Arabia500+Turkey Announces the Fastest-Growing Companies in the Gulf
Today, the Arabia500+Turkey announced the GCC winners in their ranking of fast-growing companies, in anticipation of the Arabia500 gathering on December 3rd at the 2011 Prime Minister's Global Summit on Entrepreneurship in Istanbul.
The Arabia500+Turkey is an initiative by the AllWorld Network, which has worked since 2009 to discover and rank the fastest growing companies throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The central idea, founder Deirdre Coyle has explained, is that visibility equals growth. By raising awareness about their scalability, the AllWorld Network hopes to generate an influx of investment in these companies while boosting connectivity between them as well.
Their model, which was developed to bolster companies in the inner cities of America in the late 1990’s, has now located a similar set of fast-growth companies that can lead this region in job creation. The statistics thus far are promising.
Two-thirds of their ranked entrepreneurs, have reported stronger profitability compared to a year ago, with the group on the whole growing at around 40 percent despite the global financial crisis. The combined GDP of these companies is greater than 80 countries, AllWorld reports in their press release.
They note that, collectively, Arabia500+Turkey companies represent $15 billion in sales, hold 100,000 employees, and have each created 200 jobs on average. What unites the entrepreneurs that build these fast growth companies? On average they are 42 years old, and nearly all of them plan to found another company in the next two years.
A look at the GCC winners reveals that Saudi Arabia boasts a majority of the fastest-growing companies in the Gulf. The ranking, which divides companies into three sets, fast-growth, startups, and companies to watch, lists 6 companies in Bahrain, 6 in Qatar, 40 in Saudi Arabia, 16 in the UAE, and even one in Yemen that has performed well despite the current political and economic climate, the well-known Aqarmap.com.
Arabia500+Turkey winners will gather for the 2011 Prime Minister's Global Summit on Entrepreneurship in Istanbul, Turkey, December 3-5. Stay tuned to hear news from the ground at Arabia500’s announcement ceremony, and watch this space for updates on the winners of North Africa, Pakistan, the Levant, and Turkey, which will be released this week.
