In the latest FocusKSA discussion, Saudi-US Trade Group President, Richard Wilson, spoke with Walid Abdulwahab, a recent graduate of the University of Southern California and Founder and CEO of Desert Farms, which produces, markets and sells camel milk and camel milk products to a growing list of U.S. retail outlets. Walid discusses his background, academic experience in the United States and the story behind his founding of Desert Farms.
Walid attended high school in Jeddah before enrolling in a community college in Santa Monica in Spring 2009 and eventually transferring to the University of Southern California. One of about 20,000 Saudi students in the U.S. who are not part of the King Abdullah Scholarship Program, Walid speaks highly of the U.S. community college system and his experience. “I’d highly recommend it [to Saudis] to start off with… You can save a lot of money and you’re two years ahead of the game once you transfer in [to a full time program].” Walid’s academic emphasis at the University of Southern California was business administration and entrepreneurship.
He then founded Desert Farms, an organic camel milk company that has had success in the United States market. Recently, Walid and Desert Farms were profiled in the Atlantic.
Living in Santa Monica, a hub of health-conscious eating, impressed Abdulwahab. “The organic market in Saudi Arabia is still very, very small,” he noted. “One summer when I went back home (to Saudi Arabia), I was looking for a source of raw milk. I was drinking raw cow’s milk in the United States because it was available, but so much of the milk in Saudi Arabia comes from powdered milk that’s imported, and most of it is really processed,” Abdulwahab said of how he got the idea for Desert Farms. “So a friend told me the only source of raw milk you can find here is from a camel. And I thought that was interesting – even though we hear a lot about camel’s milk in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia specifically, it wasn’t really commercialized at the same scale.”
Even in Saudi Arabia, Abdulwahab said, it was hard to find camel’s milk except from a Bedouin street vendor.
Aware of the nutritional benefits of camel’s milk and believing that there is a market for it in the U.S., the idea for Desert Farms was planted.
FocusKSA is a joint project of the Saudi-US Trade Group and SUSRIS.com.
See the full interview here:
