ASA Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Dubai, UAE, has released a reality-based web series dubbed “7 Days Challenge” chronicling how they converted an idea from fitness trainer and entrepreneur Johnny Mijajlovic, popularly known as Coach Johnny, into a revenue generating business in just a span of seven days. The entire first season was released via the official ASA Ventures YouTube channel at midnight on 29th July 2019, Gulf Standard Time.
The first installment of the 7 Days Challenge follows Samreen Shaikh, one of the VC’s younger members, as she takes on the challenge of transforming Mijajlovic’s idea of an in-home personal training and fitness coaching platform into reality. Shaikh harnesses the firm’s resources as she collaborates with its experts in corporate strategy, technology, marketing, public relations, and sales. Quoting ASA Ventures CEO Arif Saiyad, the idea behind the challenge is ‘to put young leaders front and center, as they see things with fresh eyes and are guaranteed to take a new approach to things.” Saiyad also explains that millennials in their workplace are known to find faster yet well-rounded solutions, hence his decision to challenge Shaikh.
According to Shaikh, from the get-go, the task of building everything from scratch seemed impossible to carry out because of time constraints and other external factors, but the entire team behind it saw this as an opportunity to “show Dubai and the rest of the world what we do on a regular basis in the office.” She also adds, “Apart from having a solid in-house team, we consider ourselves fortunate that we are in the UAE, a country conducive to entrepreneurship and investing.” The UAE garnered $625 million in startup funding in 2018, making it the top country in MENA for startup investments.
ASA Ventures, a VC 2.0 that has been providing startups with funding plus operational partnership since it was founded in 2003 in Portugal, has confirmed that filming for the second installment has begun.
About ASA Ventures: ASA Ventures is an international venture capital firm founded in Portugal in 2003. It offers startups funding plus operational partnership through its established in-house synergies.
