Please tell us more about Linkers IoT and what inspired you to start the business?

Linkers is a digital transformation solution enabling traditional showroom and businesses to become data-driven businesses with IoT devices connected to Linkers cloud analytics. We believe that data-driven decision making is what will differentiate traditional showrooms and businesses to be able to compete in today’s digital world. We help business owners and operators to
optimize their showrooms in terms of sales, cost reduction, asset protection, environmental monitoring and control, as well as operational improvements.

I spent the last decade focusing on smart buildings and building automation and I was well versed with IoT solutions and its benefits. However, one day I was having dinner with my co-founder at a local restaurant and our experience was appalling and I thought to myself I will never come back to this restaurant again. The surprising fact was that neither the restaurant owner nor the operations manager knew that the customers including us, were having a horrible experience. While we were sitting there, we started analyzing the problems that were impacting customers such as:

• Bad temperature control (it was too hot)
• We had to wait in long queues to order and some customers would just leave the restaurant due to long wait time (lost customers)
• There weren’t enough staff within the restaurant to cater to customers (bad experience and most likely low recurring customers)

This was a bit of a Eureka moment when we realized that we can solve all of these pain points in operations, customer excellence and profitability, using simple IoT sensors and building in the right analytics and triggers for restaurant owners and operators. We started talking to several restaurant owners and realized they were facing the same issues within their restaurants, retail businesses and showrooms, that was indeed a universal pain point for businesses with offline locations and showrooms. It was then we decided to set up Linkers, after realizing the need for businesses to become data-driven and to be able to take action in real time through offline data collected by IoT sensors turning this into action and triggers using AI and analytics. Our vision became clear to transform businesses with intelligence, and in less than 10 months we had our beta version live. We incorporated Linkers in 2018 within Dubai Silicon Oasis.

Your tagline is “Make better decisions using the Internet of Things”. Can you please explain this concept for our readers?

We assist businesses to be data driven and make decisions that lead to increase in sales, reduction in cost, auto-triggered maintenance tickets, streamlined operations, monitored environmental conditions and providing asset protection. Our sensors and cameras are installed within any location and with the help of our cloud technology, data is synced with the cloud securely giving customers access to real time analysis. What we can do with this data is limitless, as an example we can show you the change in repeat customer rates or conversion of customer to sales at one point in time and a defined period as well; once you add in multiple locations, we can compare conversions with traffic/ repeat customers vs. branches for better KPIs and SLA (Service Level Agreement) improvements. Over 2020 we aim to build on the automated smart insights and triggers in real time leading to quantifiable improvement in profitability, customer excellence and better SLAs and KPIs within businesses without any human intervention.

How is Linkers IoT applicable to small, medium and big corporations—and can ordinary people use it?

Linkers is a simple plug and play solution that you subscribe to and “pay as you grow”, we have packages tailor-made for SMEs and large enterprises. For SMEs you can opt to subscribe to the
solution with monthly payment plans and if you don’t want to pay for hardware costs upfront, we’ve got a solution for that as well. We assist SMEs to become data driven and analyze their
operational costs to minimize waste while improving revenues. For larger enterprises, they can compare branches, build in auto-scheduling, look into seasonality, improve their marketing spending, streamline operations with improved KPIs for store managers and various teams like marketing, leasing, operations, sales and maintenance.

Linkers solution is designed to be simple and can be used by any individual, however, today our core focus is B2B. What were the challenges you faced when setting up your business—and how were you able to overcome these challenges?

Linkers as a business is focused on emerging technologies and the biggest challenge by far was finding the right talent and more so a team that can keep up with Linkers’ accelerated growth, culture and community. It took us two years to build up the team we have today and I can comfortably say that our core asset is our team. We have developed a filtration process and an onboarding program for new members to the family that can hit the ground running. Time is the enemy of every startup and we work to ensure that our teams are coherent with high impact. We faced difficulty in finding the right advisors and mentors, who understand SAAS businesses and also the value of the data we collect. With the help and support of BRINC and FALAK, we have been able to optimize our offering & value proposition (hardware and software), get access to some amazing mentors, improve our market access, build and execute a clear go-to market strategy for our upcoming and future growth and optimize our internal organization in preparation for the upcoming raise.

What advice can you give to aspiring entrepreneurs—especially those who want to work with IoT?

The life of an entrepreneur is always a hustle and even more so within the local technology space. We highly recommend tech startups to be laser-focused on a specific segment and ensure to deliver value and great service to customers. Stay in constant communication with your customers, figure out and address customer pain points early and in the right way, launch your MVP and learn from early adopting customers what to optimize and what features to add in always catering to the current and future needs guided by the customers’ pain points. You set a baseline for yourself and can always upsell to the customer later once you add further value.

For more information:
https://linkers.io/