MWC25 | Harrison Lung, e&

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Harrison Lung

Group Chief Strategy Officer

e&

How e& and IBM are shaping the future of AI and FinTech innovation

The telecommunications industry is rapidly evolving beyond its traditional role of providing connectivity. Companies are now embracing digital transformation, expanding into artificial intelligence, FinTech and content services. The broader shift to AI in telecommunications is driven by the need to create new revenue streams and compete with over-the-top service providers.Harrison Lung of e& is on set with theCUBE to discuss AI in telecommunications.The ability to leverage AI for enhanced customer experiences and operational efficiencies is becoming a key differentiator in the industry

play_circle_outline E&'s diverse business portfolio across telecom, technology adjacencies, and digital consumer services.

play_circle_outline Partnership with IBM for joint research on AI adoption and AI governance platform.

play_circle_outline Collaboration with IBM for global insights, expertise, and technology assets.

play_circle_outline Future focus on financial impact and long-term benefits of AI in society.

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Harrison Lung, e&

Harrison Lung

Group Chief Strategy Officer e&

In this engaging episode, we are joined by Harrison Lung, the group chief strategy officer of e&, for an insightful discussion at MWC25 Barcelona. Known for its resilience and innovation, e& has transitioned from a UAE-based telecom giant to a multinational entity with operations in 20 countries, offering services from telecommunications to digital consumer solutions. TheCUBE's Savannah Peterson and Dave Vellante engage with Lung on the company's strategies in embracing cutting-edge technologies such as AI, IoT, and cybersecurity to drive growth and innovatio... Read more

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What services and countries has the telecom company e& expanded to since it first started? add

What recent initiatives have been announced by the speaker in collaboration with IBM and what are the key focus areas of these initiatives? add

What are the benefits of partnering with IBM as a global technology company? add

What factors should be included in announcements regarding the impact of new technology, such as AI, on a business, including revenue uplift, productivity, and long-term effects on society? add

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Harrison Lung, e&

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>> Hola amigos and welcome back to Barcelona, Spain. We're here at the end of day one of our four days of coverage of Mobile World Congress. My name's Savannah Peterson. I'm joined with Dave Vellante all week. Dave, what's the most unexpected thing you heard a guest say today?

>> DOGE for AI was the line of the day. That DeepSeek was DOGE for AI.

>> She was full of a lot of interesting things.

>> I thought that was pretty good.

>> Yeah, I thought that was pretty good too. I also liked-

>> Turning caterpillars into butterflies, that's an oldie but goodie.

>> Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a lot of metamorphosis. I also liked that we talked... We got some more food analogies today with the barbecue and the wireless thermometer. You never know where we're going to go.

>> Deep ribs.

>> Now I'm hungry. We're talking about beverages. What a perfect time to introduce Harrison. Thank you so much for coming to hang out on the show with us today.

>> No, and thank you for having me, to the both of you.

>> So this is our first time having the opportunity to work with EN, or at least it is for me. I'm not sure if you have Dave.

>> It is. Yeah.

>> In case the audience might not be familiar, what does e& do?

>> Yeah, so e& started as a local telecom company in the UAE about 50 years ago. Since then, we've expanded to another 19 countries in the telecom operations, from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, other parts of Africa like Morocco, and more recently we closed the telecom network deal for four country in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovakia, and Hungary. In addition to our telecom operations, we've also expanded and invested a number of digital and technology adjacencies, both on the B2B side for enterprises, serving them up the stack on different solutions and services such as cybersecurity, AI, IoT, and others, as well as in the digital consumer side, focusing on three pillars. First is content. So we run an asset called STARZPLAY, which is the competitor to Netflix to our region. We also have assets in FinTech called e& money and Wheel Bank, and then most importantly, we have Careem, the super app, which provide ride-hailing, food delivery, and grocery services in the UAE.

>> Hang on, hang on.

>> I was going to say, so what don't you do, because that sounds like 17 business.

>> This is like what every telco wants to be, because you're over-the-top competitor. You're basically got internet businesses. You're more global than many telcos. Wow, I mean, that's the blueprint that every telco we've heard about for years... We hear a lot of complaints about monetization, we can't compete with the over-the-top vendors they're using our network. You guys just went and did it. How did that happen?

>> So I think we're very lucky and privileged. We're at the end of the day a publicly traded company, but our board and our management tea, have really high aspirations. So we're really shooting for the top. In fact, the most recently launched campaign that we had was called Go For More. So it's not just settling-

>> Never satisfied.

>> Never satisfied, and going for more. That's number one. And number two is we're very lucky to have the capital allocation and the capital deployment ability to make these bets and investments. And thirdly, of course, is the patience to wait for some of these businesses to grow. Because as you rightly said, the different businesses I listed, the telecom, the technology, the enterprise, the consumer, each have a very different margin profile and a financial profile. So we've come to a point where we actually have independent businesses, independent BU's for each one of them, so as to also communicate to our investors and capital markets that these are all different businesses, and therefore we expect shareholder value return based on the different multiples that each one would derive.

>> Okay, so you don't... Sorry. So you don't expect that everyone has the same operating model, the same margin model. The market dictates that. And your governance model is to maximize that, not to try to make a fish climb a tree.

>> Well, because to your point, being the incumbent telecom operator in the UAE is something we took to heart. It is our heritage, it is where we started 50 years ago. And running a telecom operator is not easy, particularly the network. You're the trusted partner of the enterprises, the governments, and the consumers that you serve.

>> Which are three very different markets. This is another question I want to ask you in a second. Keep going, but that's-

>> And we take that very seriously.

>> It's not easy.

>> So from a network quality perspective, network uptime perspective, we never take that leave it to chance. In fact, as you may know, the UAE, our network is the fastest 5G network in the world. Kudos to our CTO team and the technology team. It has the highest fiber penetration in the world. Kudos to them. On the flip side, we mentioned some of these technology assets, the he OTT play in media and content. Now, as we run, for example, the AI algorithm to give you the next video to watch, the next show, the next movie, is there a difference if there's a 98% accuracy versus 95? No, they're all pretty darn good. So that for us is a much faster operating model to ensure we learn and we test and learn to understand what the consumer appetite is. We feed back into the system so that we give them the next best product.

>> You guys are good at content, I'm hearing. Most telcos aren't, they're great at connectivity, they're great at infrastructure, they're great at the network not going down, and they're really bad at content. How is it... You answered before, but did you have to hire different people, did you get people from different industries and cultivate them and like you said, you had patient capital?

>> Absolutely. We did, I think, three very important and interesting things. Number one is in our strategy refresh cycle about three years ago, we actually set these up as different businesses, different verticals with different P&Ls with different leaders. That provided full accountability for each of the CEOs to manage and run the respective business based on the right operating model. That's, I think, number one. Number two is the, I would say, culture operating model's very different as well between, let's call it, a startup or a scale-up versus that of a telecom company. While from our side, there's a common base load of what each organization should strive for, being courtesy and respectful and professional to each other. We're also united as one as a collaborative team. We're also customer obsessed, and we dare to be bold. These ones are no regrets and it's something that we have to do. However, the day-to-day operating model is slightly different, because to my earlier point, the telecom operator is the trusted partner of the many institutions that they serve, and we never want any network downtime. However, on the technology side, we always test and learn based on the case at hand.

>> Move fast and break things. Exactly.

>> Or keep iterating and keep prototyping. I want to talk about your customers for a second because marketing to those different audiences has got to be a unique challenge for each one of these views. And also kind of a unique... I mean the data you must have on your community as you roll out these different products is also kind of fascinating. How are these respective communities responding to the AI wave? Is there a difference between ,say, the government and the consumer side of things, or are you seeing some commonalities-

>> Of course, I think there's quite a bit... There's both commonality and differences, I think. And by the way, even on the consumer side as an example, there's also differences between the countries and markets.

>> Yeah, I can imagine.

>> Because in some more developed markets, if you say, "Hey, I will give you some free data for access to your information," they'll probably say no. But in some emerging markets, of which we also operate in, for them, it's about having that data access, that they don't have to pay for, for example. So they might be more lenient to it. Not to mention on the government side, there's, I would say, different levels of maturity in the regulatory framework, in the areas of data and AI, whether it's from Europe, the Middle East, to Africa. So the good news is because we operate in each of these markets, first of all we adhere diligently to operating framework and the regulatory framework of each market that we operate in, whether it's data governance, whether it's AI sovereignty and the like. But we're also able to use a lot of best practice sharing across the different markets, because on the telecom side, we're in 20 countries. On the digital and technology side, we're in additional 18. So total of 38. So we can really do the compare and contrast against these markets and really learn and take the best to bear. And thirdly is we don't do it alone. We do a number of different partnerships. I think one we will talk later on today with IBM, but we also work with other, I would say, third party organizations such as the GSMA, the World Economic Forum, and others, because they themselves are also different bodies that look at AI... For example, we're on the AI Governance Alliance. There's different AI initiatives in these bodies as well.

>> Gosh, I can imagine those conversations are probably pretty fascinating, especially at World Economic Forum and whatnot. You mentioned IBM. Let's talk about it. Talk to us about the collaboration and partnership there.

>> Well, first of all, IBM has been a dear and trusted partner of ours for many years. And in fact, in the last, I would say two months, month and a half, we announced two interesting initiatives. One is after, I would say, close to one year of hard work, we actually did a joint research white paper. We looked at the adoption of AI in the regions, in the MENA region, looking at Saudi, Egypt, and the UAE, comparing to the US so that we can do a compare and contrast of where we're ahead, where we may be behind, and the like. So I would encourage all of our viewers online today to actually go and download the white paper and results. The second thing is we also announced with IBM to work with them on an overall end-to-end AI governance platform and framework. And this is a very pioneering approach that is, I would also almost say, market-leading. And the reason is beyond the data governance and the AI sovereignty, we also want to have a common pain to have the right compliance, transparency, and governance to manage all these different AI initiatives and processes. So we're actually very grateful for this partnership.

>> And it makes so much sense to be building that out. I didn't know you guys were working on a governance platform. Super critical right now. I got to ask you, you mentioned the report. Was there any data that came out of that research that you found particularly surprising or illuminating?

>> Yeah, I would say both surprising as well as a validation in terms of the readiness of the organizations, the amount of money that, for example, in the region is deploying in AI. If you look at almost every week, multi hundred million billion dollar deals in AI data centers, LLMs, and others. And of course, the aspiration of all the CEOs working very closely with the respective government partners in deriving AI at scale as well as for impact.

>> That's exciting.

>> So tell us more about the tech generally, your philosophy toward technology with all these disparate, or I shouldn't say disparate, but separate businesses, and I'd be interested to see how you guys think about AI because you're really forward thinking. A lot of customers that we talk to, they're struggling to understand what's the return on AI. We're doing some experimentation in the cloud. We have all this data on-prem. We have data gravity, but we don't have the skill sets. We're a little bit worried about the ROI. What's your philosophy there and approach?

>> So I would say two things to your question. The first is in terms of AI, no one organization can do it alone, and us being one of them. So in addition to some of the bodies we mentioned, whether it's IBM, the GSMA, and the WEF, from a framework perspective, there are other technology providers we work with, whether it's the Microsoft and the Amazons and the AWSs of the world. And many of these relationships typically span the entire, I call it the stack, ranging from the infrastructure and the cloud layer to the platform and the data mangling and the adjudication of it to, in many cases, the services layer as well, through different consulting, joint go-to-market angle with these organizations. The second thing is, I would call 2025 the year of the AI from a monetization and impact perspective.

>> Well, I think it has to be, otherwise companies are just going to bleed money trying to find their application internally.

>> And for us, this is actually very interesting because in addition to our organization going through this journey, the amount of money that companies spend on AI inside the telecom industry is actually a very, very small percentage versus the larger percentage of the money other companies in financial services and healthcare, in government spend on AI. And as such, we see this as a tremendous business and commercial opportunity for our B2B arm called e& Enterprise to have what we call an AI as a service, where they go to these customers of theirs, typically large corporate MNCs, global players, to then work with them through this journey to really monetize it and to derive it at impact.

>> Why do you think that investment has been so much lower relative in the telco space versus other industries like you mentioned?

>> I think for two reasons. I think number one is at the end of the day the percentage of, let's call it, market cap or GDP in the telco area is much smaller compared to all the other industries. For example, rolling back the clock 20 years ago, the telecom contribution as a market cap of top X number of telcos is significantly higher than some of the hyperscaler. Now it's inverse. And at the end of the day, it's one sector out of maybe 10 or 12. So you have large companies such as those in healthcare and financial services that spend a ton of money in technology every year. So we want to support these organizations through their journeys.

>> Well, your core business is very capital intensive, some of your other businesses have great marginal economics, and your blended operating model is actually pretty profitable. I got to translate the currency, but you guys do very well and you've got a dividend and so forth. So how do you see... And a lot of these, the core business, at least around the world, is highly regulated. So is your business highly regulated? What role do regulations play generally in your business? And then specifically, how do you think about governance and regulation in AI?

>> Well maybe I'll first answer your question on the financial first. I think we're very fortunate to be able to, back to my marketing campaign, going for more, because just in the last year, we grew 10% in revenue, year on year. And since we've started this journey, both from a revenue and net profit perspective, we're at 15 to 20% growth. So we're one of the few companies where we feel we're able to leverage our strong telco core to provide the cash flow generation, the dividends, which is around 5%, with an increasing and progressive dividend year on year, but also invest in growth, which we see as a tremendous growth engine and revenue and EBITDA and net profit contribution in the upcoming years. On your second point, I think for us, the rule of regulatory bodies is super important. At the end of the day, we're a telecom player, so we have the licenses, the spectrum in our 20 countries to operate in that space. But also in the same time, in the technology aspect, we're also operating in a very agile manner to test and learn, where these cases... Now in some of our assets, like in FinTech, they also have licenses, banking licenses, wallet licenses and whatnot. But it's still very different than a traditional telco license, which allows you to operate in a much more faster and agile fashion.

>> What do you get from IBM. You talked about it before a little bit, but is it data stack, is it AI? Paint a picture of what you guys partnered, what's the tech underneath?

>> Well, I would say two things. The first is at the end of the day, while we aspire to be a global technology company, because we're in 38 countries, IBM is in over 100 companies. So they're much more global than we are. And as such, this partnership really brings their insights and expertise to bear to us in a number of different markets that we're currently not in. The second part is IBM is a technology company. They have different IPs, different patents, different technology assets that we currently do not. So for us, this is really about a one plus one equal to three type of synergy and collaboration, and having these insights and expertise that we can leverage both for ourselves as well as for our customers.

>> We were just talking about this in our last segment about how collaborative the partnerships are, and-

>> They have to be.

>> Exactly. Companies that maybe would've historically in certain regions, for example, been competitive, are partnering together so the water level rises together. This has been awesome, Harrison, you've done fantastic. I've got one final question for you. When we're at Mobile World Congress next time in 2026, what do you hope to be able to say then that you can't yet say today?

>> Wow. I think beyond all the announcements, the announcements should also include financial impact, whether this is the revenue uplift that has driven the business, whether this is the productivity, and there's one saying that I think I heard on one of the keynote speakers on the stage. In technology like AI, I think we tend to overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. So I think we're in that cycle, where there's a lot of talk happening, there's a lot of investments that being made, but there will be some winners and some losers, and we hope to be one of the winners. And then the long-term impact is what's tremendously interesting, because in addition to my role as a group chief strategy officer, I also have sustainability reporting to me, and we actually also see AI as a true enabler to decrease the digital divide and the potential AI divide and lifting up many citizens and society into the digital economy.

>> Yeah, wow. Well, we look forward to having that discussion with you at next year's Mobile World Congress. Harrison, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy week.

>> Thank you again.

>> Great to have you. Thank you.

>> And thank you, Dave. It's been an absolutely banner day here. We're cruising. Ready for some tapas?

>> Oh, yeah. Tapas, a little sangria.

>> Let's go baby. I hope you're all ready for some tapas, or at least now you're thinking about them. Thank all of you for tuning in wherever you might be. We're here in Barcelona, Spain. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.