Neeraj Shahji is the CFO & Co-Founder of WOW Technologies QFZ LLC. He is a Chartered Accountant,CPA (USA) and MBA from UIUC GIES college of Business with more than 18 years of experience in the Finance field. We got a chance to interview him and even learned about his company WOW Technologies.
The Main Idea Behind It
We started by asking him about the idea behind his company and his career journey.
We asked, “What’s the idea behind your company?”
We are an E-commerce and technology company in Qatar.”The term ‘On-demand Service Provider’ is quite in the news these days. We live in a pandemic age where on-demand service providers have become the norm. In this era of digitalization, people depend more on mobile applications that provide services at their doorsteps. Still, the market gap exists for such a platform that offers vast services from delivery to outsourcing tasks at commercial and residential levels. But a new crop of competitors aims to do better for struggling startups and end consumers, offering reduced or eliminated costs and more significant business autonomy to help the service providers’ skill set.
WOW2ALL comes into the industry to create a bridge in the market by launching an online marketplace connecting consumers with service providers.” said Neeraj Shahji.
“How did you begin your career
journey? Do you have some advice for beginners?” We asked.
Neeraj continues, “I am a Chartered Accountant and MBA from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign with a Creativity to Entrepreneurship specialization. I worked as a Finance professional for many years with major investment and Real estate companies in Qatar, India, the USA, South Africa & Monaco.
My entrepreneurship journey started 3 years back in Qatar when I encountered
common household problems related to cleaning services and could not find professional cleaners. I gradually became interested in finding solutions to our daily problems and was awe-struck by the idea of a single platform that could solve all the daily needs of households, busy executives, and families. Our ownership of a facility management company backed up our venture.
My advice for startups and beginners is to look for business ideas from their daily routine and work setup. Look for things and routines that you strongly believe need improvement or a gap exists for a better user experience. This will improve your creative ideas and help you think of solutions to those problems. Chalking out a clear strategic plan for what they intend to do in the next 5 years will help them stay focused on their plan.”
The Ultimate Goals
We wanted to know about the goals of WOW2ALL, so we asked Neeraj, “What’s the goal of your company?”
He replies, “The main goal of WOW2ALL is to provide daily needs of Residential and commercial utility services through a one-stop-solution platform. In the process, helping service providers list their services on WOW2ALL and generate business enabling them to go Digital transformation. We truly aim to make WOW2ALL a global name with current focus to expand in the MENA and European region in the next 2-3 years. For our expansion needs and scalability, we are currently looking for interested investors and partners.”
The True Essence of A United Team
“What makes the team successful, in your opinion?” We asked.
Neeraj continued, “Below are a few qualities that go a long way in making the team successful:
- Every member of the team is well-aligned with the strategic goal of the organization
- People practice active listening when others speak
- Problem-solving is a team task and not an individual task
- Decision-making includes the whole team, not just managers
- Everyone respects one another within the team
- Conflict is resolved quickly
- People take ownership of their mistakes and do not repeat it
- Highly adaptable to change and circumstances within the team
- Feedback is welcomed and empowers others to do better
- Effective communication throughout each department and divisional hierarchy.”
Upon hearing this, we also asked him about his views on employees’ energy levels for business success.
According to him, “Employees are the No 1 asset for the company. We believe in providing employees not only monetary incentives but motivating employees to be future owners of their own businesses. This entrepreneurial culture helps our organization to motivate and energize employees as we make them feel partners and not employees as all are working hard for the betterment of the company.”
We further asked, “How do you plan to motivate your team to go the extra mile?”
“In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, we challenge our team to take on new roles and assignments which enable them to reach new heights. By constantly raising the bar, we will help our team to move out of their comfort zone and reap the rewards of increased motivation and improved performance.
We instill a positive culture by adopting a solution-oriented approach to work, which inspires the team’s can-do attitude. This helps create a team culture that embraces change and fosters innovation.
These practices provide us with rewards of a more motivated and energized team that goes the extra mile.” says Neeraj Shahji, the CEO & Co-Founder of WOW Technologies.
Growing As An Organization
Every business goes through challenges at some time. However, how they tackle it makes each company different from the others. We also asked Neeraj, “What keeps your company moving forward even during challenges?”
He shares, “Challenges are important for organizations to grow, as these challenges become a learning point for the future. We are not afraid of challenges. We regularly revisit and update our business plan, which helps us remember the changing market conditions and the need to respond to them. We are fully committed to our strategy, even if it takes us out of our comfort zone. Sometimes we must make hard decisions such as making employees redundant. But unless we are prepared to do this, we risk putting our business at a competitive disadvantage.”
Technology’s Importance In Business
“How do you think technology is leading to changes in businesses? Do you feel it’s helping your company grow?”
“Technology plays a major role in all aspects of the business from functional to transaction level. Importance has increased more so after the pandemic and is now an intrinsic part of any business model. We now have zoom meetings even locally with people present in the city, which helps us save time and resources. The remote work boom during COVID-19 has demonstrated that employees can work remotely and that technological support can deal with any technical issues that may arise.
Technology has no doubt helped our organization to grow particularly. I can mention here about cloud storage which has helped us remotely upload and view content, and store and retrieve data as needed. No need to purchase internal servers, hard drives, and thumb drives. We can access information now almost anywhere. The other aspect of technology worth mentioning here is Mobile Technology, smartphones that have helped us take our work anywhere. We no longer need laptops or pads. It has given us efficiency, convenience, and speed.” says Neeraj.
Pathway of Digital Transformation
When we were curious about Neeraj’s company adapting to this digital world, we asked him, “How is your company adapting to digitalization?”
He shared, “We have digitally transformed ourselves. Remote and hybrid working is the new norm, where we use free tools such as Google Drive for cloud storage and document collaboration. For real-time communication between staff, we use slack. Slack provides a solution to some of the communication difficulties that come with working remotely. It lets you have real-time conversations with anyone on your team, create channels for different purposes, and create threads within messages to keep your chats organized.
For our accounting and financial reporting needs, we use Xero software, cloud-based software with a special feature of connecting the app to your bank account and letting it import transactions automatically. We have completely transformed ourselves with less paperwork and digitalization, improving our efficiency and cost savings.”
Do you use innovative ideas to be unique?
He continues, “We constantly look for Innovative ideas to sell our products and services to the markets. We constantly add new services and features to our on-demand services application, providing ease of access and convenience to the customers and adding value to their daily lives as they don’t have to look for those services in another platform or channel. We aim to be a one-stop solution for any services required.”
Combining The Power of Technology With Experience
Our next question was, “What are the services/solutions or products offered by Your Company on par with the current industry standards?”
He shared, “We are a technology company WOW Technologies QFZ LLC, incorporated in Qatar, who develops Mobile applications, software, and into Information Technology consultancy. For a decade, we have associated companies that have been in the business of facility management and hospitality. Using our decade-long experience in Facility management and combining the power of technology, we are providing services to the Residential and commercial sectors through our Demand service App’ WOW2ALL’.
This app is available on both IOS and Android. Its simple-to-use features and great customer navigation experience allow us to seamlessly serve our clients and customers for their daily needs and helps users to hire services professionals, from hairdressers to beauticians, appliance repairers, carpenters, cleaners, pest controllers, painters, constructors, and much more.
The WOW2ALL will be a leading platform that provides services via the application with high-quality, pre-screened independent service professionals and service providers. Our platform will perform functions like an aggregator that supports consumers and service providers from the backend. Our target market will be all who use mobile applications, individuals, families, and couples who need domestic services at their doorstep.
Since our services are not limited to households, we also target corporate and commercial sectors for day-to-day maintenance services. We aim to integrate Artificial intelligence and chatbots in the next phase of our applications which will take customer experience to the next level. We strive to grow our business, placing technology at the forefront of our business model.”
This seemed very interesting, which got us curious about their upcoming services or if they have something in mind. Hence, our next question was, “Tell us something about your upcoming products or services.
“Our upcoming service offering is in the AI-based RPA (Robotic Process Automation) space, where we see Business operations at all levels spend too much time on mundane, error-prone, and repetitive tasks like Preparing, merging, and manipulating the data, moving files and folders, open and checking on an email attachment, management reporting, forms filling data entry, multiple IT Maintenance logging In and logging Out. Our RPA solution will mimic the human brain to provide awareness and decision-making, mimic the human eyes to look for contents, and automates high volume forms processing. It will be supported by bots that mimic the hands doing the work. This will immensely benefit employees working from home who can rely on the bots to handle the repetitive activities and focus on activities requiring functional expertise, judgment, and decision making.” shared Neeraj.
Lastly, we asked him, “Would you like to say anything else to our viewers?”
“I would like to mention that all businesses, whether startup or established, would need robust technology to grow rapidly in these changing times. If it wasn’t for technology, we simply wouldn’t be successful in coordinating all of our employees, customers, and vendors. Businesses across the nation are diverse in needs, culture, and education. Advances in technology can help businesses address these differences unlike ever before. There is no limit to what can be accomplished by a business that employs a successful technology plan.” Neeraj concluded.
Connect with Neeraj Shahji on LinkedIn.
Find WOW Technologies on QFZ LLC on LinkedIn, Facebook & Instagram.
