Arun ShankarJohnny, tell us more about Blockobi and its solutions?
I have been in digital transformation now for 20+ years and have previously built and sold multi-million AED businesses that delivered digital solutions for 450+ companies across 25 industry classes, including 350+ of them locally here in UAE.
Dubai has been my home for the last 11 years and it only made sense for Blockobi to be based in Dubai because we support the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, of the Government being on Blockchain by 2021, including reducing over 50% of paper based or non performing Government transactions.
Blockobi is designed to be the ‘go to’ Blockchain, AI & IoT advisory and development agency for enterprise level operations in the GCC region. Our focus is on providing innovative solutions for Government, quasi-Government and tier 1 level organisations.
The landscape is currently filled with numerous emerging solution providers in Blockchain. What makes Blockobi unique or different?
Our approach and service delivery model is primarily focussed on our commercial client’s core business objectives; improve bottom-line and generate more revenue. We work very closely with our client’s operations and strategy teams to really nail down the use case within their organisations that add value by being on Blockchain (and or integration) with AI or IoT. This aspect we really do believe makes Blockobi very unique, whereas most suppliers in this space go directly into technical build we have continually seen that by getting ‘under the hood’ of the client’s commercial needs and deeply understanding their business and constituent operational parts results in building and deploying many more successful and innovative projects into the market.
The Blockobi team is also driven to ensure that Blockchain and other innovative solutions are (and absolutely should be) driven by commercial and c-level professionals and their business objectives thus evolve beyond the current command of ‘Techies’. Of course, we are ‘techies’ AND business leaders that know how to effectively communicate exactly how our solutions can make our client’s products and services faster, smarter, build value, or gain a better competitive edge in the market. It’s absolutely imperative that commercial and strategy teams lead the way forward in IT innovation. By enforcing this approach at Blockobi we can really see this is where amazing opportunity for the future resides, and that is very exciting.
This year has been very favourable for Blockobi, especially in the UAE because of the country’s vision, committed support and promotion towards the innovation sector. Secondly, commercial adoption fuelled by the understanding of how Blockchain & Smart Contract technology can provide benefit has driven strong commercial interest towards Blockobi.com and our suite of services.
How is Blockchain disrupting modern-day enterprises?
I really have a distaste for the term ‘disruption’, it only ever was and only ever will be innovation. Professionals or enterprises that get ‘disrupted’ are the ones that didn’t pay attention to new ways of doing things that could keep them relevant in the business marketplace whom then get taken out by some garage based young buck entrepreneur. I would prefer to have the label applied here and have it rest with lazy, inefficient enterprises who quite rightly should be ‘disrupted’ because they disregarded how to continually give more value to their employees, customers or client base.
What is your ‘go to’ market strategy, and tell us about your major partnerships?
Our overall strategy is aiming at Government, Quasi-Government, and tier 1 level enterprises. We are exploring some major partnerships with Infrastructure, Telecommunications, Banking, and Finance leaders. We are also currently engaged in real estate, supply chain, asset logistics, and trade financing Blockchain initiatives. The interesting sectors we see are the traditional ‘non digital sectors which have never really been through too much of a digital IT revolution but could greatly benefit by catching the Blockchain wave early on.
What is your roadmap for the year 2018?
It is no secret we want Blockobi to be an exceptional company and that’s why our roadmap for 2018 is to keep on-boarding exceptional talent. I am a big ambassador of intelligence in people, ideas and fostering creativity. We want to build and protect our reputation in UAE for providing quality, and continually refine our Blockchain, Ai and IoT delivery models for the benefit of our clients. The coming year is about steady growth in the business, as I would like to see my business around for 20-30 years.
