Omar Hijazi - Career

Career

Omar joined Digital Daya in October 2009 as the Managing Partner. Digital Daya ('digital influence') is a new generation strategic consultancy that empowers leaders in the public sectors to leverage the new media of the Internet to communicate their message, build public influence, and execute high-impact programs to reshape governance and public policy. Digital Daya has offices located in Kuala Lumpur, Washington D.C., and Dubai. Omar Hijazi also leads the research and public policy arm of the organization based in Washington D.C. The Digital Policy Council (DPC), an international, non-partisan "think tank" on 21st Century Governance.

Omar Hijazi was the former CEO(July 2005- May 2009) of the Dubai-based Tejari, a fast-growing e-commerce network that has succeeded in becoming the number-one hub of online trade for businesses and individuals in the UAE, the region and across emerging markets all over the world. Since taking the helm at Tejari in 2005, Hijazi has managed to lead a semi-governmental one-product company into becoming a multi-product success story over the Internet, with the launch of several online e-commerce initiatives and ventures that brought global recognition for the six-year-old company.

Hijazi has helped to establish Tejari as the regional leader in e-commerce, making it one of the most recognizable brands in the industry. Tejari, the leading online B2B marketplace for emerging markets, has been ranked as the eighth largest electronic sourcing platform in the world, in a Forrester research report entitled “Holistic View: The ePurchasing Software Market”.

Tejari has managed to launch two new lines of business under Hijazi—Tejari Ventures and Tejari Communities. Tejari Ventures is the company’s idea-lab that incubates e-commerce new initiatives and then launches them as new companies. Tejari Communities is a new concept for the emerging markets, where offline communities are being brought online and offered a virtual space, in which members of each community can interact with their peers from the same community, members of other communities and the outside world.

Dubai World, the state-owned holding company of the Emirate of Dubai received criticism for overly aggressive expansion and reliance on debt to finance their expansion and development during 2009. Tejari as a Dubai World subsidiary and its CEO Omar Hijazi also faced similar criticism. Also, Hijazi managed to lead a substantial growth in Tejari’s main core business, the already successful Tejari Marketplace business-to-business procurement suite and Tejari’s international franchising operations.