Hamid Farooq
With over three decades within the telecom, consulting, oil & gas, banking, finance, services and logistics sectors, Mr. Farooq brings more than 24 years of experience at the C-level, leading complex commercial operations, growing companies from the ground up and turning around low turnover companies into profitable cash cows. Having delivered a broad range of assignments across different organizational functions, including finance, HR, sales, marketing, customer care, business development and commercial, Mr. Farooq has facilitated corporate profitability and shareholder value while enabling sustainable business performance.
Since 1993, Mr Farooq has been a core founding team member of several companies, setting up new ventures and achieving impressive success stories. As a business leader, he has demonstrated his competencies at leading teams, mentoring/coaching C-level executives, fostering healthy relationships with key stakeholders, managing projects, devising strategic business plans, negotiating/closing multimillion-dollar commercial contracts and driving organisational change.
Having spent over 19 years within the telecom industry, Mr Farooq is a veteran and has some of the most enviable records to demonstrate. From creating an enterprise value of US$ 2.9B from HSBC and Goldman Sachs to achieving positive EBITDA within 17 months of launching a Greenfield telecom project, Mr Farooq has been instrumental in growing mobile telephony by leaps and bounds in Pakistan. He has fostered robust relationships with the telecom industry regulator, ministries, government officials and the central bank to introduce “calling party pays” regime and lobby “industry” status for telecom operations, resulting in favourable debt/equity ratio and receiving additional industry-related benefits.
Mr Farooq’s successes in the telecom and mobile finance sector include U (Microfinance) Bank, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, Warid Telecom and Jazz (Formerly Mobilink). Until recently, he was managing a US$725M pension fund for Pakistan Telecommunications Employees Trust (PTET) to invest the funds in national saving schemes, bank/term deposits, stocks, and real estate to maximise pensioners’ returns at minimal risks. Under his leadership, PTET has transformed into a fund-surplus entity by streamlining investment priorities, optimising risk v/s returns, and introducing innovative products to maximise fund value.
Demonstrating his entrepreneurial capabilities, Mr. Farooq has prepared and presented business plans, secured funds and acquired nationwide licenses to set up mobile money/micro-financing banking entities within Pakistan. Leveraging his connections within the decision-making corridors, Mr. Farooq has infused equity, hired the right professionals, implemented infrastructure, core banking systems and corporate governance frameworks to launch the mobile financial services within 12 months of conceptualizing. Mr. Farooq has been the backbone of several companies that have won awards for their outstanding achievements, including the “Best B an-led Mobile Money Global Award” granted to the lobal Award” granted to the Upaisa Brand in Dubai.
Mr. Farooq maintains a healthy work-life balance and travels to different countries to identify cultural similarities/differences and imbibe the finer aspects of diversity to become a good human being. Mr. Farooq walks, jogs, exercises and plays golf to keep his body healthy. He is a person any new employee would look up to for gaining knowledge and guidance.