DAVOS: The UAE’s relationship with India is moving to a new level and next week’s visit by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, is an important affirmation of how close the two countries are becoming, Adeeb Ahamad, Managing Director of the Abu Dhabi-based Lulu Financial Group, told Gulf News in Davos.
Ahamad welcomed India’s renewed interest in seeking better relations with its neighbours. “The Middle East and India have been linked for more than 2,000 years, but for the last decade the economic relationship was not given much priority,” he said. “Under the new government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has taken a lead in reaching out to its friends.”
Ahamad speaks with the extra knowledge gained from being a member of the World Economic Forum’s new South Asia Regional Strategy Group, which has been formulated to provide strategic guidance on the Forum’s regional agenda. “I believe that through the newly created board, we would be able to bring about changes on the ground in key areas across the region and also initiate greater private and public cooperation that enhances community development,” he said.
Commenting on India’s recent decision to demonetise R500 and R1,000 banknotes, Ahamad welcomed the move and noted that it had been widely supported in India. “The people supported it because it was done with the people’s interests at heart as well as to reduce corruption and black money,” he said.
“Remittances did not drop, because people still need to help their families,” said Ahamad, who speaks with some insight since the group’s Lulu Exchange runs a network of more than 130 branches in nine countries. “But we are still waiting for an answer about what to do with the Indian banknotes that are outside the country.
Ahamad has run Lulu Financial Group for nine years, and has set up new divisions within the Lulu Group such as Tablez (brand retailing) and Twenty 14 Holdings (hospitality). His own story is one of globalisation: born in India, he studied for the hospitality industry in Switzerland and London, later moving to work in major hotels in London and Milan before settling in Abu Dhabi.
At the World Economic Forum, he takes keen interest in meeting people with new ideas and encouraging engagement with local and global leaders across continents, so as to tackle some of the pressing global matters and create impactful change at the grassroots level.
Some of this is a necessary business awareness of disruptive technologies, and he gave two examples from his own businesses. “When we started Lulu Exchange, online was almost unheard of, but five years later when we started we were almost too late, things had moved too fast. In the hotel business, the impact of online booking has been huge. We used to have hundreds of booking agents on the phone, and that whole practice has been wiped out and the customer now has a much wider choice. We all need to worry that we will not be the next Nokia or Kodak!”.
