When I departed Mumbai, the rains were pouring heavily. When I stepped out in Dubai, it was a sizzling heat of 42°C, touching 48°C at a peak. The UAE was picking up from a business perspective, especially after the Eid festival and the surviving floods. It was just the perfect time to nurture the lead pipeline.
This visit was primarily sought to meet enterprise prospects and local UAE partners. The intention of approaching a prospect collaboratively was multi-fold. It assures prospects that they will be covered by multiple parties and from all aspects. Also, it enables our partners to attend to enterprise customers and position themselves well. While Priyanka and I were there, we also ensured we met active and future Frappe partners.
The Costly Discovery of Frappe
Ajith, the founder of Add-on LLC, was an accountant who was soon elevated to Accounts Auditor. Leveraging his network of the Indian diaspora, he swiftly started selling Tally. In all innocence, he thought of getting the perfect accounting solution built from scratch. He also found a vendor at GITEX who committed to building every accounting feature for just AED 50,000. For Ajith, it was too good to be true.
The engagement started, and the vendor kept sharing the progress. Ajith also paid the vendor 25,000 AED. After two months, the vendor delivered the alpha version. Ajith showed the product to one of his friends. After glaring for a few minutes, his friend asked in confusion, "Isn't this looking like ERPNext?" You can presume the rest of the story.
When I heard this, I told Ajith, "You must have paid the highest fee for the discovery of ERPNext"!
When I met Ajith, Add-on LLC was still an uncertified entry-level partner. After a few days of our meeting, they became certified, started migrating customers on FrappeCloud, and attained a prominently listed Bronze partnership. Again, this reinforced the idea of meeting partners in person, hearing their side, and helping them understand Frappe's business model.
Sharjah Culture Center using ERPNext
Abdelrahman is a hobbyist developer who has been coding since grade five. Ever since discovering Frappe, he couldn't stop himself from building stuff. While great at coding, Abdelrahman was hustling on the business front. He took on a couple of fixed-bid projects and committed to significant customization. These projects eventually became a drag and didn't pay off on time. To rescue, they would get another project, and the cycle continued.
Seeing different types of partners, most tech-driven businesses face similar struggles. I gave standard gyan to deliver vanilla ERPNext implementations and get customers hooked on the platform. Though it sounds repetitive, it is almost a tube light moment when partners realize it. It changes how they approach a customer and commit to the project.
I met Abdelrahman for the first time in Frappe Local, Dubai, and learned about the project for the government entity. I needed to learn more about this project, as we were expecting to meet another semi-government prospect shortly. Abdelrahman shared that they made a custom Frappe app for the Sharjah Department of Culture and Heritage and the Sharjah International Award for Cultural Heritage. I kept this reference handy when we met a said prospect.
Dubai Autism Center
Dubai Autism Center (DAC) is a non-profit that educates children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. They have established a 1:1 ratio between children and facilitators to ensure each child receives attention. We happened to see some facilitators attending to children. Kudos to their patience!
The QCS team has supported them in implementing Frappe to streamline their education and healthcare processes. The team also took this project as a CSR initiative, not billing organizations backed by the local administration. It's great to see Frappe apps being used for such excellent causes.
Praveen, Trueline
Praveen has been thriving as a tech advisor for eight years. He is also friends with Shajeer (from Wahni Solutions) and a neighbour. He discovered ERPNext a few years ago but wasn't motivated enough to dive deep. Knowing that Shajeer was meeting us, Praveen's interest in Frappe revived.
The heartening experience in this meeting was that Shajeer motivated Praveen to become a Frappe partner. Shajeer understood that Frape would need more partners to challenge the proprietary software's ecosystem. This brought the much-needed perspective that we must look at other Frappe partners beyond the immediate competition.
ERPNext for a Marine Services Business
Craft Interactive is one of UAE's most experienced partners. Over the years, they have served customers across domains, with some proven success in the Marine domain. Before the meeting, we met with Delwin to learn how Craft Interactive performed as a company. It was nice to know that they are much more metric and quality-driven, especially after process audits by the Frappe team. Delwin was kind enough to offer us breakfast at a restaurant with a Mumbai theme called "Raju Omelette." The food, furniture, floor and banners on the wall gave Mumbai vibes.
Soon after, we rushed to meet a prospect from the marine industry. The CEO joined in first, which allowed us to have a casual conversation. Surprisingly, we discovered a strong Mumbai connection. When we said Frappe's office is in Vidyavihar West, he easily guessed, "Is it the same place where Nathani yards used to be?".
The IT and accounting teams joined soon. The company had initiated an Oracle implementation around COVID-19. After three years of struggle and investment, it was only now stabilized. However, the overall TCO and cost of customization were nagging issues, raising the need to look for alternatives.
The discussion made management curious about the 100% open-source platform and Frappe's unique culture. It was pleasant to see the CEO visit Frappe's office while he was travelling to Mumbai.
Community Meetup
DIFC is a prominent international financial hub in the Middle East. Safwan Erooth, a Frappe fanboy, recently registered his company at DIFC and had access to various DIFC facilities.
Our meetup kicked off in true Frappe style, with chairs arranged in a circle to ensure everyone has equal weight on the table. After the introductions, I asked some questions and shared Frappe's direction, especially the new products driven by a small and super-talented Frappe Labs team.
Since the event was at AI Hub, we felt entitled to discuss AI's impact on skill development. Are we losing practical skills by relying too heavily on shortcuts?
Safwan Erooth, Founder of Tridz, shared how he uses advanced AI tools to speed up code reviews and can solve customer needs. Vivek Digambernath also shared that AI can help fast-track mundane implementation activities like data clean-up and migration.
While AI is helpful, it is essential to recognize the unnecessary noise and buzz created around it. Before discussing AI, we must ensure that our primary datasets are in place. Once we have this foundation ready, AI could assist in building better models. If we keep our data scattered in a spreadsheet, it is better to organize that first than falling for the AI buzz directly.
Meeting Ahsan from Tass Hamjit
Post-meetup, while we were still at DIFC, I received a call from an unknown number. The person (Ahsan) on the other end inquired if we could meet. Safwan suggested that I invite him to his office at DIFC. Coincidentally, Safwan and Ahsan turned out to be acquaintances.
Ahsan, an IIM and CMA, had a humble beginning with his accounts auditing business. Slowly and steadily, they grew into a team of ~250 members, becoming a brand name in auditing. Along with auditing, they ventured into business consulting and did a couple of ERPNext implementations.
To ensure the efficient delivery of ERPNext projects, they collaborated with efeone, co-founded by Jamsheer. The latter worked with Earthian and contributed to building Frappe Health (renamed as Marley Health now). The combo of efeone and T&H has already delivered about eight ERPNext projects and is actively scaling.
This one meeting had multiple dots connecting beautifully in a matter of a few minutes.
GITEX Global, 2024
My Middle East adventure started a year ago when I visited GITEX to support our exhibiting partners. After a year, Frappe and three ME Frappe partners will participate in GITEX as exhibitors.
Reflecting on last year's journey, it started with creating dots by meeting community members and understanding the UAE. As I visited the UAE multiple times over the year, the dots increased and began to connect naturally.
The more dots you create, the more connections you make. Keep nurturing the connections and keep growing together. That's what I've learned from this visit.
I invite you to visit and support Frappe's effort at GITEX Dubai, 2024.
