Lulu International Exchange is one of the largest worldwide remittance and foreign exchange service providers in the GCC, and Adeeb Ahamed has played a vital part in its growth. While the first branch opened in Abu Dhabi in September 2009, the firm today has 130 outlets across the globe. With 90 percent of employees in the GCC’s private sector being expats, the total annual money transfer is $84.4bn, according to the IMF. Ahamed told Arabian Business that moving into remittances and exchange business was a natural progression for the group. But he always intended to take the company’s operations further, adding payment solutions services.
“As we’ve seen, any retail company at some point in time has diversified by entering the financial sector. Take the likes of Walmart, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, at some point in their growth timeline they diversified into financial business and that’s because it is a natural fit for the retail business,” he said.
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