‘I never say no to a project, everyone should try their chance’

Ahmed Safar is a young ambitious Emirati who graduated from the American University of Sharjah. With a major in Finance, he started participating in many projects at an early age and now owns three businesses - a book delivery firm, Jumeirah Publishing & Distribution Company and a media agency.

The 25-year-old’s ambition is to develop himself in any way he can. Safar is always looking for chances to learn new things and explore new experiences that will uplift him and boost his career.

Ahmed takes up several volunteer works within and outside the country, while his passion for photography and travel keeps him busy at other times.

The secret to Safar’s success is that he never says ‘no’ to any project. He believes that accepting a project is a challenge that will open up opportunities and that which will lead him to either success or help develop his skills.

“Life is an ongoing learning process, so why not take the chance and try it out,” said Safar.

Book delivery

Safar began this project two years ago with his partner. The idea sprang to mind when his partner noticed that fewer people were going to shops to buy books. So he thought of delivering books to homes and focused on distribution of books.

Realising the importance of social media they started the project on Instagram, and called it ‘Book Delivery’.

“We started with one employee and began receiving orders on Instagram. Then we entered contracts with different libraries to get more books,” says Safar.

After the first year they reached 10,000 followers. Now, two years later, they boast over 30,000 followers.

After a survey to ask people to evaluate the project, 85 per cent of the respondents said that they liked the idea.

“We offer 1,000 of the most popular English books as well,” says Safar.

Jumeirah Publishing and Distribution Company

This project started one-and-a-half year ago and Safar is the co-founder.

The aim of this project is to encourage people to write and they support any writing projects, plus training people on how to write.

“The trick here is to have at least one strong title to promote and give more cash flow to our company, so we did that and we have one book [Arabic novel ‘I knew that I love you’] here that sold over 2,000 copies,” says Safar.

Safar said that publishing is still young in the UAE, and with government support and initiatives he says that the future of publishing is strong.

Speaking of challenges, Safar says, “Being a distance manager is one of the hardest things to do. Another challenge is trying to reach out as much people as you can.”

“There are competitors who sell books in UAE without having a distribution licence,” he says and adds that managing cost and time is also a challenge.

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