Ghani Holdings: Transforming UAE Real Estate with customer-centric innovations

Kamran Ghani’s entrepreneurial journey started three decades ago in 1995, when he started a business – a small initiative – that has grown into the diversified conglomerate known as Ghani Holdings, with interests in hospitality, tourism, real estate, trading, automobiles, automotive aftermarket and car rentals.

Ghani has created an ecosystem of transparent management that binds all its businesses together and that grows smoothly. Ghani Holdings owns Park Regis Business Bay hotel, Zone Tourism, Hot Wheels Car Rental, Colombia Used Cars and Auto Spare Parts and Plazzo Development Real Estate.

Empire Developments is one of the fastest-growing real estate developers in the UAE, offering high-quality affordable luxury homes. It has a portfolio of seven real estate projects with 1,500 homes, and a gross development value exceeding Dh2 billion. It has already delivered four out of the seven projects, with the remaining three currently in various stages of development.

In an exclusive interview, Ghani shares his success mantra.

What inspired Empire Developments’ 0.5 per cent monthly payment plan, and how is it transforming home ownership in the UAE?

Empire Developments is a customer-centric real estate developer, focusing on the customers’ needs and happiness. So, we launched this 0.5 percent monthly payment plan so that the property buyers with fixed monthly household income can buy their dream homes without going through the pains of home acquisition costs, including mortgage.

This initiative is inspired by our vision to help the buyers and make buying their dream home easy. This game-changing move has encouraged many middle-income families to buy apartments, so that they can protect themselves from rent inflation and uncertainties. Ownership of a home brings security and a peace of mind. More and more families are buying properties from us.

How does Empire maintain luxury, quality, and smart technology while keeping homes affordable?

This is an important balancing act that we have to do in order to manage the affordability with luxury, without cutting corners. As a developer, we are mindful that we work for our customers – home buyers – who are our largest stakeholders.

Although profitability is important for business to attain long-term sustainability, however, it is the happy customers or customer happiness that keeps us in business. So, our loyalty is to the customers and their interest – to give maximum for every dirham spent with us, even if it means less profit.

With a Dh2 billion portfolio, what’s driving your growth and timely project delivery?

Simply put, it is the customer satisfaction that is driving our growth. Our customers are our biggest sales force – they share their joy, emotion and happiness to their friends and relatives – who become our customers. Our success is based on our track record of high-quality homes with ample amenities and facilities that speaks volume about our work and craftsmanship.

So, our customer loyalty is our biggest growth enabler, based on the quality of work done by our team. One of our core strengths is our commitment to on-time delivery and with the high quality finishings.

How do you see Empire and Ghani Holdings shaping the UAE’s real estate future?

Although we are a small player in the overall context of the economy, we are a very focused business group that has a vision to help the UAE grow further – by delivering the right products and services – be it in the real estate, tourism or automotive sectors – where we have our footprints.