Tanveer Ahmed

Early Life and Career

Mr. Tanveer Ahmed was born on 7^th March, 1979 to parents Abdul Razak Ismail and Waheed at Mangalore. In the year 1981, he moved to Dubai. Having completed his school education pre-university education at New Indian Model School, he pursued his Bcom at Private institution, Mangalore. After his graduation, he started working at printers and computer sales as a salesman.  After a while, he returned to India due to passport issues. Later on, he started working as a logistic coordinator at Singapore based company named CWT SML Logistics Company at Dubai.  This company is a third party logistics service provider. He had to work with different clients from all over the world. One of the client happened to be Cannon which is one of the world’s leading camera and print Manufacturer. Mr. Ahmed was their direct service provider.

He had a salary of 1800 Dirhams. This was the beginning stage of his career. The financial condition of Mr. Ahmed was weak and he wanted to stabilize his financial condition. The only way to achieve this was to work hard. Had to work hard to make it possible. One of the positive trait of Mr. Ahmed was his English communication skills. His verbal communication skills was quite good. The Cannon clients were impressed by his communication skills and passion towards his work. Ever since Mr. Ahmed started working at the logistics company, the shipment was on time and the shortages and errors were relatively low. Mr. Ahmed was a huge asset to the company. After 6 months, an employee in Cannon offered a job position to Mr. Ahmed. The only condition was that the logistic company which he was working with should allow him to resign without any problems. Resigning from the logistic company was a huge risk. But Mr. Ahmed was ready to face the new risks and challenges. He knew that he will never know the outcome if he didn’t try or take the chances. As a result, he resigned from the logistics company and returned to India. He believed that patience and hope is the key to success. In the year 2002 he returned to Dubai and started working at Cannon. This is the starting point of his career. Ever since then, there was no looking back. In the first six month, Mr. Ahmed was dealing with exporting, shipment etc. later on, he found the job quite boring and decided to find something more challenging. After a while, he took on an important project of Cannon European head office. The project was to create a base in UAE. Mr. Ahmed did not have a strong base on that. After a while, Mr. Ahmed set up the first Cannon spare part distribution center at the Middle East. It was a 2.5 year project (2003-2005) which dealt with implementation of ERP system, communication system with suppliers, payment structure etc. He had to deal with another project in France. He had to travel to France for the project where the French language was the only means of communication.  He attended the private French tutorial classes to learn French. The project turned out to be a very successful one. Mr. Ahmed worked in the Cannon supplies and department for 4 and half years. In the meantime, he attended the evening classes to pursue his MBA. During this 4 and half years in the supply department, Mr. Ahmed received appreciation and knowledge which boosted his confidence and skills. He also received several awards as a token of appreciation for his work in the department.  The sales and marketing team of the Cannon had relatively less number of people. The company had a plan of expanding the team. The company offered Mr. Ahmed to in charge of the sales and marketing team. But Mr. Ahmed was more in to administration and supply chain sectors. Mr. Venkata Subramanyam Hariharan , his senior persuaded Mr. Ahmed to take up the opportunity as he believed that Mr. Ahmed could accomplish more in the field of sales and marketing due to his excellent communication skills and presentation skills. Later on, he started working in the sales and marketing team as the area manager (UAE and GCC) in the year 2007.In the initial stage,  Mr. Ahmed found it extremely difficult to cope up with Marketing and sales team due to lack of experience in the field and poor mentors. Mr. Ahmed was responsible for managing Cannons sales and marketing across few GCC countries. Being an international market GCC for Cannon, the marketing investments were not up to the mark and the main focus was on UAE. Hence developing the GCC for the Marketing was quite challenging for Mr. Ahmed. The case was even more challenging due to his boss who was not willing to understand Mr. Ahmed or to express his ideas. The new environment was quite stressful and difficult to Mr. Ahmed. Being a start performer at cannon and suddenly being relegated to something like that was draining him emotionally as well as psychologically. After a while, the Cannon decided to reshuffle the entire management. In this process, Mr.Venkata Subramanyam Hariharan was promoted as his immediate Boss. Being an excellent observant and an experiences professional, Mr. Hariharan was aware of the problems faced by Mr. Ahmed. On the first day of his new position, Mr. Hariharan had a deep talk with Mr. Ahmed for two whole hours which allowed him to remove all the stress and frustrations out once and for all. Mr. Hariharan helped Mr. Ahmed to get over his depression and took him step by step addressing all the challenges and difficulties that was faced by him. This was the fifth turning point of his career. Later on, Mr. Ahmed found himself gradually turning in to a sales and marketing expert in Cannon. Within a year, Mr. Ahmed led the sales and marketing team in Cannon where he handled all the reporting, forecasting and budgeting in coordination with his respective seniors. Gradually the Cannon sales and marketing team started expanding and the number of staffs increased. Anything to do with any part of operations across Cannon, be it finance to supply chain or purchasing was handled by Mr. Ahmed. Overall Mr. Ahmed was centrally managing the sales and marketing communications and co-ordination across all sales managers and area managers for the entire Cannon Middle east and North African regions. In the year 2011, Mr. Ahmed was promoted to a sales manager for North and West Africa (North and west Africa refers to the 36 countries which were the former French Colony). Although Mr. Ahmed was not a native French speaker, this region was given to him considering his experience in managing the logistic and supply chain in the French region. Mr. Ahmed had to deal with staff management responsibilities from Morocco, Algeria, UAE and many more. This caused his travelling to increase tremendously. He had to travel to Morocco, Algeria, Indonesia, Ivory Coast etc.  At the same time, due to his operational requirements in sales and marketing in Cannon, he had to spend a lot of time in Cannon in Dubai as well as travel and manage the markets in different regions. Mr. Ahmed had all the tools to manage the business to the best of Cannons abilities. One of the main challenge faced by Mr. Ahmed was that there was no balance between work and life. He felt as if he was enslaved in that particular position. All he had to do was travel, work and repeat. This pressured him lot and his health was getting detoriated. His focus on his family was almost negligible. In the year 2012, he started working on an alternative plan. He wanted to start something on his own and come out of the corporate world.  His exposure in both supply chain and marketing and sales for 12-13 years in the industry gave him extreme exposure to the business globally. He learnt the global perspective on electronics and IT hardware industry. The entire global prospective helped him understand the global dynamics of trade within the industry.  He started to make a business plan and set up a small company. It was his friends company and he was a partner of the company.  This was during his days with Cannon.  In the year 2013, Mr. Ahmed resigned from Cannon and same year he set up his company. It was a one man show company named Ayhan fze at Rasalqaima which was named after his son. He was trading primarily in electronics and IT hardware which was basically from cameras and lenses to printers.  The main challenge was to identify the partners and suppliers whom he had to work with and to negotiate the prices. Due to his past experience, he was well aware of the above stated dynamics. Gradually over a couple of years, the volume and turn over started increasing which resulted in the establishment of another company named Arib Shipping. Mr. Ahmed was looking for partnerships and business ideas. Mr. Ahmed never failed in any business which was handled by himself but the businesses he trusted others on had failed miserably which was mainly due to lack of transparency. Mr. Ahmed dealt with all sort of people in the international level belonging to different religions and atheists and he had a lot of positive experience to cherish and remember. But unfortunately his experience with his own close members was one of the saddest part of his professional career. According to Mr. Ahmed the people lacked ethics and do not believe transparency where they believe in shortcuts to making money. Mr. Ahmed tasted betrayal from his trusted members which made him turn in to a wise man today. This experience had taught him whom to trust and whom not to in an very early age.

Interests and association

Apart from being a successful businessman, Mr. Tanveer Ahmed takes pleasure in cricket. Cricket was his passion. But as the time passed, he had to give up on cricket due to his academics skills and early professional career. Later on, he started focusing on his career and dheen to understand the real objective of life.  Over the last ten years, Mr. Ahmed realized how difficult the life can be sometimes and how Allah helped him in every level. So he started helping people irrespective of caste or creed.  He realized that it will difficult for him to do it alone. So he was looking up to partnering with the right people or organizations or associations. Culturally and socially, he was kind of involved with certain organization at Dubai.  But he was not satisfied with it.  In the year 2009, he came across a presentation by Mr. Khasim of Hidayah Foundation.  He had also seen a documentary named Aakrandhana which caputured his attention on a lot on the sufferings of the community. The presentation was a bigeye opener for Mr. Ahmed that he don’t need to travel to Africa or any other place to see the extreme conditions of poverty. This was his start with the Hidayah Foundation in the year 2009.  Mr. Ahmed had a discussion with Mr. Khasim on the topics such as giving importance to the Arabic language. Mr. Ahmed was very passionate about the Arabic language.  The main intension was to connect the people with the holy Qur’an.  Till today Mr. Tanveer Ahmed is a very much part of the Hidayah Foundation. During the 9 years, Mr. Ahmed served as president of Hidayah a number of times in the Dubai Hidayah foundation unit.  Mr. Ahmed was also a part of Bearys cultural Forum, Dubai.