RIYADH: Rakan Al-Eidi is the founder and CEO of Chaizer, a Saudi Arabia-based “pop-up” smartphone charging provider.
After gaining his bachelor’s degree in industrial systems engineering at Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd University, Al-Eidi worked with Aramco, KAUST and the San Francisco-based venture capital firm 500 Global. In the meantime, he also completed an MBA majoring in Entrepreneurship and Human Resource Management from the University of Queensland, Australia.
He was also, from May 2012 to January 2016, the founding managing director of the Saudi Affiliate of Endeavor, a New York City-based organization that supports entrepreneurs with potential for economic and social impact in various regions of the world.
El-Eidi founded Cown Space, a co-working solution, in April 2017 and then launched Chaizer in Cown Space in November of the same year. Facing challenges running both companies, he decided to focus entirely on Chaizer. He spent two years developing and researching before bringing his product to the market.
The app functions via a scanned QR code by which users can access the nearest Chaizer power bank station location where they can pick up the charger and later deposit it at any Chaizer
station — meaning they are free to roam with it.
As per Chaizer’s website, its R&D team “worked on digital transformation for the power you need to charge your phone. Now, wherever you go, there is (the) power to use through the Chaizer ‘Power Pass’ … with unlimited power bank swaps from Chaizer’s network of machines.”