The Great Minds Group, a homegrown events agency has defied the odds and continues to thrive amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike many start-ups in the region who spend an average of five years to establish a name in the market, the Great Minds Group growth mindset, initiative, decision-making and passion were some of the secret ingredients to their many achievements to-date in the UAE market and internationally.
The company was gearing up to celebrate their achievements and their two-year anniversary in operations when the world was struck with Covid-19. The events industry, along with many others was hit hard, with international travel suspended and social interactions and gathering heavily restricted resulting in the companies’ operations grinding to halt, temporarily.
Unlike many business in the region that closed operations temporarily or permanently and have made mass redundancies, Leila Masinaei and Noel Greenway, Managing Partners at The Great Minds Group, used their time away from the day-to-day operations to formulate a plan to ensure the survival of their business and keeping their ever-growing team in employment.
Within a matter of days, the Great Minds Group paved the way for DigiConnect, a virtual executive boardroom series operating out of Dubai, servicing clients across the globe.
To date, DigiConnect has produced over 15 unique virtual boardrooms that were organised, managed and supported by the existing team. The boardroom series provides industry professionals with a platform to address and discuss need-of-the-hour products and solutions for businesses to adopt and continue seamless operations amidst the current global pandemic. Clients are from a range of different industries including finance, healthcare, retail, supply chain, technology and education from UAE, USA, Latin America and many more.
Leila Masinaei, Managing Partner of Great Minds Group said: “In early March, we were informed that all events in UAE are cancelled until further notice to curb the spread of the Pandemic. To quote my hero and role model, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, “There is no “impossible” where there is faith and determination.” And Faith and determination is what we have as the guiding principal of our young company. We set up a disruptive approach to business events and entered a crowded marketplace to change the game; we grew from 3 to 40 staff in less than 2 years, and can boast having Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum attend one of our last events in 2019, before we were event 2-years old, amongst our portfolio of impressive business to business events in every sector.”
Leila continues: “So we came up with a winning formula that not only would keep our company open and our team employed, but most importantly, would play an essential role in numerous organizations from public and private sectors in finding solutions to address their challenges during the pandemic and beyond, and DigiConnect series was born. From concept launch until first successful boardroom took 3-weeks, and the rest is history. Our services have proven invaluable to markets and organizations finding answers and solutions, and we have even had enough demand to be able to hire some new members for our growing family that had recently lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic.”
Noel Greenway, Managing Partner of Great Minds Group says: ‘With the world being thrown a curveball in the form of Coronavirus pandemic, every enterprise and business entity had a choice to either wait for life to get back to normal or accept the current situation and find a way to adapt their business to the new normal. At Great Minds, we chose the latter and within weeks of realising that the pandemic would last for long, we launched our virtual boardroom series with DigiConnect in April. Since the launch of DigiConnect we have helped many organisations close new business deals, forge fruitful partnerships, find solutions to their challenges and have received numerous testimonials from clients. I truly believe that anything is possible if you have the right people to support you and at Great Minds we are truly blessed with having amazing people.’
The Great Minds Group will continue to execute and grow their digital event portfolio going forward alongside their physical events and the team are busy working on set of new virtual event products catering to the requirements of the new normal in the business world.
