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Shaping up future business leaders

Dunia Finance’s leadership programme inspires young minds in their formative years to help them discover the leader within, writes Muzaffar Rizvi

Rajeev Kakar conducting a workshop with students. He said dunia is committed to investing more on leadership programme in the future. — KT photos

A “great leaders are born, not made.”

This quote sums up the basic tenant of the great man theory of leadership, which suggests that the capacity for leadership is inborn.

According to this theory, you’re either a natural born leader or you’re not, but Abu Dhabi-based finance company Dunia Finance’s managing director and chief executive Rajeev Kakar believes otherwise. He is busy shaping up future business leaders through his unique and well-descriptive three-week programme at dunia training academy in the Dubai Outsource Zone.

Perhaps Kakar is more inspired by the great American sportsman Vince Lombardi, who once said: “Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”

Kakar is not the only one who is following the footsteps of the American football player and coach Lombardi, as 48 students are currently participating in the Dunia Young Business Leaders Programme to sharpen up their leadership skills. The intensive summer internship “complimentary programme” is designed for high school and university students and has received tremendous response since its inception in 2013.

Against the previous programme’s 36 students, this year 48 students from Canada, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Thailand and Turkey are undergoing a mix of effective learning methods including classroom skill-based and aptitude development training, field trips, special projects, exposure to impact investing and sustainable growth practices, among many others.

Zohayr, an 11th-grade student at American School of Dubai, termed the programme “a good initiative” and said it will help achieve his ambitions to become an investment banker in future.

“The leadership training programme provides us a wonderful opportunity to learn and go through a first-hand practical life experience just in three weeks,” he said.

“Such programmes cost up to $7,000 in United States, but here it is free of charge,” he said.

Nigel Fernandes, who came from India and wants to be an electrical engineer with a marketing degree, also praised the programme and said it will help him a lot in achieving his life’s ambitions without costing him a penny from his pocket.

“We don’t see such a valuable initiative anywhere in the world. It is a good-quality programme and I recommend every student to apply and go through this life-learning experience.”

Teetat Srethbakdi, grade-12 student at Shrewsbury International School Bangkok, who is keen to supervise the family’s insurance business or something along the line of engineering or business, said the course is still very demanding and challenging, but meeting new people and hearing inspiring stories from the speakers are fantastic and kind of balance that out.

“The programme has been much better and much more interesting than I have expected. I expected to learn a lot from the programme, but didn’t expect to have so much fun at the same time,” Srethbakdi said.

Some of the parents of participating students also echoed the similar views and praised dunia management for their brilliant initiative that aims to inspire young minds in their formative years to help them discover the leader within.

“Dunia Finance is giving the most precious opportunity to leaders of the future. I am so grateful to dunia for this inspiring programme, which will be a milestone in my son’s future career,” Bengi Erim Eker, mother of Turkish student Efe Ozar, told Khaleej Times.

Amani Abid’s parents, Ridha Abid and Fatima Zohra Mezroua, also expressed the same views and paid rich tribute to the dunia team for their efforts to build up future business leaders.

“We appreciate a lot all the efforts and the great work you [dunia] are putting in this programme. We see that every day in Amani’s happy face when she comes back from the day at dunia. She is extremely happy and enthusiastic about being part of the dunia family. Thank you very much for making that possible.”

“As parents, we are extremely happy about having this opportunity to have Amani live this enriching and empowering experience. All our appreciations go to you and to the whole dunia team,” they added.

The leadership programme is structured into three key modules that engage students in case studies, workshops, roundtable discussions with industry experts and hearing from real-life entrepreneurs. In the three-week course, the students with different cultural backgrounds first go through a conceptualisation phase and then enter the business development stage. In third and last phase, they learn about execution steps to help understand various aspects of the leadership programme.

“The selection for three-phase leadership programme is absolutely on merit. It is a very unique programme that we are focused on to contribute towards creating sustainable resources,” Kakar told Khaleej Times during a break in an interactive session at the leadership programme, which is due to close on Thursday.

“Our dunia slogan from the beginning has been of empowering people, enabling success and enriching lives in this world of finite resources. One of the most important things that we need is leaders who can create jobs, not people who just seek jobs. So we want to catch children early to influence and shape their minds, be able to influence and teach them that it is possible to learn leadership [and] it is possible to make a difference,” he explained.

Asked this programme is a talent-hunt drive for dunia, Kakar was quick to respond and dispelled the wrong perception.

“This is purely a non-commercial initiative; these are students and we help shape their minds so that a few years from now, these will be the ones who will go forward [and] be leaders, be in the government, politics, education… they will make a difference and help make our world a bigger and better place,” he said.

To a question about the leadership programme’s future prospects, he said: “We are definitely focused on doing this on an annual basis, but we don’t want to limit it just to young business leaders. We would like to link on to other communities and we want to run this programme on a round-the-year basis.”

“We’ve been doing training for a long time, we train our people, we focus a lot with external institutions and now we are tying up a lot with external institutions,” he added.

“We believe that training is an important part to improve performance and development actions are important in enhancing performance. This is a development programme that helps raise the bar and we will do more and more programme of this nature. We are committed to investing more on this in the future,” Kakar concluded.