Ali Sajwani | Seasoned Emirati Entrepreneur & Sports Enthusiast

ABOUT

Ali Hussain Sajwani oversees day-to-day operations at global property developer, DAMAC Properties. He holds a BA from the Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, where he majored in economics.

Having inherited an entrepreneurial mindset from his father, Founder of DAMAC Properties Hussain Sajwani, Ali is keen to explore new frontiers with an eye on strategic business investments, especially in technology, sustainability and the startup ecosystem.

He has set up several private business ventures, including a luxury transport business, which he exited in 2020, delivering a 200% return on equity. Ali went on to establish a specialised facilities management company with 1,500 staff members that provides services to the high-end hospitality segment. His most recent entrepreneurial endeavour is establishing a highly targeted short term leasing company in Dubai.

Ali also sits on the board of the family office for investments, with a focus on US equities and venture capital funds. Through the fund, he participated in the acquisition of the global fashion brand Roberto Cavalli in 2019. He is also the founding board member of Emirates Angels Investors Association, a non-profit aiming to positively contribute to the early-stage investment ecosystem through their investor network.

ROLE AT DAMAC PROPERTIES - GENERAL MANAGER OF OPERATIONS

The son of Hussain Sajwani, Founder of DAMAC Properties, Ali developed an entrepreneurial spirit at a young age. As a child, he was intrigued by the business affairs of his father, spending weekends at DAMAC’s office learning about the business and attending board meetings. Each summer, he would shadow a different department head to learn the nuances and inner workings of his father’s real estate company.

As the general manager of operations for multi-billion dollar, publicly-listed global real estate development company DAMAC Properties, Ali’s day-to-day responsibilities include overseeing several key functions that are critical to the company’s growth, expansion, and long-term strategy. These include CRM development, handovers and collections, marketing & communications (traditional & digital), direct sales, information technology, and hospitality.

A true believer in the power of technology, Ali has developed the company’s technology roadmap to enable and accelerate future growth. He led digital transformation within the organisation to implement a data-driven decision-making process with a re-mapped customer journey for a customer-first approach.

His key achievements within the company include taking full oversight for all direct lead generation resulting in double-digit year-on-year growth in efficiencies across all KPIs, introducing procedures and initiatives that reduced marketing COAS for the direct channel, moving the company to an internal paperless process, streamlining the collections function by bringing in a bucket system similar to banking, along with maintaining the pace of collections during the Covid-19 pandemic, among others.