Tesco homeplus opened a virtual grocery store in a south korea subway station, where users shop by scanning QR codes on their smartphones

Billboard depicting actual supermarket shelves

A large, wall-length billboard was installed in the station, designed to look like a series of supermarket shelves and displaying images and prices of a range of common products. each sign also includes a QR code. users scan the code of any product they would like to purchase, thereby adding it to their online shopping cart. after the web transaction is completed, the products are delivered to the user’s home within the day.

the strategy makes productive use of commuters’ waiting time, while simultaneously saving shoppers time spent going to the supermarket.

video footage documenting the concept and actualization of the virtual supermarket

For more info, visit: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/15557/tesco-virtual-supermarket-in-a-subway-station.html

Due to the increase of online stores in Kuwait, I thought of sharing info about visa/master card and knet gateway options in Kuwait.

This post is about online payment and not in a physical store.

Ok knet is simple and can be installed with most banks in Kuwait, as an online payment service.  But to do so you need a company account. They would charge about 350KD one time fee and no monthly fee. Another charge would be 1% on every transaction.

With Visa/master card you have to pay the same amounts but with a monthly fee of 40KD and a transaction charge of 3%. But not all banks have such a facility online. I know that NBK and Burgan both provide  the service, and I do not recommended Burgan because there service is horrible.

This is a new software that you can sign on using our styles pens, i think its a great technology but how legal is this in Kuwait? I would love to use this with digumz.com and become even more paperless business.

Softsign allows you to open PDF files and to add signatures by signing directly onto the screen with your finger or a stylus. You can then email the document directly from the App or send it to a third party App.

Watch how Netflix operations runs, remember that this only works when the mail system runs efficiently.

The idea behind 6alabt is simple, it’s like the google of food. But when users start growing and restaurants increasing on 6alabat this is where things become tough to manage. 6alabat has a 8 different departments and each department had 2- 3 employees except the operation. They got Operations, IT, Sales, Collection, Business Develepment, Finance and admin and the Saudi branch has 3 employees.  Mohammed Jaafer explained to me how things now are all automated and that everything can be tracked from customer request to the restaurant, they can even know if the restaurant has received and processed the customer order. When 6alabt started in April 2004 the orders would come in by email and the guys running it would just call “lets say hardeez,  Listen ya basha, there is an order for a guy called blah blah and wants one super deluxe meal and his address is….. and don’t forget the cookie”:P

6alabat got established by two guys in April 2004, and they had 43 orders in one month! Today 6alabat receives 2000 per day!, yes per day. Today 6alabat has about 135,000 users. Mohammed has done some smart moves, by registering the 6alabat logo and name worldwide. So nobody can just come and use the name or the logo.

When I say Mohammed has a vision, I mean he sees 6alabat.com further than the Kuwaiti boarders, he has established now 6alabat in Saudi Arabia and has his eyes  on Qatar, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, then slowly to Syria, Iraq. Off course this will require resources and man power, international legal teams but with its expected growth I think it’s going the right way.

I can safely say that many have used 6alabat.com, I have been very interested in the online business in Kuwait and even more when it changes or gets shifted to a new level. I know that 6alabat.com has made that shift, a change that took it from a small company with basic technology into a Small to medium sized company  that has plans for the future. The guy behind this shift is Mohammed Jaafer. I knew Mohammed for a while but after meeting with him yesterday, I saw a man with a vision. He is quite young too. Mohammed studied in the UK and when he got back to Kuwait, he worked in the corporate banking sector. He always had an eye for starting in the food business. So he setup the restaurant The Kitchen, located in Shaab area. The restaurant was selling high quality food and with a delivery option. Mohammed explained how he struggled to maintain the restaurant, and that he had many ups and downs. He sez that many think starting a restaurant is easy and can make you successful fast but after he went through the experience he knew it was otherwise.

So in his search of trying to increase sales in his newly established restaurant the Kitchen, he was told about 6alabat.com and that it will increase his sales. He approached 6alabat.com and was not really sure that it might help, but when you’re in desperate times you try to find any solution to increase your sales. He was told before using 6alabat.com that it may backfire, because due to the large volume of sales he will receive, he said in his mind “naaaah” not believing that from slumped sales and 1 delivery car, that 6alabat.com would make him get 4 delivery cars and cant keep up with the demand and all of that for 400fils per order.  The kitchen pays 200 fils and the customer ordering pays the other 200fils.

This become the eye openers for Mohmmed, where he started thinking of acquiring 6alabat.com, you see these corporate banking fellows, get taught to think in many options. Like why start a business from scratch, you can buy the business and build on it. I think Mohammed made a sound investment, after he has consulted and managed to convince his family about the decision to buy 6alabat.com. There was a long period of negotiations between the old owners and Mohammed. But at the end they both met at the same point and a transaction was made. I know only two E- business in Kuwait that went throw such a transaction: 6alabat.com and q8car.com.

The rest will be continued in other posts:

Growth of 6alabat.com

Managing 6alabat.com

Change and innovation in 6alabat.com

6alabat.com future

Where are we heading

Ok am no economist but I always read the latest business news and trends, and I have been seeing a trend growing now for some time. You may relate to what I say in some way or another but this is where we are heading as global business.

Sharing is the keyword for the next 10 years (I think), we will share everything you can imagine. And with this sharing will come more decentralization of any system that is locking us within it, when I say us I mean social us: people or citizens of a country. Example, when we take a loan, or deposit money we have to go throw a system; the banking system. Not anymore, payments are being made between people and removing the bank (Paypal), not completely yet. When taking a loan in the US or the UK, there is a site called Zopa where you take a loan from people you do not know personally, yes the amount has to get deposited in a bank but the bank has no control over the interest any more, you pay the person who lent you now. Peer to Peer methodology is moving into everything, movies, music, now money. Another new idea coming out is Ripple (My partner Ahmed Hajeyah pointed out to me), where it uses peer to peer to transfer money between people, the banks are out again. People are accepting to share cars in business like Zip Car. Now forex transactions and currency exchanges are being conducted by excluding the banking system like KlickEX

So as you can see many examples are out there, and when following such system, the economic system and legal channels we are use too may change, these barriers are dropping and no more corporation have control over them (but not Digumz:P).

So viva la vida for the internet. It may become the 21st century Che Guevara.

After the Small to Big (Kings college London) class, I started getting interested in Social networking websites. From there onwards I always had an idea lingering in my mind to start a social networking site. I know many are saying it requires hundreds of thousands of KDs and many IT developers but that’s all achievable if you have the right working mix. I DON’T!

So after I wrote my idea on paper, I contacted the professor at Cranfield university who was teaching us in November 2011 about social network sites. Tazeem Rajwani is very interested in such projects and have worked with many social startups in the UK. He read my brief and thought it was good (Mark Zuckerberg watch out)!! Eshfeeeh I think it sucked like hell but he was worried about my feelings. Anyways I learned a lot from him again and I will give you the summary of his points:

1)      It has to target a niche market, examples like Human resources, football fans, food lovers etc etc

2)     Transaction value, I like this word: this means that the social site I create must provide some kind of value to the end user. Where he benefits when using it and it already makes a job even cheaper or less of a cost on the user, example LinkedIn where it’s cheaper for HR people to use than hiring a head hunter.

3)     Barriers of entry, how fast others can copy you, if you just started out with a budget and facebook comes and likes your idea, they can do it in days when it will take you months, its just a resources matter: he has many, I don’t.

4)     Revenue stream: how will you make money, somebody has to pay! There is no free lunch my friends.

I think I did not answer the 4 above questions. So am back on the drawing board.

Below is a pic from a company we have visited in central London, they recruit staff based on social networking methods, its called bravenewtalent.com

I tend to watch business news passively but some things just jump in my face, like the news that E-books sales have surpassed print! This is major game changers, why? Because if you’re in the selling books business then you know that this industry just ran over the cliff and the only way its heading is down. Then after you weep and think you lost everything, you can start thinking of shifting your model to downloads, most e-commerce sites provide download options now, 3 years ago this option was not widely available.

Another thing that amuses me is when I read news like Al Naser Sport shop just opened  its 61 branch! 61 more than most banks in Kuwait. Most banks have 50 branches and less, then you start thinking surely there is a large market for sporting goods. The way i think is then how can i bust this market with some model that i can create to take a chunk of its market share.(wayid emsadig nafsy) I can imagine the CEO of Nasser Sport thinking: ” that he is cornering the sports market in Kuwait and my logo is fab:P”. (logo needs to be changed badly) I do think they are doing a great job at it too. Some times these small pieces of news are indicators that show how markets are shaping too.

(image taken from bananaq8)

I say this because business modeling or model creation if incorporated with new technologies can make a profitable business, like the lulu printing shop that is all automated compared to the physical brick and mortar print shops. Image that with a simple button you can publish your book. Did i just contradict myself about the book industry’s:P.  So I think why not an ecommerce site to sell sport goods online in Kuwait and deliver them. Understand that new technologies are the catalyst of many industries, and that they can destroy a business in a very short period. A friend of mine told me, if you want daily news about Kuwait, follow these news broadcast on twitter instead of subscribing to these news sms service that charge you 500 fils a week. Here again twitter just made a service that is charging 500fils into free. Again these services are reaching the top of the cliff, sadly. 

It seem like National bank of Kuwait NBK site crashed due to the heavy load of customers try to see if they got the amiri grant got deposited. Well that anticipation of customer traffic should have been predicted early that these coming days will have huge traffic on the bank sites.