A Brief History of Me

My name is Mohamed Adel Fakhro (Mo Fakhro).

I am a Stanford-educated intrapreneur, entrepreneur, investor, director, and thinker.

I was born in Bahrain into two prominent business families: the Fakhro family and the Almoayyed family. Both families have a long business history of success in Bahrain, the Arabian Gulf, and India. Forbes magazine has ranked both families’ companies among the top 100 family businesses in the Middle East.

I attended the Ibn Khuldoon school and graduated in 1996 with high distinction. While in middle school and then high school, I developed a keen interest in the family business and spent a lot of time discussing business with my father during long walks and jogs every evening.

In high school, I excelled particularly in math, economics, and physics, and scored amongst the top 1% in the world on American standardized tests (SATs and APs) on these subjects.

After finishing high school, I went to the United States to further my education. I was accepted to Stanford University, one of the top universities in the world.

I majored in Economics at Stanford and came to the realization that all of the major companies over history had developed, more than anything else, by being part of high-growth industries. Companies that succeed focus on being a part of what will be the major industries of the future. I decided to dedicate my career efforts to achieving extraordinary returns by predicting macroeconomic trends and allocating capital to monetize those predictions.

I became the first Bahraini to attain an undergraduate degree from Stanford upon graduating with honors in June 2000. I wrote my graduation thesis on the impact of patents on innovation in the genomics and biotech industries. I concluded that patents need to be increased in length in order to encourage more investment in R&D.

My upbringing in Bahrain, and my education at Stanford, imprinted in me the ideology of hard work, fairness, equality, and the celebration of differences between people, which I carry with me daily.

Upon graduating from Stanford, I set out to achieve my career objectives. I wanted to grow by predicting macroeconomic trends. Chief amongst these trends at the turn of the new century was globalization. I also wanted to somehow connect the dots between my Stanford education and my family’s trading history in Bahrain. At the time, in 2000, my family’s businesses were set around operations in Bahrain. While my great-grandfather had trading operations in parts of the Middle East and India around the early part to the middle of the last century, those businesses had been scaled back during my grandfather’s generation, and replaced by a very concentrated presence in Bahrain. The nationalistic feelings during the post-World War 2 period made it quite difficult to operate a company outside of one’s native country. My father and his brothers had thus built up the group during the oil boom years to be a highly respected Bahrain business, that was involved in various business sectors, but only within Bahrain. With the opening up of the laws that allowed us to do business around the Gulf, and indeed the world, I made it my focus, to try to break through to other markets with businesses of my own and businesses of my family.

One of my first endeavors was to set up a software company, FakhroSystems, in Cambridge, Massachusettes, in a small office/apartment just off of Harvard Square. I literally slept at the office for the first few months of my career as the office also had a sofa that transformed into my bed at night. My team and I worked to develop applications for the mobile internet, which was an emerging field at the time.

I moved back to Bahrain some months after that but continued to manage the business from Bahrain. I began to work in parallel with our electronics trading division in Bahrain and to develop the family’s car rental business, first in Dubai, then in Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Fujairah. In parallel, I began the process to develop our ship supply business in the UAE, and to develop a restaurant business in Saudi and Kuwait. I also made my first private equity purchase by investing in a majority share of a company that produced and distributed Arabic music in the GCC, and we had a few big hits. I also set up an online grocery company, and an online jobs portal soon after moving back. Among my other initiatives were to set up software businesses in India and Silicon Valley, and a venture capital investing business in India, the Middle East, and the United States. During my initial years back I used to also write regularly on economics matters in the local and regional press. I also took the initiative to expand our trading relationships in Bahrain with emerging Chinese companies, as Chinese companies became more significant.

I have also contributed to some of the group’s existing businesses, including the car rental and restaurant businesses in Bahrain, and to some of my parents’ personal businesses, properties, and investments. Other businesses I have set up include schools, gyms, e-commerce apps, and SaaS products.

I have traveled extensively for business, across the GCC, the US, China, Europe, and India, and have learned a great deal from their cultures and their people.

I have split my time between my family businesses and my own businesses. Today, my own businesses have developed to be significant companies in their own right. My main personal company is a financial services company named MBA Fakhro. My family’s main businesses continue to develop. These family businesses include Abdulla Yousif Fakhro Group, YK Almoayyed Group, Adel Fakhro & Sons, Mona Almoayyed Investment Company, and Lotus Investment Company, among others.

Today, between my personal and family businesses, I am proud to say that we have significant operations in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, India, and the United States. I continue to aspire to do more during my generation to grow in significance and to carry on the legacy.

I hope in my next push forward to look to set up manufacturing and life sciences companies in India that could export to the US and also build a stronger customer base in the US for my software and AI businesses. In parallel, I hope to keep building up revenue in the Middle East for my personal and family businesses. I also aspire to keep building on my franchise and trading relationships to develop into other emerging markets around the world.

I would also like in my next push forward to create companies that are at the forefront of technology, that could provide a benefit to humanity, while also generating shareholder wealth for myself and my investors. Among these companies under development are a company under Fakhro Industries named Project Q, a company that will focus on manufacturing quantum chips for the computers of the future. Another company named Clever Meats under MBA Fakhro, will manufacture cultured meat to rid the world of the problem of killing animals for food. Another company, Genie Biosciences, under The Very Small Group, will use advances in CRISPR to find cures for genetic diseases. Another named C3 (Cure Cancer Company) under MBA Fakhro, will use the same CRISPR technology as well as bioinformatics to work on vaccines for cancer.

In 2022, I set up Infinite Loop to be my personal family office that, as my career develops, will become the holding company for my shares in my personal and family companies, which I will ultimately hand down to my heirs. The term infinite loop is derived from computer programming and refers to a code that repeats perpetually and does not terminate. This is an analogy to what I hope to achieve with the companies that I am associated with: to provide perpetual wealth growth for future generations.

In 2024, I launched a company in Bangalore named Nellford Aerospace under MBA Fakhro. The idea for Nellford Aerospace is for it to manufacture rockets to transport people from one point to another on earth in a fraction of the time of current commercial jets. I have had this dream since I was in college and would travel from Bahrain to Silicon Valley in a grueling journey that would take 24 hours. What if I could make a rocket to take me there in one hour, I thought. That is the dream that Nellford Aerospace is working to turn into reality for world travelers. To cover its running costs Nellford Aerospace will also manufacture and sell drones, and launch satellites.

Beyond my education and business career, I am the proud father of three wonderful children: Maryam, Adel, and Rajwa.

In terms of my community service, I became the youngest ever person to be elected to the Board of the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 2013, where I chaired two committees, the Entrepreneurship Committee, and the Internal Audit Committee during my four-year term.

I was also appointed to the board of directors of Tamkeen (the Labour Fund) in 2015 and served for 8 years. I am currently a board of trustees member of Ibn Khuldoon National School. I served as a board member of al Muntada Society as Treasurer from 2012 to 2018.

In my free time, I write articles and poetry and spend some time every day learning about areas that interest me, including history, new technologies, economics, and business. I also enjoy chess, tennis, walking, and weight-lifting to clear my mind. My favorite periodical publications are The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American.

I am also very active on social media and communicate with over 50,000 friends, connections, and followers regularly through LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, YouTube, Threads, and X. I primarily express my views on subjects that interest me like business, economics, science, technology, psychology, positive thinking, and health, but I also communicate updates on my businesses and my personal life. I find this to be a very enriching experience and a great way to advance my career by spreading my message of education, peace, and prosperity to a larger and larger audience over time.

I used to spend a significant percentage of my time traveling for work to India, the United States, Europe, and China, but have more recently settled down a little more and have replaced some of my travel by communicating through Zoom, WhatsApp, and other technologies.

Having said that, I still spend around a quarter of my time traveling. In addition to my business travel, I also travel socially with my family approximately twice per year (although I have been accused often of not taking enough holidays). I am a member of YPO and enjoy meeting people from chapters around the world when they visit Bahrain, when I visit their countries, and during our global gatherings.

Fortunately or unfortunately though, I have spent the great majority of my waking hours advancing my career. I started this in high school and continued it through college and into my business life. This is one of the realities of wanting to build a career of significance and one that I accept. As they say, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

While I find innovation and learning fulfilling, my primary career objective is to keep the personal and family businesses that I am associated with as a significant force in the next generation, not just in Bahrain, but across the Gulf, and the rest of the world.

I hope the family will continue to enjoy the close-knit and warm relationships that they do today and continue to pass on to the next generation the values of hard work, integrity, and commitment to the customer and to the communities in which they operate.

I feel that, while it is easy to sit on one’s laurels and enjoy the fruits of established businesses, to be successful over generations a family business must always strive to adapt and look for new horizons.