Entrepreneur goes down memory lane

Abu Dhabi: When Mohan Jashanmal first arrived in Abu Dhabi, drinking water used to be brought in from neighbouring countries in diesel drums.

"Any water you could get in Abu Dhabi in 1964 was salty, and water for drinking and cooking was brought to the port in massive containers," the 73-year-old businessman, originally from India, told Gulf News.

Abu Dhabi was a completely different city in those days, far from its current status as the capital of one of the fastest developing countries in the world.

"Everywhere there was sand, and the port was just metres away from our house on the Corniche," Jashanmal reminisced. He came to the UAE to carry forward the family business and settled down in their house here with his new wife. "Our house was a three-storey concrete structure that people then used to call the Jashanmal Palace because it was one of the only solid buildings for miles.

"We had a full view of the waters and we could walk down to the expansive beach whenever we wanted to," he recounted.

Jashanmal is the regional manager of Jashanmal, Abu Dhabi and a shareholder in the Jashanmal Group, a luxury goods store with nine flagstores in the UAE, distributing leading international brands.

At the helm of his business in the UAE, Jashanmal has spent four decades in the country, and witnessed its unprecedented growth.

"Everybody now owns a car. However, when I first arrived in the Abu Dhabi, then a part of the Trucial States, our Range Rover was a rarity. Business, too, was a completely different affair," he recalls.

At that time, the Jashanmal store stocked imported household items, clothes, and even groceries for the British troops that would dock at the Abu Dhabi ports. And to load up on their products, the then-young executive and his staff had to drive to Dubai, which was the most developed emirate, he said.

Risky drive

"The drive took at least four hours in a four-wheeler, and was extremely risky because it took us across the desert and sand dunes. There was no paved road, and we relied on dirt tracks for direction, or used the compass as a last resort when we were lost. We always carried water and petrol with us, just in case we got lost and ran out of fuel," Jashanmal said. The company already had an outlet in Dubai that was established in 1954 by Jashanmal's elder brother while he himself managed the store in Abu Dhabi. This was also a time when the UAE had not yet come into being as a nation on the world map.

"People would land at the Abu Dhabi port and undergo custom checks right in front of our eyes. There was a lot of trust among the people then. I remember several instances when we collected our goods from the post and paid the duty on them long after they had been sold," he said with a smile.

With the establishment of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce in the late 1960s however, things got a little more formal. Expatriate businessmen were asked to choose local sponsors and teach them the trade, and this led to the formation of the Jashanmal National Company.

Future vision

But then, the equation changed completely on December 2, 1971. Jashanmal remembers this period as a phase when an Emirati had a startlingly clear vision of the country's future.

"The late President His Highness Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan came to the Corniche on that historic day to witness a small performance set up by the Indian community on a makeshift stage. He looked so radiant and happy, and he had so many dreams," Jashanmal said.

"We would spend hours at the President's majlis, and we could never convince ourselves that his lofty dreams for this small nation would actually come true, at least not within our lifetime," he said.

These hopes soon came to fruition however, and even the area around Jashanmal's Corniche home underwent a transformation that made it unrecognisable from the sandy shores he first came to.