Bringing high quality translation and language services to the people of Mauritania thanks to Kosmos Innovation Center.
When Yenje Abdellahi first applied for the Kosmos Innovation Centre program he was perhaps slightly unusual in that he already had a successful start-up under way. He started Elite Zone – an institute for teaching languages and translation services – in 2019. Through hard work and his experience in marketing, he had built the firm up to be successful, but he knew that he wanted more. So, when he heard about the Kosmos Innovation Centre program he applied, but failed to get in. His dogmatic attitude was rewarded in 2023 though when he was finally accepted onto the course and at its conclusion was named as one of the five recipients of the seed funding.
“When I first applied to KIC, I was mainly thinking about the seed funding, and I thought that the only thing my project lacks is money,” Yenje explains. “Of course, I realise now that it’s not about the funding at all – I advise anyone who I talk to about KIC to think about learning the soft skills and learning to start your business, but also to keep it on track and strong.”
Yenje is refreshingly honest about his own shortcomings when it comes to the soft skills he was lacking when he first started his business. “I was very good at marketing, because that was my specialty, but the real world is harder and needs a lot of skills, a lot of networking. That was my weakness. So, it was really helpful for me to catch up with KIC, because all those skills were improved with them. I got to know more people in the field. My startup was successful in one area, but I wanted it to be successful all around the city. And I needed to know about networking. I was very young when I started, so I knew only people at my age, but I wanted to have business to business connections to provide services for international organizations and so on. So that was really, really difficult for me.”
Since winning funding from the KIC, Yenje has seen Elite Zone grow massively. Their original location has now been joined with another branch, which also employs around 17 people. However, it’s the international clients that Elite Zone has worked with that make them such an impressive outfit. UNICEF, Netflix and Amazon Prime have all queued up to work with Elite Zone for their translation and handling services. All of this led to one of Yenje’s favourite jobs so far.
“I worked for Amazon Prime doing the translation and fixing services for The Grand Tour TV programme with Jeremy Clarkson. The filming, the preparation, everything took around maybe two years, and I was really, really proud to have the main role of translation. I was also a fixer with them at the same time, doing things like translating documents and helping with applications with the government. It was really one of the most exciting jobs I have done.”
As he thinks about his advice for other would-be entrepreneurs, Yenje returns to a familiar topic: networking. “First of all, I would advise them, for young entrepreneurs or fresh businessmen, to start building a very strong network, because you will need people in the future, and even if you don’t need them, it’s good to have a network, for your reputation, for recommendations, for getting advice, for everything! When you start with KIC, take everything seriously, and when they meet other fellow entrepreneurs, or when they meet businessmen, see them as someone that you can learn from.”