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Our team

The people you will work with.

NAAS Consulting is small by design: a founder with fifteen years of building companies and programmes in the Saudi innovation economy, working with in-house lawyers, a government relations officer and corporate consultants. The people you meet are the people who do the work.

Founder

Nawaf Attaf Abdulmalik Alsahhaf

Fifteen years building companies, programmes and founders at the centre of Saudi Arabia’s innovation economy.

Nawaf was the founding CEO of the Business Incubators and Accelerators Company (BIAC), part of the Public Investment Fund group through TAQNIA. BIAC runs technology incubators and accelerators and advises government and private bodies on programmes of their own.

Before BIAC he spent nine years at the BADIR Program for Technology Incubators and Accelerators, rising from business development to become its first CEO and supporting hundreds of technology startups on the road from research to company.

He founded NAAS Consulting to put that experience and network to work for international companies entering Saudi Arabia, where the right opportunity and the right partner matter more than the paperwork.

Highlights

  • Founding CEO, Business Incubators and Accelerators Company (BIAC), PIF group
  • First CEO, BADIR Program for Technology Incubators and Accelerators
  • Fifteen years in startup, SME and innovation programmes in the Kingdom
  • Helped secure Saudi Arabia’s chairmanship of the Arab Technology Incubators and Techno Parks Network, 2019–2021
  • Educated at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and the University of Strathclyde

Track record

What the programmes he led delivered.

Published results of the programmes he built and led at BADIR and BIAC, each shown with its source.

Technology projects incubated by BADIR by 2019, when he completed his term as CEO
6551
Raised by BADIR-incubated startups across 184 investment deals from 2010 to 2019, his years at BADIR
SAR 508m2
Contribution to GDP reported by BIAC under his leadership, with some 700 technology companies supported and more than 3,000 direct jobs
SAR 2.1bn+3
Incubators and accelerators run by BIAC, the first company licensed in Saudi Arabia to manage them
10+4
  1. Saudi Gazette, January 2020
  2. Saudi Gazette; Zawya, January 2020
  3. BIAC, via Wamda, September 2020
  4. Wamda, September 2020

Companies supported under his mandate

A selection of startups incubated at BADIR or backed by BIAC while he led them.

  • Foodics

    Cloud restaurant management and point of sale. Joined BADIR’s ICT incubator in 2015 and went on to become one of the Kingdom’s best-known software companies.

    MENAbytes, October 2017

  • Lucidya

    AI-powered Arabic social-media analytics. Incubated at BADIR; BIAC co-led its Series A of about US$1.2m in January 2019.

    Entrepreneur Middle East, 2019

  • Dukkan Afkar

    E-commerce marketplace for creative and design products. BIAC led its SAR 19m Series B in December 2019.

    BIAC; Tech-WD, December 2019

  • Quant

    Data science and AI analytics. BIAC led its SAR 4.5m funding round in 2020.

    Wamda, March 2020

  • MORNI

    Roadside-assistance app incubated at BADIR, with more than 8,000 service providers within its first two years.

    MENAbytes, October 2017

  • Diabetic Science International

    Biotechnology company developing wound-care treatments, incubated at BADIR.

    MENAbytes, October 2017

Companies are named to show the reach of the programmes he led. They are not NAAS Consulting clients.

The team

A small bench that covers every step.

Our founder works with an in-house team that covers the legal, government and commercial sides of an entry. Individual profiles will follow.

  • 01

    Senior legal counsel

    Company law, shareholder and joint-venture agreements, and contract review, working alongside your external counsel.

    Profile to follow

  • 02

    Legal counsel

    Entity structuring, registration and licensing files, and regulatory checks for your activity.

    Profile to follow

  • 03

    Government relations officer

    Ministry of Investment, Commercial Registration, Qiwa, GOSI and Muqeem transactions, renewals and visas.

    Profile to follow

  • 04

    Corporate consultant

    Market research, buyer and partner mapping, and the pipeline behind each mandate.

    Profile to follow

  • 05

    Corporate consultant

    Business cases, entry strategy and localization plans, and the reporting your leadership relies on.

    Profile to follow

And a network we trust

For steps that need a licence we do not hold, such as certified translation, product registration or trademark filing, we work with vetted specialists and stay accountable for the result.

Have an opportunity in mind, or looking for one?

Tell us your sector and ambition. Within one business day we will reply with an honest first view of where the opportunity is and, if it fits, a scope for an Opportunity Scan.

Discuss an opportunity