Laundry owner to ethical hacker to CEO of many companies: UAE businessman Adil Alzarooni’s journey

Laundry owner to ethical hacker to CEO of many companies: UAE businessman Adil Alzarooni’s journey

Dubai: Long before Emirati business leader, educator, and author Dr Adil Alzarooni rose through the ranks to become the CEO of Al Zarooni Emirates Investments (ZEI) and Al Bidayer Holding, and the Founder of Citizens School, he ran a chain of laundries in his 20s. With a capital of Dh100,000, all of which came from his savings and earnings as a top student at Etisalat College of Engineering (now known as Khalifa University), Alzarooni kept his first business venture a secret from his family. “I had just graduated from college. One day, I picked up the newspaper and saw someone selling a laundry. I wanted to run a business, so I bought it and began operating it. But I wouldn’t tell my father because I feared failure. And I didn’t want to embarrass myself and my family,” he says. “But operating the laundry taught me invaluable lessons in sales, customer service, financial literacy, and efficient management practices,” says Alzarooni. Although not financially lucrative, two profound lessons were etched into his entrepreneurial spirit from running the chain of laundries. First, he embraced the identity of an ‘experience guy’. “Everything that I do needs to be an experience. Education is an experience,