Putting a smile on the face is his business, and in a little more than three years he has delivered more than 1.5 million such sunshines. The smiles story doesn’t stop at that milestone as it does, in the process, light up his face as well as 300 more who earned bread and butter, and farm-fresh groceries too, for their families.
That’s surely food for thought, and right rewards for thinking ahead of times and the boldness shown to bid goodbye to a well-paid job and flourishing career to chase one’s dreams.
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The smile factory had a humble beginning as he along with his bosom buddy set about making the dream come true with a small team of five. Slowly they conquered the hearts bringing restaurants to the dining tables of their clients who could now relish the choicest dishes without stepping out of their homes and stock up on staples.
Shopping with your family getting lost and mixing with a happy crowd in glitzy malls is a pleasure but that’s not something one wished to do just about every day even before the Covid scare enforced restrictions at all levels of human interactions. Your time could be well spent minding matters more close and crucial to your heart, and safe, than pushing a trolley along the aisles of hypermarkets or waiting impatiently for your order to be served in an eatery.
Options offered by entrepreneurs like Gaurav Anil Nahar came handy for many even before the pandemic struck, but the new world order set in by Covid-19 has made such opportunities a blessing without which life would have been impossible to mange or even imagine now.
But, five years ago, if you would have told Nahar that he was going to be the founder of Oman’s first food delivery app he wouldn’t have believed you. Back then, the idea hadn’t even crossed his mind.
What unravelled a year later took him down a different path than what he had planned for his life. For almost seven years Gaurav enjoyed a permanent job in global consultancy firm PwC after completing his graduation from Indiana University Bloomington. “Back then, I was working in Dubai with PwC, and used to shuttle down to my hometown in Muscat frequently. It was during then I used to have frequent conversations with my close friend Moosa Al Lawati about starting a platform for food delivery because at that point there was none in Oman,” Gaurav said.
“Back then, people would have thought I was crazy to quit an otherwise flourishing career at PwC and risk everything to start a business,” he said. Gaurav, a Certified Public Accountant, was working in the Assurance Department in PwC. “It was a tough call to quit but both of us felt if not now let’s not do it,” Gaurav said.
Soon both Gaurav and Moosa shifted back to Muscat and decided to spend all their energy in developing the platform. After a year of intense labour, team hunt, crash course in technology and logistics, Akeed was born in May 2018. Started with barely a five-member team, Akeed now has over 300 employees, of which operations and logistics hold a major chunk. “The pandemic taught us a lot of lessons about staying together and delivering quickly and safely. It’s a challenging period for everyone but we made sure we stood above the rest,” he said.
Akeed is one of the leading players of home delivery in Oman and built a state-of-the-art customer application that gives users a simplified ordering experience with no minimum order, fixed delivery fee, cashback offers, and many promotions and discounts. Akeed has worked its way to become a pioneer in fast and effortless service in Oman and completed 1.5 million orders in Oman.
Looking back, the journey to this point felt like a rollercoaster. “You don’t always get the results that you want, but I guess that’s just part of running a business.
Sometimes you’re in the red, and sometimes you do well. It’s all a matter of consistency, just keep going. The biggest award is bringing smiles especially during the pandemic,” he said.
Akeed has come a long way, from bringing favourite restaurants to the people’s doorstep to now delivering farm-fresh produce and groceries to their homes. Akeed Fresh is a new vertical launch, under the Akeed brand umbrella, aiming to deliver daily essentials to simplify shopping in these tough times, while bringing the same hand-picked experience to tens of thousands of homes.
“We wanted to give back to the country we are living in. In those days we found the problems people faced when trying to order food. We wanted to make something that’s simple and easy to use. There are many players in the market now, especially after Covid, but Akeed remains people’s favourite,”