In this episode, we sit down with Qais Ammori, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Almosafer, Saudi Arabia’s leading travel brand. With over two decades of experience building and scaling digital platforms, Qais shares how he’s leading Almosafer’s digital transformation across consumer, corporate, and government travel.

From real-world applications of AI to cross-sector lessons from telco and media, Qais unpacks what it takes to build customer-first, data-driven, scalable platforms in the Middle East — and how travel tech is powering Saudi’s Vision 2030 goals.

Key Topics:

Travel tech innovation in MENA

Data, AI, and personalization at scale

Building high-performing tech teams

The future of regional platforms

Scaling with strategy and vision

Whether you’re a product leader, founder, engineer, or investor, this episode offers valuable insight into how the MENA region is building what’s next — and why leaders like Qais Ammori are ones to watch.

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Subscribe to the channel for more conversations with the builders shaping the future of the Middle East and beyond.

Welcome to this bonus LIVE episode of Breaking Down barriers where we explore  what it really takes to scale a fintech to 10 million users.

Recorded live at Huspy in partnership with Arbor Ventures and AWS, this exclusive panel brings together product and growth leaders from the world’s top challenger banks—including Monzo, Revolut, OakNorth, Alpheya, Vision Bank, and Huspy.

Hear bold insights from:

Marc Saade 

David Henry 

Fernando Fanton 

Kristjan Kaar 

Moderated by Roger Rouhana and Khaled Lababidi

🎯 Key topics explored:

Scaling without the hype: what really drives growth?

MENA’s unique fintech challenges and opportunities

Building resilient teams and tech for rapid expansion

Future-proofing: risk, regulation, and reinvention

Global growth playbooks for challenger banks

The next frontier: AI, personalization & customer obsession

numi Search Ventures is proud to have teamed up with our Supporting Partner AWS, and our Investment Partner Shorooq to bring you Breaking Down Barriers, along with our MENA Leaders Community.

numi Search Ventures is co-founded by Mark Long and Ricci Putnam. Ricci Leads Executive Search where we bring outstanding Leaders together with Founders and Investors globally.

For more information, please reach out to [email protected]

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region.

Khalid Baareh - Founder & CEO at MealPlanet joins us on Breaking Down Barriers where we explore:

Raw emotion: Entrepreneurship Journey and Personal Growth: Khalid nearly lost everything in 2020. His learns are something every founder needs to hear.

How serial investor & founder Khalid is digitizing and disrupting the food industry with MealPlanet: A game changing company that revolutionises restaurants, delivery & health

Product Development and Customer-Centric Growth - Khalid shares insights on validating customer demand, balancing convenience vs experience, and building trust through quality service.

Building, Leading, and Scaling a Company: Khalid shares lessons from fundraising, VC interactions, and a previous acquisition.

He also touches on metrics-driven leadership and gives predictions for the evolving MENA tech ecosystem.

numi Search Ventures is proud to have teamed up with our Supporting Partner AWS, and our Investment Partner Shorooq to bring you Breaking Down Barriers, along with our MENA Leaders Community.

numi Search Ventures is co-founded by Mark Long and Ricci Putnam. Ricci Leads Executive Search where we bring outstanding Leaders together with Founders and Investors globally.

For more information, please reach out to [email protected]

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region.

We are joined by Ismail Omar, Co-Founder and CTO of Taager on the latest episode of Breaking Down Barriers

Operationalising product is crucial in the age of AI, moving beyond just "tech-enabled" to truly "tech-driven" organisations. 

Building a tech platform with logistics, AI, and financing at scale presents significant challenges in team building, speed vs. quality, and expenditure management. 

numi Search Ventures is co-founded by Mark Long and Ricci Putnam. Ricci Leads Executive Search in the MENA Region, where we bring outstanding Leaders together with Founders and Investors.

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region.

Samer El Sahn - Chief Product Officer at Floward joins us and the 2X Unicorn builder talks about the MENA startup scene and why so many fail, building product organisations and the perception of these companies in the region. 

numi Search Ventures is proud to have teamed up with our Supporting Partner AWS, and our Investment Partner Shorooq to bring you Breaking Down Barriers, along with our MENA Leaders Community.

numi Search Ventures is co-founded by Mark Long and Ricci Putnam. Ricci Leads Executive Search in the MENA Region, where we bring outstanding Leaders together with Founders and Investors.

inDrive CPTO Stephen Kruger joins us and shares his thoughts on how AI is having an impact on the pipeline of software engineers. 

He shares the growth story behind inDrive as it squares up to bigger competitors in multiple markets globally. Sleeping giant? Find out!

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region.

numi Search Ventures is proud to have teamed up with our Supporting Partner AWS, and our Investment Partner Shorooq to bring you Breaking Down Barriers, along with our MENA Leaders Community.

numi Search Ventures is co-founded by Mark Long and Ricci Putnam. Ricci Leads Executive Search in the MENA Region, where we bring outstanding Leaders together with Founders and Investors.

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region.

Yi-Wei Ang, CPO at talabat, joins us this week, where we understand what it takes to achieve the biggest IPO in 2024 and what it's really like to oversee a successful product function in a $10b company.

talabat is one of Dubai's big tech success stories - but it hasn't always been this way. Transforming from an Ops to a tech company with a product-led customer-centric focus has seen talabat fend off competition and strengthen it's core proposition.

Listen to the full story here!

numi Search Ventures is proud to have teamed up with our Supporting Partner AWS, and our Investment Partner Shorooq to bring you Breaking Down Barriers, along with our MENA Leaders Community.

numi Search Ventures is co-founded by Mark Long and Ricci Putnam. Ricci Leads Executive Search in the MENA Region, where we bring outstanding Leaders together with Founders and Investors.

Welcome to Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders of some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region.

We are joined by Ashu Gupta, CTO and Co-founder of Lean Technologies. Lean provides the Data and Payments tools to empower MENA's next generation of financial products | Trusted by Etisalat, Hubpay, Lulu Finance, 

We discuss the death of Visa and Mastercard, the next area Ashu thinks needs disruption, open banking and so much more

numi Search Ventures is proud to have teamed up with our Supporting Partner AWS, and our Investment Partner Shorooq to bring you Breaking Down Barriers, along with our MENA Leaders Community.

numi Search Ventures is co-founded by Mark Long and Ricci Putnam. Ricci Leads Executive Search in the MENA Region, where we bring outstanding Leaders together with Founders and Investors.

Welcome to the first episode of Breaking Down Barriers, the podcast series that explores the untold stories from the builders, makers, and leaders from some of the most innovative companies in the MENA region.

First up we're joined by Himanshu Niranjani, CTO at Property Finder. Property Finder is a leading Proptech in Dubai that has had phenomenal success of late. 

Their current CTO Himanshu joined them after spending decades in The Silicon Valley working on game-changing products that changed consumer habits forever at companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Linkedin. 

numi Search Ventures is proud to have teamed up with our Supporting Partner AWS, and our Investment Partner Shorooq to bring you Breaking Down Barriers, along with our MENA Leaders Community.

numi Search Ventures is co-founded by Mark Long and Ricci Putnam. Ricci Leads Executive Search in the MENA Region, where we bring outstanding Leaders together with Founders and Investors.