Easing the pain points of employees

Disruption is inevitable and more so as we tend to adopt technology to ease our life, so did Talal Bayaa, CEO and co-founder of Bayzat, who made it his mission to monetise a simple idea of comparing financial products, provide human resource (HR) solutions to employees by launching Bayzat.com.
The company has already received $3 million funding alone for 2017, this is in addition to the series of funding done by leading venture capitalists and angels like Beco Capital, Womena, Delta Partner Group, Precinct Partners and RAED Ventures, from the time of its inception in 2013 - which adds to more than $5 million. The platform is the first one-stop-shop to offer a real-time comparison of health insurance rates in the UAE and help clients use their health insurance policies online. The company has recently introduced HR administration services that help companies automate all their administration work from data entry to managing employee records.
The company and its team of 70 employees are working towards becoming the leading HR and insurance technology provider in the UAE.
"With over 15,000 lives on our platform, we are looking to expand our customer base and to accelerate our revenue growth, which has increased three fold year-on-year," said Bayaa who is responsible for providing the vision, overall leadership and strategic management for the company as well as ensuring the highest quality of the services provided.
Most of the people researching or browsing Bayzat are millenials - between 25 and 35 years old, of which 65 per cent are male, with interests predominantly in marketing, technology, business. "We're getting a lot more commercial requests and searches about plans and benefits. You can see there's mounting interest after the mandatory insurance deadline - but not just for the policies themselves, but information about them, comparisons between other providers, and differences in regional insurance plans," said Bayaa, who prior to setting up Bayzat worked for a private equity and corporate finance firm, followed by two years at an investment bank.
After sensing an opportunity in the financial products market, Bayaa started Bayzat with his school friend and now co-founder Brian Habibi. The duo led Bayzat to where it is today, and is now known widely as the company that provides insurance and smart HR solutions that simplify and empower lives with using world-class technology. Bayaa has studied bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He is a CFA Charter holder as well as finance, investment and banking expert. The 29-year-old Palestinian-American entrepreneur, said: "Our strategy is to find pain points faced by employees and solve them using technology. We are going to continue investing in improving our customer experience and our mission is to delight our customers to the best of our abilities. We're also eager to progress with further R&D and advancements for our HR platform, which was launched earlier this year. The team have been working hard towards incorporating new features into the platform for customers to use. In short, our underlying aim for our HR platform is the same: we will continue to help companies save time and money by providing a more modern HR experience."
Amir Farha, co-founder and managing partner at Beco Capital, said: "Technology is flourishing in large industries. The realm of automation is opening new efficient - both in time and cost - pathways that businesses are quickly tapping into. Able to target and reach their customers faster and execute services more efficiently, we're seeing a prolific paradigm shift in the way companies conduct and promote their services."
Bayzat is very much a forerunner in this shift. By providing transparency and simplicity in the management and use of health insurance policies, they're solving a very real pain point faced by all consumers in the region through technology. In addition to helping lift the veil on health insurance, they're well positioned to take advantage of the year-on-year growth medical insurance has seen since in recent years. All-in-all, their position, strategy, dedication to "curing" paper-based sectors (like HR and health insurance) with technology, and commitment to providing exceptional customer care is why I know Bayzat will continue to succeed in their endeavours, added Farha.
Like the VC, even the Bayzat staff is equally optimistic of its success, Özgür Akyüz. head of marketing at Bayzat, said : "Bayzat was different from the get-go. The CEOs were involved and supportive, the team, each A-players in their own right, geared towards bringing this company to the next level. The culture at Bayzat, even when there was only a handful of us, was powerful. Culture is something most companies in the Middle East seem to take for granted, but once you've been part of a community where everyone is aligned and share the same goals, you see how important it is to have. Naturally, the aims of the business are something I believe in, too. At Bayzat we believe in solving problems through technology, for the benefit of both the sector and consumers. Technology is helping correct the knowledge gap shared by millions of people regarding the products and policies they buy - myself included. It's great that we're able to provide that level of clarity and support with our platform."
- sandhya@khaleejtimes.com