Bassim Haidar
Founder and CEO Optasia
His expertise in driving growth, improving financial inclusion and unlocking economic opportunities in emerging markets has led him to found businesses across technology, telecoms, logistics, energy, engineering and medicinal cannabis.
He is the founder of Channel VAS, now Optasia, a leading vendor of mobile financial and fintech services. It improves financial inclusion by offering banking services and smart handset financing for developing markets and currently serves over 650m customers in over 30 countries.
A serial entrepreneur, Bassim founded his first company, Intercomm Ltd, when he was just 20 years old. He later founded GMT Nigeria, which he grew to the leading integrated procurement, finance and logistics provider in West Africa.
In 2003, recognising the growing need for telecoms infrastructure in Nigeria, he founded Channel IT. At a time when the industry was facing a magnitude of challenges in sourcing, logistics, revenue generation and customer retention, he created the benchmark on how to successfully create and provide essential supplies and services nationwide. The company now operates across 19 countries and plays a major role in connectivity in the Middle East and Africa. He also founded Knuru Capital, a private venture capital firm with interests in technology across the Gulf Region, Africa and Southern Europe, and serves as its Chairman.
He founded SafriCanna, a medicinal cannabis company in South Africa. The firm engages in R&D, undertakes clinical trials and exports to several countries worldwide.
As an active philanthropist, Bassim has previously worked alongside the World Economic Forum and Africa CEO forum, and is a member of the Global Council of Amnesty International