How Saudi Entrepreneurs Omar Almaeena And Safwan Modir Brought Innovation To The Business Of Breeding Camels Omar Almaeena and Safwan Modir share the story of how they came to be the entrepreneurs behind Redsea Camel Company and Fatha Productions.
By Tamara Pupic
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While many entrepreneurs can express strong feelings when explaining what building a venture means to them, only few can perhaps encapsulate their fiery entrepreneurial passion in one sentence like Omar Almaeena, who co-founded Redsea Camel Company, a camel breeding farm located in the Al Qassim region of Saudi Arabia, as well as Fatha Productions, a Jeddah-based production company, with his "best friend and brother," Safwan Modir, three years ago. "In 2021, I teamed up with Safwan, and we embarked on what could be the journey of our lives, bringing everything we have learned in our professional careers to our new businesses," he says. "This is what I feel I was destined to do, and our journey has just begun."
Breeding camels has been a traditional skill passed from generation to generation across the Arabian peninsula, but Almaeena and Modir have added a modern business twist to it. Redsea Camel Company breeds the Mizayeen variety of camels, which Almaeena says are high-quality camels that belong to the top six bloodlines of these animals in the region. Starting with just one camel in 2022, the company now has more than 50 of them, with the average sale price standing at about SAR100,000 (US$26,654) for each; that said, they are sold as part of packages that include veterinary care, feeding, lodging, and general care for the animals, all of which can be customized to the needs of the customer in question.
"Our biggest unique selling point are these packages, because they help us attract more people to the industry," adds Modir. "Our proposition is that this is an investment with an average return on investment between 15%-20%. That's a great return compared to other investments in the market with similar or lower risks. Plus, we have to remember that this is still a new industry with not a lot of prior data to compare and build on, but hopefully, we will be gathering more and more information in the coming years as we believe in this industry, especially with a lot of attention paid toward the camel industry by the Saudi government." Almaeena adds, "We were the first camel owners to incorporate a company and treat breeding as a business, introducing packages for customers, digitizing the whole process, and offering camel care for our customers and ourselves."
As a business, Redsea Camel Company is particularly focused on the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, which is organized by the Camel Club, an organization launched by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017 to preserve and showcase Arab heritage in caring for camels, while also turning it into a sustainable industry. Held in Al-Sayahid, 120km northeast of Riyadh, the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival is a 45-day cultural, economic, sports, and entertainment event, with one of its key highlights being a beauty competition for camels. Thousands of camels participate in this contest that has prizes worth more than $80 million up for grabs. "It is the biggest camel beauty competi- tion in the region, and camels are eligible to participate when they reach the age of one year and eight months old," Almaeena notes. Modir adds, "We are expecting that our clients will participate in the competition next year. A couple of the mothers that we own competed in the competition in previous years; plus, a camel from one of our studs took the second place last year, before we acquired it, and that, of course, raises the value and prices of our camels."
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Source: Redsea Camel Company
Once the entrepreneurial duo took a deep dive into the camel world, they realized that their whole experience of starting up a camel breeding farm, learning about this age-old tradition, and developing innovative solutions to modernize it was, simply put, worth filming. And that was how the Almaeena and Modir came together to launch their second venture, Fatha Productions, which produced Camel Quest, a comedy docu-series also starring the duo, which premiered on the global streaming platform Netflix in early 2024. The show's six episodes, which were filmed from November 2021 to January 2022, showcase Almaeena and Modir -aka "SAFFwOMZZ"- exploring the Kingdom's camel industry, with their ultimate goal to make it to the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival. Describing it as a "blend of humor, friendship, and cultural exploration," the show came out just as the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Culture declared 2024 as the "Year of the Camel." "In 48 hours, we made it to Netflix's top 10 ranking in the region," Modir adds. "The show is unique in a way, because it combines comedy, travel, adventure, knowledge, and, of course, our camels, and it also touches upon friendship and much more. It's a show everyone would enjoy, and that's what Netflix saw."
Speaking about the deal Fatha Productions secured with Netflix, Almaeena says that pitching Camel Quest to a notable streaming service was a goal for the company from the outset. "We have had our ups and downs trying to get this show sold, because getting on Netflix is a process and a long one, but we learned to be patient," he says. That said, for any creatives seeking to attract the attention of Netflix and the like, Almaeena's advises them to make sure they have a strong concept or idea, while also ensuring that money isn't the only objective, and "that there's more to why they are doing it."
As for what's what's next for Fatha Productions, Modir and Almaeena aim to work on creating out-of-the-box content in different genres and formats. "Currently, we have several projects in different stages of development and production with a mix of feature films, television shows, and animation across different genres, such as action, comedy, and drama," Almaeena says. "The focus is always on the story, the team, the cast, and the message, as we believe that the financials will follow, when our aim is do the best possible production that we can do."
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Source: Redsea Camel Company
The honesty and passion shown in this statement should take one back to the beginning of this feature, while also explaining why Almaeena and Modir consider their work in the camel industry and content creation to be "the journey of their lives"- after all, the two friends had no experience in either of the two fields prior to starting, but they went all in nevertheless. Modir, for instance, had a high profile career in hospitality that saw him become the youngest hotel general manager in Saudi Arabia in 2019, managing luxurious hotels, and even turning one into the headquarters of the first Formula One race in Jeddah.
Similarly, Almaeena's educational background in finance and marketing led to a career in banking in London, Singapore, and Jeddah, and further to venture capital, which saw him investing in more than 20 startups and achieving a couple of successful exits, one of which was the San Francisco-headquartered ride-hailing service Lyft, a rival of Uber. So, how did they end up in an industry so different from all they knew up until then? "Safwan saw an opportunity in the camel world while surfing on X, he saw that something was going on around camels, and a huge beauty festival where you get to meet the King and Crown Prince," Almaeena replies. "That was at the end of November 2020, and so, he decided to participate, and who was crazy enough to join him on this crazy adventure, but his childhood friend, me, who had just come back from Los Angeles." Modir adds, "Knowing nothing about the camel world was our main challenge. It took us three years to figure out how things work. We truly did go on a quest to understand the camel world; we even went on a camel bootcamp to really learn about camels. In the end, we managed to modernize the entire industry, and come up with a business model that can generate revenue and very high profits."
A similar ethos governed their exploits with Fatha Productions. "With regards to the film industry, we saw that our story was somewhat a unique one," Modir says. "Leaving everything we ever knew to go deep into the camel world, and creating a business out of it, is something worthy filming. We also always secretly wanted to be actors, and we felt we had good comedic chemistry together; hence, we went for it." Being bold enough to start from scratch is thus what Almaeena and Modir consider to be the true essence of entrepreneurship . "Being an entrepreneur means that you start a business as if you have nothing to fall on; you are your only back-up plan," Almaeena says. "Our journey in the camel industry was about working smartly, which led to, for example, discovering that you don't need that big of an investment as we thought when first started, but to get our hands dirty, and spend time with the camel owners in the desert, which we did do till we finally understood it all."
Being in Saudi Arabia also helped, Modir adds. "It has become the destination of choice for many industries; the strides that the country has taken in the past few years till today are remarkable," he says. "We have seen great growth and opportunity in the film industry in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Kingdom's entrepreneurship space. There is a lot of funding available, and the conditions for getting licenses and doing businesses in general have been im- proved, all of which helps these industries. It's truly a great place for content creators, filmmakers, and startups, because there is so much growth potential."
