Firoz Merchant At the age of 22, Merchant, who grew up in poverty in Mumbai and was even forced to drop out of school as a result of it, visited Dubai for his honeymoon. He spent a significant amount of time during that visit scouring the lanes and by-lanes of Dubai’s Gold Souq. He subsequently set up a gold trading business in Dubai’s Deira district in 1989 and scaled it into a business that today employs over 3,500 people, with manufacturing facilities in China and India, and which also has plans to expand its retail store footprint to 250 stores in the near-term. With annual revenues of around Dhs1bn, between 70 to 80 per cent of the company’s business comes not from gold, but diamonds. In 2019, Merchant was also granted permanent residency in the UAE. Related Stories Indian businessman Firoz Merchant granted permanent UAE residency The golden touch: Dubai’s Pure Gold Group chairman Firoz Merchant New gold jewellery stores featuring augmented reality open in the UAE You might also like Sunil John Dr. Thumbay Moideen Vidya Chhabria Mohan Valrani K. Rajaram Dr. Adnan Chilwan Sanjiv Kakkar Ram Kumar Thota Raghu Malhotra Sunil Kaushal Atif Rahman Amit Jain Rishi Kapoor Vasu Shroff Anil Pillai Bal Krishen Rohit and Sharad Bachani Raju Ramesh and Sunil Paul Ayesha Depala John Paul Joy Alukkas Geet Bhalla and Digvijay Pratap Snehal and Sunita Hadani Nisha Jagtiani Kunal Kapoor Dino Varkey Ashish Panjabi Adeeb Ahamed Yogesh Mehta Yusuff Ali M.A. Ravi Pillai Micky Jagtiani Sunny Varkey Sunil Vaswani Shamsheer Vayalil Rajen Kilachand Azad Moopen Tony Jashanmal Paras Shahdadpuri Joy Alukkas Dr. Zulekha Daud Dhananjay Datar Rizwan Sajan PNC Menon Sima Ved Shaji Ul Mulk Ramesh Prabhakar L.T. Pagarani Ram Buxani Surender Kandhari Sohan Roy Shyam Bhatia