His bold and innovative way of thinking has helped expand Elixir’s offerings across a broad range of new and emerging industries, including advertising industry, automobile, hospitality sector (the group has signed contracts with leading hotel chains to help them in their expansion into new regions), Venture Studio – where the group helps young entrepreneurs achieve their potential by incubating their product and helping them acquire customers – venture capital and private equity investments.

The group invests in emerging technological ventures and projects and turns them around to growth via capital and in-house capabilities.

He is a seasoned businessman, investment banker and philanthropist with a strong track record of performance in fast-paced organisations. Transforming enterprises and real estate assets into successful ventures with exceptional results, and reaping double digit returns through his investments has become his trademark.

Born in Pakistan, Rao, a former banker, moved to Dubai to seek career opportunities. He left banking and developed a plan to start his own business. Real estate was a clear choice to start as it was always booming in the UAE.

Throughout his career, Rao has endeavoured to respect the values of courage, passion and intensity in everything he does. For his employees, he is an excellent CEO who is drawn to change and effective action.

As someone who strives to be a best-in-class leader, Rao is always looking towards the future, setting ambitious goals and relying on their intuition. He believes in taking the initiative, is quick to capitalise on opportunities and is more likely to take high-level risks than his executive counterparts.

His intensity and passion for growth and development is matched with a charismatic and persuasive personality. With resilience and drive, Rao motivates his circle of influence by showing them that taking risks and making large-scale changes can lead to exponential growth or can fail dramatically.

A key difference between good CEOs and great CEOs is the ability to bounce back and push forward. A great CEO is open to learning from their mistakes and will work to turn unanticipated situations into positive results. Rao has shown this trait time and time again.

By utilising his experience in the banking and real estate industries, and by implementing innovative and best practices, Rao has led the Elixir Group to achieve exponential growth. His analytical ability and team-based approach to drive organisational improvements and implementation of best practices has produced remarkable results.

Apart from corporate success, Rao has also established a foundation for social welfare projects and has led numerous philanthropic initiatives.

The disruptive impact of technology

“Technology has the capability to disrupt all the industries, be it finance, health, retail or any other,” says Rao.He firmly believes that any businesses that lag behind on this front are doomed to extinction within their respective sector.“New technologies are making out-of-the-box progresses and making radical changes to work-life environments. The technology which was impossible a year ago is now possible with awe-inspiring results, such as a chip implanted into the human brain that can communicate with a computer and smartphone. The applications are far and wide from commercial to personal use, branching out in new niches every year.

“This is the speed of $187bn worth of technology market.”

Starting your day right

Rao is the classic early-rising entrepreneur. “I usually wake up around 4am and work out at home for an hour. I then read for an hour and have breakfast. By 7am, I have nourished my body, mind and soul and feel all geared up for work.”At the office, he likes to begin each day with a morning meeting, where he gathers the most important information of the day and takes some quick key decisions.

He references Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why. “The bigger the ‘why’ a person is, the more motivated they will be. Personally, my ‘why’ of building a business empire is simple – I want to donate $1bn to charity as part of the Giving Pledge [Givingpledge.org] before I retire.”

Ali Rao on… having many mentors

“My mentors have changed over time. When I was in banking, my mentor was Shaukat Tareen; in the corporate and investment world, I aspired to become like Warren Buffet; when I looked at business transformation, I envisioned becoming like Elon Musk, especially the way he achieved his goals that were set incredibly high. In politics, I have looked up to Imran Khan due to his resilience and grit.”