Faisal Al Bannai had a knack for business from an early age. At 7, he was selling chocolates to his siblings. Today, at 32, is the founder and CEO of Axiom Telecom, a company with a projected revenue of Dh3 billion last year. Lorraine Chandler tries to find out more about his entrepreneurial spirit.
Axiom Telecom is the Middle East's biggest wireless telecommunications organisation with about 900 employees, 200 retail outlets and 240 ?points of presence' (retail stands with Axiom's products, but not its staff).
The company is planning to double its presence across the region by the end of this year, with strong growth in Saudi Arabia.
Its founder, Faisal Al Bannai, 32, is one of the UAE's most successful businessmen and mobile phone companies are more than happy to deal with him.
Yet it wasn't always this way. Shortly after leaving university, Al Bannai saw a lot of promise in the mobile phone market and opened Axiom Telecom in 1997 with only four employees.
He managed to persuade Ericsson (now Sony Ericsson) and Nokia to break exclusive agreements with distributors, a difficult move at the time.
From the beginning, Al Bannai got involved in every aspect of the business and recalls times when he would personally receive delivery of phones at the airport, transport them to storage and, later, from storage to the vendors - even taking responsibility for picking up the money.
There were many ups and downs in the early days, and many criticised Al Bannai when in 2001 he decided to expand into retail in addition to his wholesale operation. Doomsayers told him he was going too fast, that he was too late to capture the market.
When Al Bannai told them he was planning to open 30 stores in a year, they scoffed and advised him to open a few stores at a time and wait and see what the response was.
Yet he had a vision that his company would have to notch up a certain volume of sales in order for him to reach his goals.
There's no doubt his vision paid off. The company has grown exponentially over the last five years. Revenue in 2000 was Dh120 million.
By 2002 it had tripled to Dh360 million. In 2003, it had increased more than fourfold to Dh1.6 billion and figures for 2005 are expected to exceed Dh3 billion.
At the end of 2003, the company decided to venture beyond the UAE and enter into the Saudi market. Within a year it was the dominant mobile phone player in the country.
Al Bannai plans to have more than 600 outlets and 300 retail points of presence by the end of this year, with Saudi Arabia leading these expansion plans.
Despite his youth, Al Bannai has already received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Establishment for Young Business Leaders, together with the Arabian Business Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2005.
It makes you wonder what he's going to achieve in the next 30 years.
When I meet him, I am a little taken aback at his laid-back manner - hardly typical of someone who's at the helm of such a dynamic business. He appears to have all the time in the world to chat with me and seems a bit bemused when I ask him if his work is stressful.
He says he has got to a point where he knows how to manage stress, but I have to say I doubt if he ever feels it.
Taking pride of place on his desk are individual photographs of his four children. He is able to give me the birthday of each child and smiles fondly at the photographs, seeming more interested in talking about his family than about the impressive story of Axiom's rise.
He looks tired and reticent and I wonder whether this is because he's been up all night working, or whether it's fatigue from playing with his kids.
Getting information from him is initially like trying to get a smile from a dentist, but he eventually opens up and lets me in on the rapid growth of his company.
I
I have learnt something important in these last (few) years. In this type of high-growth industry, when you're doing things that have never been done before, stress levels can be quite high. You need to have your own (way of) isolating this stress. If you don't learn to contain it, you'll just get burnt out.
I know every aspect of the business and none of the salesmen could ever ...
bluff me. (That's) because I've been so intensely involved with Axiom from the beginning, I consider myself a considerate person, but I can get quite upset if things don't go right. I'm not the shouting type, that's not the way to run a business.
If one of my employees did something completely out of line then I would have to sack him, but I don't believe firing people should be a (regular event). In fact, some people say I give my staff too many chances.
I believe that as long as you set your mind to doing something, you can achieve it. However, regardless of how much determination you have, you also need to have the right skills.
I had an idea in my mind that I had to achieve a certain (target) when I decided to expand into retail. I felt to get the right response, I needed volume.
It was a time of huge investment in the business and a lot of people were waiting for me to fail. It was a stressful time moving from distribution to retail but it paid off big time to go in that direction at the time.
Me
Me and my parents:
My father, Abdul Aziz, was a Major General with the police until he retired two years ago, after about 30 years (of service).
As a child, I found him kind and generous, but he could also be firm at times. He combined the firmer policeman elements and the more caring human traits to give us a very balanced upbringing.
My mother, Rukia, is originally from Kuwait. She was a (school) headmistress in Dubai, but gave up work after two children. Although you might think she'd be a disciplinarian, she actually spent most of her time making things easy for everyone in the family.
She's a friendly and down-to-earth lady, who's happiest when everyone around her is happy. I have two younger brothers and two younger sisters. We are all very close.
Looking back, it's hard to say if we had too much discipline. I spent much of my childhood playing outside with friends and family. Nowadays, like most national families, we meet every Friday in our father's house.
Me and my education:
I attended Rashid School for Boys, Dubai, and was in the first class of graduates from there in 1991. I did well at school, but I never believed in studying all day long. Maths was my best subject.
I then went on to do a bachelor's degree in management and finance at Boston University (in Massachusetts, United States) after which I completed a master's degree in shipping, trade and finance at City University, London.
When I was at university, studying different commercial projects, I became intrigued by the business world. Then I came back to Dubai to start my career.
Me and my family:
I've been married for eight years.
My wife studied Islamic studies in Dubai, but now she's a full-time housewife and we have four children. She's very supportive of my work and enjoys spending time with the children. She also mixes well with my family.
We have four children. Abdul Aziz is the eldest, aged 7. He's the quietest one and is quite happy sitting and playing in his room. Hind, 5, is the only girl and she knows it! She is always trying to take advantage of this fact.
Abdullah, aged 3, is very naughty.
He's the one who jumps off walls. Every week he bumps his head and he's broken most parts of his body, including two hands and a few other bones.
He makes me laugh, though, the way he tries to use logic in his conversations. Marwan is the baby, at 6 months, but he seems to have a nice disposition so far.
I think we have a complete family now. Four is a nice number! We have a lot of fun when we're all together. I'd like to spend more time at home but that's not always possible when you run your own business.
The toughest thing about being a parent is trying to balance things. You want children to have their own individual personalities, while also learning manners and doing things the way you want them to.
If you leave all the decisions up to the children, then what sort of parenting have you given?
But you have to be careful that you don't enforce your own style on your children. I try to make sure that my children don't get everything they want, but I also don't believe I should deprive them of something just to make a point.
Instead, I try to manage things; for example, I might give them a certain (amount) to spend on toys. I work hard, and I want my family to enjoy the benefits of this. I want them to feel that they are well taken care of.
Me and Axiom Telecom:
In 1997, I set up Axiom Telecom because I could see the huge potential in mobile phones. In 1998, Nokia made us its agent in Pakistan; this was (our) first step towards breaking the monopoly (some) agents had with mobile phone companies in the UAE at the time.
Then in 1999, we managed to be appointed as a second distributor for both Ericsson and Nokia. We decided to move from general trading to distribution. It was a tough time.
It wasn't easy to make (Nokia and Ericcson) break (away from only using) exclusive agencies (and take on) a new company. At every point, we had to prove ourselves to the industry and it took us a few years to achieve this.
In 2000, we made a strategic decision.
We had made some money and lost some money but we decided that we could be a leader in this field, so we expanded and placed more emphasis on the Axiom brand.
From a team of four, our employee count had increased to around 40 and then we went through a period of tremendous growth that has led to us having 900 employees today.
Despite some low periods, we continued to see opportunities (for growth) - even when everyone was telling us we were growing too fast.
In 2001, we decided to get into retail outlets, even though people were saying we should focus on either retail or wholesale, not both.
I realised that not only could we do both, but we could also open a service centre and offer added services. I saw that if I had all these elements, my whole proposition would become much stronger and that one plus one could equal three.
Our focus is on retail. That's the face of the company, but there are so many other elements which also add to the equation that make up the success of Axiom.
Around 2003, we felt we were a sizeable business and we opted to venture outside the UAE, starting with Saudi Arabia. Our approach was to open in one market first to establish the same sort of strength we had in the domestic (arena).
We upgraded our management and IT infrastructure to prepare for regional growth. By August 2004, we were the biggest (mobile) telecom player in Saudi Arabia.
This year, we're expanding into Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iran as well as increasing our presence in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Myself
Do you think your position in the family can make an impact on your personality? You're the eldest son. Has that affected how you were brought up and how you see yourself?
Yes, as the eldest son I've had perhaps the most interaction with my father and he's had quite an influence on me.
You're naturally expected to be more mature when you're the eldest, whereas when you're the youngest, the opposite occurs. There are pluses and minuses to both situations.
Even at a young age, I was given a lot of freedom. I used to play in a chess club when I was a boy. At around 13, I attended a tournament in (the former) Yugoslavia where I won second prize for my level.
While I was with the UAE team, I had no other guardian. In fact, my family also sent my 10-year-old brother, Fahad, with instructions for me to look after him!
Do you think in the fields of IT and mobile communications you have to be young to achieve success? If you haven't made it by 30, is it too late?
I'm not sure it's really a matter of being young or not. Maybe if you grow up with these technologies, they're easier to adopt.
I remember when we were at school, some teachers didn't know how to turn on a VCR, even though for us it was normal (and we had seen these things) from about the age of three.
As a younger person, you didn't have to learn these things; you just got on with it. Your grasp is different, because you've also learnt a lot of these things at school, whereas a 60-year-old has to wrap his mind around completely new concepts.
In our field, at Axiom, we're not inventing technology so age doesn't really matter.
What sort of trends do you see in the mobile phone industry?
I think some people misread the mobile phone industry in the early days. They counted it as part of traditional electronics, but it's not.
When Ericsson first introduced the camera phone, the camera industry laughed; they thought it would never replace the traditional camera, but now Nokia is the biggest camera seller in the world.
Phone cameras are going up to three and four (mega) pixels this year.
Nowadays, a phone is everything. It's there for music, business, taking photos, making calls and even as an accessory. People don't buy mobiles just for the phone function any more.
Mobiles are fashion items now and compete with perfume and jewellery as impulse gifts.
People often buy the latest phone because it's a way of enjoying disposable income and feeling good. Exclusive phones - such as the 8800 Nokia, with its chrome steel finish - are a way of showing off one's wealth.
And the added advantage is that, unlike a TV or stereo, you carry your phone with you all the time. This convergence (of uses) ... has turned traditional sales patterns upside down, causing a sales explosion.
Is it a good or a bad thing that we're now contactable 24 hours a day? Have mobile phones made life easier or more complicated?
Twenty years ago, you left home and couldn't be contacted, but now if you leave home without your mobile phone, you really feel you have to go back for it.
Now it's an addiction and there are disadvantages to being connected all the time. While it can speed things up sometimes, it can also be a burden, because it intrudes on your private time.
If you were a mobile phone, what phone would you be?
I'd be a Nokia N70; it's a nice phone with all the gizmos and features, as well as being quite powerful in terms of capability. At the end of the day, I feel confident of my capabilities and what sort of things I can achieve.
"Age considers but youth ventures." Would you agree? Do you think young people make better entrepreneurs because they're more willing to take risks?
Yes, younger people are more aggressive and more buoyant. They are more ready to take risks but, of course, there are different definitions of risk.
You can walk into a dark room where you don't know what's happening, or you can (wait and consider the risks). You can't study everything 100 per cent because if you do that, you'll find that someone else has (already) taken the risk.
You should study and plan but there's a limit to how long you can wait before taking a decision. You just have to make sure every possible angle is covered, and that you have enough information to say, "OK, that's enough to make a decision."
If you want to be the leader in your field, you have to push the envelope.
You need to understand that if you make ten decisions and eight of them turn out to be right, then that's good. Otherwise you will end up taking two years to make just one decision, instead of making eight good decisions.
