepreneurs were able to overcome challenges thanks to private initiative, hard work, energy, creativity and street smarts.

Not all successful businesspeople from the former communist bloc have been able to break into international markets as Donika did. She must have special talents, which are appreciated by marketers and buyers around the world. But stories of successful businesspeople whose skills were dormant or suppressed by communism can be found in all countries that have chosen privatization and market-based systems. And one can only hope that some others won’t wait long to choose similar reforms and give a chance to their entrepreneurial people.

There is something about human beings everywhere, that if there is room for private ownership and free enterprise, it’s only a matter of time for success stories to emerge and for economic growth to occur.

I am a bit concerned though – as someone who now lives in the USA and cares about economic growth here – that as more countries decide to transition to capitalism and democracy, fewer people from those countries may choose to come here to realize their dreams. For centuries, such immigrants have boosted the workforce and economy of the USA.

On the other hand, as market forces around the world strengthen, America will gain more investment, business and trade opportunities overseas.

In Afghanistan, a Secret Startup Blooms

Posted on 26 April 2010 by guest

Kamela Sediqi is one of many entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship from countries with sizeable Muslim populations, April 26-27. Sediqi is founder and head of Kaweyan Business Development Services, a consulting firm in Afghanistan.

Michael Ducker is a market development specialist at J.E. Austin Associates, a business consulting firm that focuses on helping developing economies.

Kamela Sediqi

Kamela Sediqi:
During the Taliban era, to support my family, I started in secret a tailoring business, which at its peak provided income for more than 100 women. Later, I worked on different business projects with international development groups. When the Taliban regime fell, I started a construction company and enrolled into business management programs run by international organizations, such as Thunderbird University and Bpeace. With the knowledge gained from these programs, I started Kaweyan Business Development Services (Kaweyan BDS).

I started Kaweyan BDS, a consulting firm, in 2004 with one laptop and a slow Internet connection. Today, the firm employs 10 full-time workers and six part-timers in well equipped offices in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif.

I believe that private initiative can improve lives of both men and women in my country. Entrepreneurs here can use their skills and hard work to support their families and their communities. Those who become entrepreneurs also are more likely to afford investment in their children’s education, which means the next generation – both boys and girls – will have a wider range of career choices.

My firm teaches business skills to Afghans interested in starting their own companies. In 2009, working with international aid and development groups as well as the Afghan government, it ran training projects and hosted business events in nine provinces. In the same year, my firm was one of three Afghan companies selected to enter into a partnership with the World Bank’s IFC designed to run “Business Edge” in Afghanistan, an interactive learning program that aims to help managers improve their business and managerial skills. By participating in this program, we hope to grow our client base and expand entrepreneurship culture in the country.

My goal is to make Kaweyan BDS Afghanistan’s leading business development consultancy, with offices all around the country and the region. This is my contribution toward efforts to build a brighter future for my country and for the next generation of Afghanis.

Michael Ducker

Michael Ducker:
Ms. Sediki is what we call in the U.S. a serial entrepreneur, always able to find business opportunities even in the most difficult environment.

Kaweyan BDS has changed quite of bit over the last seven years, starting from general business training in areas like accounting and business planning and later focusing more on specific needs of entrepreneurs like how to fill out an application for a bank loan or how to implement World GAP standards, which certify agricultural products, so you can export your vegetables to Europe.

It is a joy to see catalysts like Kaweyan BDS supporting entrepreneurs to grow and create more jobs.

I think Ms. Sediki may get even more business by creating services that address entrepreneurship’s biggest constraints. A way to do this is to focus on a specific, large industry in Afghanistan, for example marble and granitite, and work on developing training on important issues like the use of proper cutting techniques.

Kaweyan BDS also might want to focus on helping to break down cultural barriers for entrepreneurs. From my experience of working with entrepreneurs in Pakistan, I know they have to deal with many cultural constraints. This might be that small- and medium-size business owners only do business with people of their own ethnic group or the inability of a young entrepreneur to get financing or enter into new markets.

One way to start breaking down these barriers is to facilitate contacts between different groups and bring them together based on business needs. For example, why not create an “angel network” through which successful Afghan businessmen offer small investment and advice to young entrepreneurs? This would be a great way for established businessmen to find higher return for their investment money and at the same time give young entrepreneurs what they need to grow.

Talking Turkey, by Phone

Posted on 24 April 2010 by guest

Fatih Isbecer is one of many entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship from countries with sizeable Muslim populations, April 26-27. Isbecer is founder and chief executive of Pozitron, a wireless communications company, based in Turkey.

Elmira Bayrasli is director of partnerships, policy and outreach at Endeavor Global, a nonprofit that identifies and supports high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

Fatih Isbecer

Fatih Isbecer:
When I was at a high school in Daytona Beach, Florida, as an exchange student from Istanbul, I was filled with an entrepreneurial spirit and loaded with different tech ideas. The year was 1993, and the U.S.A. was experiencing a technology revolution. I felt that this change would eventually affect Turkey. A few years later, back in Turkey, with some classmates from Istanbul Technical University, I started a small business that focused on Web projects. It was a kind of techies’ playground from which I “graduated” to a more serious – but not less fun – business.

In 2000, I started Pozitron, an R&D-based firm that develops enterprise, networking and security software applications for other companies. It took me a while to bring together the executive team — experienced senior managers are in short supply in Turkey. Once I did have executives in place, I was able to focus on the mobile telecom industry and do what I do best, which is come up with innovative solutions. One of Pozitron’s first hits was a mobile-phone application for the country’s only official sports betting game – Iddaa. Since developing that, we’ve broken into international markets with mobile-phone banking applications developed for Turkey’s largest private bank – Türkiye İş Bankası. The applications allow users to transfer money, trade stocks, pay bills and check balances from anywhere in the world.

In 2007, I was selected a high-impact entrepreneur by Endeavor, a non-profit that identifies and supports influential entrepreneurs. A year later, Pozitron won the Global Business Plan Contest organized by the Harvard Business School for a plan that focused on an integrated, mobile-banking product. It was launching this application in the same month a large U.S.-based multi-national bank released its own version that gave me a huge satisfaction.

As more people are starting businesses or doing trade, mobile telephone communication has even a more significant role to play in helping them overcome obstacles and grow their enterprises. Brand new applications and services are emerging, including Pozitron’s mobile airline ticketing and check in. My ambition is to participate in shaping the future of this industry and, together with my Turkish friends and rivals, dispel the myth that the high-tech sector in Turkey doesn’t exist.

Elmira Bayrasli

Elmira Bayrasli:
As the daughter of Turkish immigrants, I spent much of my childhood visiting Turkey. It was a place I didn’t want to go. There were many reasons for that, including rolling blackouts and no television. The most important was no telephones.

The telephone was important to me. That’s how I kept in touch with my mother and my father, who wasn’t able to stay with me for the duration of our summer-long trips. “I’ve got to go back to work,” he’d tell my teary five-year old self. “But I’ll call you, okay?”

Except he couldn’t call us. My grandmother, like most Turks, didn’t have a phone – not because she couldn’t afford one, but because Turkey’s infrastructure didn’t allow for it. Phone calls could only be made at the post office. Even then there was no guarantee of securing a working line. Thankfully that is no longer Turkey’s situation.

Today, Turks are creating technologies that have attracted world attention. Pozitron is one of those companies. And Fatih Isbecer is one of those entrepreneurs helping redefine entrepreneurship in Turkey.

With a highly educated work force and globally oriented citizenship, Turkey is home to promising young talent, a strategic geography and tremendous resources. Fatih Isbecer recognized it and started his own high-tech company. It worked not only to create jobs, but to inspire other Turks to see themselves as innovators. Turkey used to turn to the West for the latest technologies. Today Turkey is at the cutting edge, pioneering new solutions not only for Turks, but for the world as well.

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