Rising Stars: Saher Flow Solutions

Saher Flow Solutions has been picked the top five emerging deep tech startups in the Kingdom, following a review of offerings, potential, the funds have raised, and many other such factors! Saher Flow Solutions is a Saudi-Arabia based advanced sensing solution provider that offers a patented water-cut and multiphase flow meters which help oil and gas companies to manage unwanted produced water that results in increasing their costs per barrel.

Prof. Atif Shamim, founder of Saher Flow Solutions, says that he had a clear aim when starting up his enterprise, which was to introduce more sustainability-centric undertakings in the oil and gas industry. “We are the first deep tech startup to ever produce artificial intelligence-enabled multiphase flow metering solutions to help optimize upstream oil and gas production processes,” he explains. “Being the only multiphase flow metering technology provider in the whole GCC, we aim to democratize this industry within three to five years. It will help GCC states to save imports worth up to US$500 million, and create over 200 direct job opportunities.”

Running a deep tech enterprise in Saudi Arabia, Shamim says, has been both a challenging and a rewarding experience. “In line with vision 2030, Saudi Arabia has completely revamped its venture capital infrastructure, and it offers one of the highest level of investment opportunities for the startups,” he adds. “However, tech startups like ours are still relying on some specialized materials and equipment from outside the Kingdom, and this can impact our product development, and going forward, we hope that the Kingdom will be able to strengthen its tech infrastructure even more.”

For all the deep tech startups out there considering KSA as a place to start from or run their operations from, Shamim suggests that they kickstart their journeys at one of the many available technology incubators in the Kingdom. “They offer guidance, support, and a great launch pad,” he adds. “Then, finding a niche, and delivering minimum viable product to the market should be the next immediate focus, which will help gain investor confidence, and open up avenues for further expansion into the market.”