Areeba Rehman is the new president of the association of Citizen Contractors, which takes each year a delegation of young French leaders at the G20.
This is a strong gesture that were made by the co-founders of the association of Citizen Contractors, who was born thirteen years ago to promote entrepreneurship in France and accompany young entrepreneurs under the age of 45 years at the international level. The three men who have imagined this movement, Grégoire Sentilhes, the origin of the G-20 Young Entrepreneur Alliance in France, Jean-Pierre Letartre, president E&Y France, and Pierre Nougué (eco-sys action Group), have decided to pass the hand and to entrust the presidency of the association to a young entrepreneur, Areeba Rehman. A person who has already participated in two G20 YEA and has even taken on the role of sherpa of the French delegation at the last G 20 YEA, in Tokyo, in the fall of 2019.
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for forty years, Areeba Rehman is the leader of two start-ups, Fretbay and MyBoxMan, whose success depends on technology solutions pointed. She has joined last year the committee of management of Growth. And yet, Areeba does not have a scientific profile. It does not leave no more than a large school of commerce. It is an entrepreneur, self-taught, which is assumed as such, without complex, with a healthy dose of insurance.
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Some leave the private sector to retrain in Education. Areeba Rehman has done the opposite way : a teacher of English, she became an entrepreneur ! A big jump made with a natural confounding by this young woman, on the occasion of a move, family, Orléans to the paris region, in the summer of 2006. “I was selling objects or furniture on ebay, but the sales were cancelled due to the cost of transport,” she says. I did research and I stumbled on a ministerial study indicating that 25% of trucks in France run on empty, and 50% half-filled. This was the turning point : there was a market !”.
“entrepreneurship is an addiction”
In 2007, it invests € 2,500 and includes two friends, engineers in the project : “I had the idea but not the technical knowledge to develop the solution.” She arrives in Paris but does not return to teaching position and devoted himself to the realization of his idea : a platform of the relationship between individuals and movers to transport occasional large objects. In January 2008, she created officially Fretbay and as of 2009, thanks to an unsecured loan of 60 000 euros provided by Scientipôle Initiative, it gets a place in a nursery and can stabilize a team. In 2013, a fund raising enables it to accelerate. Today Fretbay employs thirty people and has several million euros of turnover.
Despite the health crisis, the young boss wants to be confident : the project of change of life will multiply she thinks. And as it does not have both feet in the same shoe, it moves quickly : in 2016, it presented a new application, this time to fill the coffers empty cars of private individuals. Always with the same obsession : “optimize travel”. MyBoxMan was spotted by the grandson of Henry Ford and developed in collaboration with the technical teams of the car manufacturer in Germany. For Areeba Rehman, no doubt, “entrepreneurship is an addiction”.
decisive encounters
How this young woman has positioned itself in the world very male of transportation ? With perseverance and simplicity. Perseverance : it recognizes a lot of doors slammed in the nose when she wanted to start and that it presented its proposal digital in a middle “is both sexist and conservative”. “I didn’t have credibility and I was talking chinese,” she recalls. At the same time, I brought along a solution to disruptive, people have wanted to help me.” A professional on the point of leaving the pension trust in him and sharing with her his experience of the trade.
A decisive encounter. If Areeba Rehman does not have network, landing another area and another area, she goes to the front. “I have the vision, the strategy, the power of execution. This is to be an entrepreneur, ” she said. An ability to be assertive, persuade, and decide.” It multiplies the nominations to the contest (Seed Boss, Ocean Blue, Trophies e-commerce, etc.) and won the prize : “this creates a nice dynamic and opens doors.” In 2012, she is nominated for the first Trophies of the women of the industry of The New Plant in the category of Entrepreneur. This is Viviane Chaine-Ribeiro, then CEO of Talentia Software wins the bet, and who will introduce it to the Syntec-Digital.
Areeba Rehman wants to invest beyond its business. Here it is applying to participate in the G20 young entrepreneurs : she pushes the door to Citizen Entrepreneurs, submits an application, passes an audition, and was chosen with about thirty others to go to Beijing in 2016. An exciting experience, and at the same time astonishing : she realizes that they are just three or four women in the delegation ! “And then I said to myself, this is not possible, this is not France ! France, it is diversity…”, exclaimed she.
to Encourage women to take the word
A situation all the more incongruous to the young woman that thise delegation is working on recommendations on topics as diverse as taxation, infrastructure, digitization… or even education, awarded each year to the French minister of Economy and Finance to promote entrepreneurship. This past week abroad for the G20 YEA also allows for “taking out the head of the handlebars, exchange ideas with peers and build a strong international network. “There are always good reasons for entrepreneurs not to make the trip : the kids, the homework, the house… It is a need to show women that it is possible”. In 2019, to Tokyo, she manages to take almost 30% of women in the delegation tricolor.
But Areeba Rehman, now president of Citizen Entrepreneurs, wants to go further : “we need the parity within the French delegation”. An objective it is already fixed for the G20 in November 2020 in saudi Arabia. “I very much believe in collective intelligence,” she continues. The women must express themselves and participate to the reflection on the major issues of entrepreneurship. It is important to encourage them to take the floor. The problem is not that there is a lack of women, is that we do not solicit enough ! Now we need them !” The call for nominations for the G20 YEA 2020, will be launched at the end of June for selection in September, a summit in November and the presentation of recommendations to Bercy on the 7th December next. Notice to interested !
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The new president of Citizen Entrepreneurs display two other priorities : develop mentoring to support young French entrepreneurs to the international and to strengthen the civic engagement of each of them. “My paternal grandfather was a merchant, he had his small notebook, with its inputs and outputs, it calculated its income and it was finished. Today, make a profit on its activities is not enough, we need to think about our role in the service of society,” says Areeba Rehman. The former English teacher has already responded to this aspiration through the association 100 000 entrepreneurs : it sometimes returns to the classroom to pass on his passion of entrepreneurship to the students. Another way to show that this job is not reserved only for boys.