Power Letters 2022: Murshed Al Redaini, group CEO, Yas Holding

With 2022 off to a good start, we – at Yas Holding – are quite excited by the goals set by our leadership and the plans in place to achieve them. We are well-positioned to take on challenges and stay on our path of growth, even as the world continues to grapple with pandemic-related implications.

The UAE has demonstrably proven its credibility in managing the crisis, while at the same time, continuing to create several opportunities for businesses to flourish and thrive. As a company, we’ll continue our mission to support the UAE’s success, as we work towards developing sustainable, diversified and high value-add businesses within key economic sectors.

During the past year, Yas Holding has reinforced its position as an agile investment company in key sectors of national and regional importance, including food and agriculture, aviation, education, healthcare and technology. Our investments and acquisitions are intended to complement and create synergies with our existing business platforms and ensure their sustainability.

Now more than ever, we recognise technology’s pivotal role, particularly across vital sectors such as food and agriculture, education and healthcare. We’ve also increased our focus on sustainable food production to meet our customers’ expectations alongside remote learning technologies that deliver a seamless learning experience, and furthermore, healthcare value chains that foster a customer centric ecosystem.

Our company Elite Agro continues to produce and distribute locally and internationally grown fresh produce. We are set to double our blueberry production capacity in the UAE in time for the season this year. Moreover, our food subsidiary, Marmum Dairy, has recently been recognised for achieving the highest growth in consumer choice among dairy and FMCG brands in the UAE by Worldpanel by Kantar, one of the world’s leading data, insights and consulting companies.

Our state-of-the-art farm is home to advanced innovative cattle care technology and state-of-the-art dairy processing techniques.

Digital transformation is an important part of Yas Holding’s growth, with our education division, Nebras Education Holding (NEH) responding promptly to the ever-changing needs of the education sector. Akadimi, a unique digital reading library platform that has served more than 186,000 students in the 2020–21 academic year, is one of our many edutech innovations making their mark in this space. More recently, we launched LearningSpace at GESS – it enables personalised lifelong learning journeys and is focused on the transformation of the education sector through technology in the UAE and beyond.

We’ve been growing our healthcare business with a substantial investment programme over the last two years. Our healthcare division, GlobalOne Healthcare (GHH), acquired WellPharma Medical Solutions, Gulf Inject, Geltec Healthcare, and more recently, Al Ittihad Drug Store, a leading pharma distribution company. We’ve also expanded our strategic holding in Iceland’s biopharma company Alvotech. These investments have reinforced our business, positioning GHH among the top players in the healthcare industry.

On the technology front, we aim to consolidate all our operations and assets and deploy a unified strategy that will take our business to new heights in the coming years.

We aim to accelerate our growth through further acquisitions and investment in our existing operations. We will achieve this by continuing to be agile, innovative and progressive in all that we do. Hard work and resilience, combined with a structured approach, have contributed to our consistent and strong performance over the years.

Overall, in 2022, we expect a continued momentum towards the recovery of business and the economy.