Unique Group is one of the largest business entities in Bangladesh, having a strong footprint in hospitality, manpower, real estate, education, health, training and development, energy and power, finance and banks/FI, facility management, agriculture, information technology and many more.
Unique Group (UG) is known for its innovation, business diversity, continuous development and excellence. Strong integrity and commitment to delivering the best is the core value of UG. The architect behind UG is none other than Mohd. Noor Ali, a man of Nawabganj, Dhaka.
Mohd. Noor Ali is not just a typical businessman, he is a freedom fighter, a true utopian, a highly aspirational, social worker, a successful father, and husband and last but not least a charismatic leader who is an inspiration to billions.
With his very visionary leadership, the journey came a long way. At the age of 70 and company vintage of 42 years, the dilemma is what next and how far? Is it “the end?” Certainly not, rather just a journey began.
From the idea of creating a monetary legacy for years to come and robust sustenance of all assets and establishments of Unique Group, Mohd. Noor Ali decided to prepare a detailed plan or his dream roadmap a couple of years back.
As per the plan, various business units and SBUs of Unique Group will gradually be brought under a single umbrella or platform, which will ultimately be governed and managed by selective and capable management of the group. With that intent, he started to organise resources, arrange logistics and finally put the thought of A FAMILY TRUST- A new chapter begins!
Mohd Noor Ali, having a very dynamic and sagacious personality, was very much aware of the fact that any critical initiative requires a capable and strong hand to lead and handhold various matters and stakeholders for its ultimate success.
In fact, he has the unique intuitive quality to see the potential inside people. He could easily pick the right person for the right job. Because of this exceptional quality, he usually identified the right set of people for his different businesses since the beginning, which later begat huge successes e.g. “The Westin Dhaka,” “Sheraton Dhaka,” “HANSA Hotel,” “Borak Real Estate,” “Borak Ready Mix,” “Unique Ceramic Industries Ltd,” “Unique Eastern Ltd,” and “Gulshan Clinic;” social ventures i.e. “Borak Polytechnic Institute” and “UPDATE College and Institute;” and banks/FIs which include “Eastern Bank Limited,” “Chartered Insurance Ltd,” “Agrani Insurance Ltd,” and “Unique Share Management,” etc.
However, in his quest for finding a capable captain for the TRUST office, he eventually managed to find one of the best leaders in the banking industry, named Syed Sanowarul Hoque, CFE. Mr. Hoque joined Unique Group as CEO-Trust, UG, 14 months back. Mr. Hoque is a veteran banking risk professional having 28+ years of experience in one of the largest and best financial institutions in the country i.e., Standard Chartered Bank.
Mr. Hoque, under the able leadership of Mohd. Noor Ali, finally brought the long-cherished dream into reality by founding the Noor Ali Family Trust (NAFT) on 22.02.2022. This aforesaid trust was formed with a view to transforming the conventional model of Unique Group business into a sustainable business model under the control span of a family trust.
NAFT is formed as per the country's prevailing law i.e., THE TRUST ACT 1882. As per the act, there is a nominated list of trustees, authors and beneficiaries. Besides that, a foundation under this trust, named Salina Noor Charitable Foundation was also formed in 2022 as one of the beneficiaries of the above-mentioned Family Trust. This is a non-profitable foundation.
The prime objectives of this foundation are to establish hospitals and schools and author various benevolent and philanthropic activities to serve the underprivileged upcountry population.
As it is planned, all the business units and SBUs in Unique Group will come under the supervision and governance of the TRUST office, which will be managed by the CEO-TRUST and his team.
TRUST Office, for smooth management of the group’s different entities or units, appoints resources in different value streams who will, directly and indirectly, contribute to the transformation process. The transformation process has kicked off and has been going on successfully since the inception of the Trust.
Till today, NAFT visited all the SBUs, business units, their core strategies, asset portfolio, investment portfolio, property and establishments, group resource profiling, policies, processes and so on. The objective was to identify strategic gaps and make necessary alignments so that the group can run sustainably with continuously growing cash flow.
This visit or deep-dive is conducted as an FFG (Fit for Growth) approach where respective business units will be brought under the thorough “deep-dive” or scanning to get a clear understanding of their SWOT and future potential.
NAFT has a comprehensive roadmap supported by a clear strategy to reach its destination model. As per the roadmap, NAFT sets short, medium and long-term succession plans for every sect of its business model and its associates under the direct leadership of Mohd. Noor Ali, founder and managing director of Unique Group.
As per the long-term succession plan, the UG will be transferred and restructured holistically into a singular entity - NAFT. In that walk, instilling good governance across the group is the first step that UG wants to begin with.
To implement it professionally, the honourable MD of UG has strengthened as well as empowered his Human Resource Division (HRD). Under his thought leadership, the HRD of UG has revamped its organogram with a view to building a revenue-centric organisation following a matrix reporting system effective from January 1, 2023.
The new revenue-centric organogram facilitates the ultimate business strategy – upscaling the revenue stream while ensuring diversification by exploring new potential profitable yet sustainable business opportunities.
Side by side, HRD, being the core of everything, started to streamline all the committees by introducing the management governance framework which incorporates the formation of a Strategic Leadership Team (ManCom/Ex. Committee), Investment Committee, Crisis Management Group, Technical Committees, Peoples forum, QA Team, Audit Committee, and rolled out the Enterprise Risk Management Framework to oversee the governance as the holistic view is the destination model of NAFT.
Since its HR strategy is revenue centric, which basically mobilises the business to grow substantially, talent attraction and subsequent retention will be one of the important priorities of the NAFT. It means going forward, any new hire will follow a certain set of criteria; the hiring process will be transparent, independent from any bias, persuasion and influence.
HR will actually be biased toward talent and potential. They will facilitate in hiring those who will help the organisation to reach the next level of heights in terms of sustainable business with growing cash flow – the ultimate goal of NAFT.
While attracting new talent is an important modus operandi of NAFT, retaining the talents is equally important. Keeping this spirit in mind, HRD has classified its in-house talents through a comprehensive talent Classification Process to find out the potential talents.
To groom them as resilient resources, a new training programme named the Talent Acceleration Programme (TAP) has been introduced. Under its banner, each qualified staff will be enrolled under the ILDP (Individual Learning Development Program). Incumbents will be tagged with a personal mentor who will guide them although the TAP and help them to excel at their own capacity to the maximum.
To infuse the culture of learning and development into everyone’s DNA, NAFT has revised its “Learning and Development (L&D)” system. In that context, there will be a number of changes in the way training and learning programmes used to be conducted.
A few core changes in the revised strategy of L&D are - i) Capacity building training for high performers, ii) Leadership training for senior leaders of the organisation, iii) On-job training for executive level and above, iv) Mentorship concept for the career development of the resources, v) Annual Leadership Town Hall for the senior leaders’ engagement.
Besides that, NAFT adopted a number of key strategies to enhance the overall productivity of its employees like conducting inter-department sports competitions, talent shows by the home-grown talents, family outings at the departmental level, offsite Meetings, skip level meetings, town halls with MD, HR session with different tiers of management and many more.
Keeping human resources the top priority, NAFT plans to introduce staff well-being programs, awards and recognition, staff-friendly benefit schemes, etc. to make the organisation a safer zone for performers. Here, at NAFT, to become a high-performing organisation, messages have been disseminated across associates to believe that “Performance is your best friend.”
In this hyper-competitive and VUCA (Vulnerable, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) business environment, all business entities need to keep a close eye on global trends to remain relevant and alive in the competition. At the same time, we are going through a transition from 3rd IR to 4th IR, which will put all businesses under serious challenges.
Conventional business models and styles might not help to a great extent! Change is the only constant. How prepared we are to cope with the changes and still remain relevant, is something we need to look up to effectively.
For this reason, to continuously explore new avenues of doing business, NAFT decided to establish an R&D team with capable resources who will keep researching and identify various business gaps and insights i.e., opportunities in terms of new business, operational competence, growth prospects, etc.
These business gaps alongside opportunities will be shared with the senior management team for their review and decision. Besides that, R&D will be focusing on new ways to drive business operations and explore globally practised proven techniques and global trends.
R&D will also issue research papers, business bulletins, industry analyses, market analyses and economic analyses and work as a “Think Tank” for Unique Group Business Value Streams.
Covid-19 taught us about “resilience.” This word was never used and referred to so many times before Covid-19 hit us. To ensure seamless and uninterrupted business even in the event of a crisis or any unwanted situation, UG-NAFT drives business continuity management strategy at the enterprise level and then at different SBUs or business unit levels.
BCP strategy will be focused on embedding processes, tools and structure which will enable UG to be one of the most resilient business entities in the country.
“Excellence” is one of the values of Unique Group. Experiencing operational excellence in most operations is not easy but very much achievable. This requires the combination of setting a good plan targeting a goal, the right resources with a common purpose and mindset and the execution of the plan to achieve that goal.
NAFT believes that they are on the right track to achieving excellence in their BAU and eventually becoming one of the best LLCs in the industry.
Here to note that to support the business, the necessary supply of utilities will be based on central operations or hub which means repetitive and geo-graphically dispersed operations will be made redundant or discouraged, however, exceptions can be possible for any special SBU.
In this regard, NAFT, alongside HR and Audit departments and their capable resources, started to review all relevant SOPs. These SOPs will be revised considering current business needs, the requirement for faster operations and the compliance environment.
NAFT is just one year old. It’s still an infant. This is just a beginning of a long journey. However, with the passage of time, the roadmap of NAFT will keep unveiling its different agenda; these will include but are not limited to bringing other units under TRUST, building its own brand for Unique Group having clear brand positioning and brand strategy, strengthening HR strategy to develop resources fit for future growth, driving revenue strongly than any time before, optimising the cost, efficient and lean operational structure, exploring new business, hiring talents internally i.e. giving an opportunity to existing talents to grow and shine.
The journey ahead is not seamless. It’s full of challenges and difficulties e.g. global macro-economic stresses, geo-political tension, climate change, etc. These are known risks which may slow down the momentum of current progress.
Nevertheless, there are unforeseen risks which might be even more hazardous and critical. All members of the senior management team are committed to being alert for facing any unexpected situations, thematically preparing for anything that can go wrong.
Under the visionary leadership of Managing Director Mohd. Noor Ali, the Trust and Foundation activities will take the good legacy of Unique Group to a next level of height in a sustainable way!
