Meet Aziz Al Harbi of RoboStores, the Saudi expat who is at home in the UAE

Gulf News

Why Dubai is home to this Saudi expatriate who set foot here at the age of 16  Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/36QbVsV  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #SaudiArabia #Dubai

Transcript

00:00In the beginning I did not, I wasn't happy with the move. I was, you know, I was young and I had my friends there and my life there.

00:09Hello everyone. I guess everyone knows how Dubai is home to many expats.

00:15And with me today is one expat. He's from Saudi originally.

00:19His name is Aziz Alharbi and he's here to tell us why Dubai is home to him.

00:25I moved here in 2003. I was about 14 years old.

00:28And in the beginning I did not, I wasn't happy with the move.

00:32I was, you know, I was young and I had my friends there and my life there.

00:36So when my parents told me that we're moving to Dubai, I was like, oh, I'm not sure if I'm going to like it here.

00:42And now, you know, 16 years later, it's my home really.

00:47Since 2003 until now, I consider Dubai really my home.

00:51How did it all start for you? Like what's your educational background? Let's start with that.

00:56So when I moved to Dubai, I attended the American School of Dubai and I did my high school there.

01:02And being in the American school and being, you know, half American, my mother from Seattle, Washington,

01:07I was always intrigued and I knew that I wanted to study in the United States.

01:12So I'm from the West Coast, but I wanted to get away from that side and go to the East Coast.

01:17So I attended Boston University. So I went to the School of Management there.

01:21At the time it was called School of Management. Now they've changed it to Qualcomm School of Management.

01:25And I studied finance. Now I'm not in finance now, but I studied it and it's a great background to have.

01:31I'm happy that I did study finance. After a couple of years, I decided that this isn't really what I want to study.

01:36It was too late. So I continued that major, but I added an operation management major.

01:42I also added a minor in economics. So I have a nice trio of topics that I studied.

01:49So when I studied operation management, I fell in love with that field and I knew that's where I wanted to be.

01:56I came back to Dubai and I worked in consulting for a couple of years for a hotel management company.

02:03And then I had a meeting with our current CEO and chairman, Mr. Anis Al-Jallaf.

02:10And we sat down and he told me his idea of what he wants to create in robo stores.

02:17I remember he showed me videos of these robots moving around and there's nothing like it here in the region.

02:26So it's something new and I can see his vision of what he wants to create.

02:30I also saw at the time the real move towards e-commerce and online and the e-commerce world.

02:39And Amazon, of course, was booming from then till now.

02:43And I thought this is a really cool and unique opportunity.

02:47And I was hooked ever since that day.

02:50So four years later, we have robo stores fulfilling for the e-commerce industry in the MENA region.

02:56Where do you want to go next?

02:58I want to continue life and my career in Dubai.

03:02So robo stores now has one center fulfilling for multiple companies across the world in the region and worldwide.

03:10We do deliver worldwide.

03:12Our idea is to take this concept, to take this company and replicate it in different regions, different markets, different countries.

03:20Whether it's Egypt or Saudi Arabia or even the free zone here have multiple in the UAE.

03:25And just expand what we're doing to really help the e-commerce world in the UAE.

03:31How interesting is this story of Aziz Alharbi for more on his profile.

03:37Do read the story in Gulf News.

03:39For now, this is Anjana Kumar for Gulf News.

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