07 Jul 2015

Stirring the nest, how ZAD Solutions flourished after losing 60% of its business!

When the eagle thinks that its eaglets have reached the maturity to fly on their own. It start stirring the nest, making it extremely uncomfortable to stay where they are used to and forcing them to make a move, to fly on their own, to hunt on their own and to venture into the unknown.

As I got to his room, I could see the Business Model Canvas hanging on the wall with a business model for a new product they are preparing to relaunch for the 3rd time.

He looked quite reserved about risk and mentioned his preference to do extremely well calculated moves — never blame an engineering for it — he even mentioned at the beginning of venturing into business he prefered to be a chicken entrepreneur, to work on his ideas while still keeping a full time job.

But after gaining a lot of maturity and domain expertise through trials that started 1996 with a web design house, Ahmed El Moualled, now CEO and Co-founder of ZAD Solutions decided to pull the plunge and venture into building ZAD Solutions after starting to attract big clients.

He tells the story with a smile I started recognizing once you take entrepreneurs through their own journey, with a bit of surprise of how someone as reserved and risk-averse like him would to be forced to go through that and still survive and grow.

December 2009, by the time ZAD Solution was getting 60–70% of its business from a main client, the client decided to stop its operations and suspend the contract. Stripping ZAD Solutions off 60–70% of its business and leaving El Mouallad, who always believed in extremely calculated steps to face the storm on his own.

Now El Moualled, enters a new phase, he is forced to downsize the company, keeping only 50% of employees, a very painful exercise, and he has to struggle monthly on making the payroll, something most entrepreneurs I interviewed could relate to at some point along their journey.

Though, despite the painful reality of this phase, ZAD Solutions was forced to grow strong business development wings, as acquiring new clients was the only way to survive, ZAD Solutions was able to build a very efficient client acquisition process and increase the efficiency of getting things done with available resources..

Today, after 5+ years of this story, ZAD Solutions has done repeated business with over 100+ of Egypt’s top corporates, most of all had been acquired after being forced into business development to survive the challenge of losing 60% of its business.

Not only that, but El Moualled is taking it very seriously and systemically to increase the company’s valuation and launch ZAD Solutions’ own products, the business model hanging on his wall turned out to be for 3eyada, a Clinic Management System with aspiration to upgrade the healthcare industry in Egypt.

One of the clearest patterns in my interviews for Egypreneur’s Survival Guideso far, is how usually after this action that seems like killing you, with the right of resilience, faith and emotional intelligence you’d be able to turn this situation around and use it to grow and get closer to your vision.

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The details of this story will be shared at Egypreneur’s Survival Guide. Check more details and request an interview from https://www.egypreneur.com/survival