Who is Dr. Khaled Khraisat?

Meet Dr. Khaled Khraisat from Jordan. 25 years of experience in the business development of the life-science industry locally, regionally, and globally. In the last years, he worked closely with a team of researchers in the biotech field to patent projects and commercialize them.

Moreover, he was on the management board of many global-funded projects targeting both industrial and scientific research sectors.

In 2018, he decided to establish a platform that connects academic and industrial sectors, so he started his journey with “JAIP” (Academia-Industry Platform) as founder and General Manager.

In 2018 and 2019 he was the only Arab entrepreneur selected two times to participate in BioStartup MENA funded by MSD/USA, which was held in Ankara-Turkey, and in 2019 they were selected as one of the cross-border fast-growing companies by World Bank to participate in the matchmaking program at Silicon Valley/USA.

Moreover, he is a certified Professional Entrepreneur for Scientists by ISSCO  (Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) members organization, and he is today also, a member in the board of many Scientific research deans and the board of many schools of pharmacy in local universities.

What can he tell us about JAIP?

Dr. Khaled explains that the Academia-Industry platform (JAIP) is an LLC (Limited Liability Company) registered in Jordan that gives the life-science industry a chance to benefit from researchers’ projects outcomes and competencies through dynamic matching models. This academia-industry platform connects both parties and provides them with professional services and business consultation.

He continues: “JAIP succeeded to deliver a unique service for both academic and industrial sector with a validated business model that attracts new clients from all over the world, JAIP now is operating in more than 12 countries, including the USA, EU, Iraq, GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), Turkey and North Africa”.

JAIP is managing projects in Pharmaceutical, Food, Medical devices, and cosmetics providing R&D (research and development), QC (Quality Control), QMS (Quality  Management System), regulatory and business development services for the industrial sector, while on the other hand, it commercializes universities` patents and researches to the industrial sector.

Moreover, JAIP provides global market business services, consultation, and skills development to the industrial sector to comply with global legislation and scale up their business to global markets especially USA and EU.

What makes success valuable?

To Dr. Khaled, success will be valuable if it is reflected in what we are doing, “our success in each project is translated into tangible results and that worth more than money”, he says. And he adds: “We feel it in recognitions, and recommendations we got from client to client”

Trainer and mentor for the Jordanian potential entrepreneurs…

In Dr. Khaled’s opinion, BESTMEDGRAPE is one of the best-designed programs to develop the skills and competencies of the selected entrepreneurs. In his words: “I was honored to be chosen the business creation manager and leader of such amazing entrepreneurs… To train and mentor them and supervise their journey to create their business and develop their skills”.

He explains: “Here in Jordan, after we developed our training materials to comply with the needs of the selected 30 entrepreneurs, we started the first phase in March 2021 where all topics related to basic knowledge for starting an SME and startup were covered, from ideation, creative thinking, innovation, marketing, laws and regulations, and finance”.

He continues: “in the second phase which was started in June 2021, we supervised teams building which ended with more than 10 local teams from our 30 entrepreneurs, each team selected and designed their idea based on using the grape pomace and nanotechnology to develop their pitches. During the whole phase, we covered advanced knowledge and conducted continuous mentoring sessions and demo pitching days to help them develop and improve their ideas and start their pitches and establish their startup companies”.

Dr. Khaled explains that the potential entrepreneurs were selected through well-designed evaluation criteria and after an interview with the selection committee consisted of experts from the academia, entrepreneurial, and business sectors. The final list consisted of 30 potential entrepreneurs from Ph.D. holders, master's and bachelor’s degrees from various backgrounds (chemistry, nanotechnology pharmaceutical sciences, food industry, engineering, business, and finance).

During the 6 months, these participants showed high commitment and invested their time in this project because they believed that the advanced knowledge and valuable experience they are receiving from this program and the opportunities will open doors for them to go far with their dreams.  

A hard but worthy journey…

The journey for all entrepreneurs was so hard he assures; but if we take into consideration the career path, the responsibilities of each one of them, their ages, the academic degrees, and their backgrounds; we are confident that not fewer than 15 entrepreneurs will go far and establish their own business with their unique ideas.

And if these entrepreneurs will be supported after BESTMEDGRAPE, he confirms that local innovation and entrepreneurship is sponsored and supported by the head of the country H.M. King Abdallah II. Also, the country has a well-established entrepreneurial ecosystem. There are also many funding programs, incubators, and accelerators to support entrepreneurship as well as competitions locally, regionally, and globally. In his opinion, these startups and SMEs will have a big opportunity to receive support and investment to scale up their businesses.

Innovation is the fuel for business success

Dr. Khaled sees that innovation is the fuel for success in business, without innovation new businesses will be forced to enter a red ocean competition which will be so hard to survive.

Currently, he says, the world shifted to the customers-orientated businesses, where the innovation and unique value proposition is the only key success that will allow SMEs and startups to penetrate the market and capture the interest of their customers.

 “I built my cross-border experience in more than 20 years with challenges and obstacles that sometimes cost us money and threaten our business survivals”, Dr. Khaled remembers, but with BESTMEDGRAPE there is a great opportunity due to the exceptional experience that the project provides to the potential entrepreneurs because of the well-designed business creation training,  the technical experience in the living labs and finally, the networking and interaction between 150 entrepreneurs from 5 different countries including Italy, France, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan with different mindsets. He concludes: “We are connecting entrepreneurs from different countries to build mixed teams benefiting from the diversity of the experience and the different backgrounds”.