Company History

The history of Estefa started before 2005, when it was established as GMR Matchmaker. As early as 1990, the founders of Estefa started helping Arabic students understand the educational system in Europe. In 1994, students at the Leiden Arabic faculty called on the expertise of Tahany Szumlas-AlAlim, who would later found GMR Matchmaker, to help Dutch exchange students resolve conflicts with local landlords, act as a tour guide, translate documents and verify trust issues. The translations often involved more than mere word-for-word transliteration to another language, and the backgrounds to situations played an essential role.

In 1997, company managers going to the Middle East asked the founders for the first acculturation courses. In 1999, it became apparent that certain Dutch institutions lacked a sound approach to dealing with their international assets. At that time, Ms. Szumlas-AlAlim was working for the Centre for the Promotion of Imports from Developing Countries (CBI), an organization under the Dutch Ministry of Finance that had the task of stimulating and supporting imports from developing countries. Although the organization’s core business was aimed at working with international partners, Ms. Szumlas-AlAlim found their approach rigid, failing to successfully reach people from non-Dutch cultural backgrounds. In the context of her frequent contacts with indigenous and foreign businesspeople, she noticed that incredible opportunities were being missed because of the lack of a vehicle for translating the ideas behind the opportunities to a Dutch approach. The approach and perspective of the CBI was simply too Dutch-centred for it to achieve its stated goals.

In 2001, Ms. Szumlas-AlAlim started working free-lance in the field of professional matchmaking, linking businesses and contacts to each other between the Netherlands and the Arabic and Islamic world. In the course of providing background research and translations for clients in various sectors, she discovered the need for international market research. Businesspeople who had problems presenting their product and choosing their image would be prepared to invest in what Ms. Szumlas-AlAlim called Global Market Research. When a career counsellor referred a Bolivian client to what was becoming known as GMR Matchmaker to research the Dutch market, the resulting project triggered an interest in expanding the scope of the work to include regions other than the Netherlands and the Arabic and Islamic world.

In 2005, Ms. Szumlas-AlAlim teamed up with two partners with similar management and language backgrounds in Latin America and China, dividing the management tasks. The main lines of business involved international research, promotion, acculturation, and contacting potential buyers as a service for investors. The company’s services included negotiating letters of intent and laying the foundations for international co-operation. In the development of the partnership, it became clear that the partners did not share the same view on the priorities of the company. In 2006, Ms. Szumlas-AlAlim became the sole proprietor of GMR Matchmaker. Now under new management, the company has changed its name to Estefa and seeks to continue the quest for intercultural understanding to the benefit of all those involved.