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Many entrepreneurs can express strong emotions when describing what starting a venture means to them, but perhaps few can sum up their fiery entrepreneurial spirit in one sentence like Omar Almaina. Three years ago, Almaina co-founded the Red Sea Camel Company, a camel breeding farm in Saudi Arabia’s Al Qassim region, and Jeddah-based production company Fasa Productions, with his best friend and brother, Safwan Modir.
“In 2021, I teamed up with Safwan to embark on the biggest journey of our lives, applying everything I’ve learned in my professional career to our new business,” he says. “I feel like this is what I was destined to do, and our journey has only just begun.” Camel farming is a traditional skill that has been passed down for generations in the Arabian Peninsula, but Almaina and Modir have put a modern business twist on it.
The Red Sea Camel Company breeds Mizaeen camels, which Al-Maina says are high-quality camels that belong to the top six camel breeds in the region. Starting with one in 2022, the company now has more than 50, with an average selling price of about SR100,000 (US$26,654) per animal. However, they are sold as part of a package that includes veterinary care, feeding, lodging and general care of the animals, all of which can be customized to suit the customer’s needs.
“Our biggest selling point are these packages, which will help attract more people to the industry,” Modir added. “Our proposition is that this is an investment with an average return on investment of 15% to 20%, which is a good rate of return compared to other investments with similar or lesser risk in the market. Furthermore, we must remember that this is still a new industry and we don’t have much historical data to compare and build on, but we believe in this industry and hope to gather more information in the coming years, especially with the Saudi Arabian government paying a lot of attention to the camel industry.”
Almaena added: “We were the first camel breeders to incorporate, treat breeding as a business, introduce packages for our customers, digitise the entire process and provide camel care for our customers and ourselves.”
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As a business, Red Sea Camel Company is particularly focused on the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, organized by the Camel Club, an organization established in 2017 by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to preserve and showcase the Arab tradition of camel care and turn it into a sustainable industry. Held in Al Sayahid, 120 km northeast of Riyadh, the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival is a 45-day cultural, economic, sports and entertainment event, with one of its main attractions being a camel beauty contest. Thousands of camels take part in the contest, which has more than $80 million in prize money. “It is the largest camel beauty contest in the region, and camels are eligible to participate when they are 18 months old,” Almaina noted. Modir added: “We hope that our customers will take part in next year’s competition. Several of our mother camels have competed in the competition in the past. In addition, one of our stud camels came second last year, the year before we acquired him, so naturally the value and price of our camels has increased.”
Source: Red Sea Camel Company
As the entrepreneurial duo dove into the world of camels, they realized the entire experience of setting up a camel breeding farm, learning about this ancient tradition, and developing innovative solutions to modernize it was, quite simply, worth filming. Thus, Al-Maina and Modir joined forces to launch their second venture, Hwasa Productions, to produce “Camel Quest,” a comedy documentary series also starring the duo, which premiered on global streaming platform Netflix in early 2024. Filmed between November 2021 and January 2022, the show’s six episodes see Al-Maina and Modir (aka “SAFFwOMZZ”) explore the Kingdom’s camel industry with the ultimate goal of attending the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival. Described as a “fusion of humor, friendship, and cultural exploration,” the show was released just as the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture declared 2024 the “Year of the Camel.” “Within 48 hours, it was in the top 10 rankings on Netflix in the region,” Modir added. “The show is unique in that it combines comedy, travel, adventure, knowledge and, of course, camels, and it touches on friendship and more. It’s a show that everyone can enjoy, and that’s what Netflix thought.”
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Regarding Hwasa Productions’ deal with Netflix, Almaena says that pitching Camel Quest to the popular streaming service was the company’s goal from the beginning. “We struggled at times pitching the show because it’s a long process to get on Netflix, but we learned to be patient,” he said. That said, Almaena advises creators hoping to catch the attention of Netflix and the like to have a strong concept or idea and make sure there’s “more to it than just money.”
As for Hwasa Productions’ future plans, Modir and Almaina aim to work on creating innovative content across a variety of genres and formats. “We currently have several projects in various stages of development and production, a mix of feature films, TV shows and animation across a range of genres including action, comedy and drama,” Almaina says. “The focus is always on the story, the team, the cast and the message, as our goal is to put out the best production we can and we believe the finances will follow.”
Source: Red Sea Camel Company
The sincerity and passion in this statement takes the reader back to the beginning of this feature, while also explaining why Al-Maina and Modir consider their work in the camel industry and content creation to be “their life’s journey.” After all, the two friends had no experience in either field before embarking on the journey, but still gave it their all. Modir, for example, has had a high-profile career in the hospitality industry, becoming Saudi Arabia’s youngest hotel general manager in 2019, running luxury hotels and transforming one of them into the headquarters for the first Formula 1 race in Jeddah.
Similarly, Al-Maina used her finance and marketing education to work in banking in London, Singapore and Jeddah, before moving into venture capital, where she invested in more than 20 startups and had several successful exits. One of them was Lyft, a ride-hailing service based in San Francisco, a rival to Uber. So how did they end up in an industry so different from what they had known before? “Safwan saw an opportunity in the world of camels while surfing at X. He saw that something was happening around camels and there was a big beauty festival where you could meet the king and the crown prince,” Al-Maina replies. “That was the end of November 2020, and he decided to participate. And the person who was crazy enough to accompany him on this crazy adventure was me, his childhood friend who had just come back from Los Angeles,” Modir adds. “Not knowing anything about the camel world was our biggest challenge. It took us three years to understand how it worked. We went on a serious quest to understand the camel world and even attended a camel bootcamp to really learn about camels. Eventually, we were able to come up with a business model that could modernize the entire industry and generate revenue and very high profits.”
Their exploits with Hwasa Productions are built on a similar ethos. “We found our story to be a bit unique when it comes to the film industry,” says Modir. “To leave everything we knew behind and go deep into the world of camels and start a business from there was something worth filming. We secretly wanted to be actors and felt we had a good comedy chemistry, so we gave it a go.” Having the courage to start from scratch is what Almaina and Modir consider entrepreneurship to be all about. “Being an entrepreneur means starting a business as if you have nothing to fall back on. You are your only backup plan,” says Almaina. “Our journey in the camel industry was about working smart, and it showed us, for example, that you don’t need as big an investment as you thought when you first started, and that you really need to get your hands dirty and spend time with camel owners in the desert. We did, and we did, until we figured it all out.”
Being in Saudi Arabia also helped, Modir adds. “Saudi Arabia has become the country of choice for many industries, and the progress the country has made over the past few years to date has been remarkable,” he says. “We’ve seen a lot of growth and opportunity for the Saudi Arabian film industry, and the entrepreneurial space in the Kingdom. There’s a lot of capital available, and the conditions for obtaining licenses and doing business in general have improved, which all helps these industries. It’s a really great place for content creators, filmmakers and startups, because there’s so much potential for growth.”
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