Abdul Razzak Daud

PORTFOLIO
 Founder and CEO of DESCON (till Aug 2018)
 Founding member of Lahore University Of Management Sciences (LUMS)
 One of the founders and first chairman of the Pakistan business council
 Former director of state bank of Pakistan
 Former federal minister and held portfolio for commerce,industries and production from nov 1999 to nov 2002
 Trustee member of shoukat khanum cancer memorial hospital and remained for 10 years
 Board of Governors National Management Foundation
 Trustee CARE Foundation and Member, Board of Directors NUML College
 Has been on the board of various corporate giants such as ICI Pakistan, KSB Pumps, United Refrigeration Ltd, PIA
Introduction

 Migrated to Pakistan along his family

 Had just one year schooling in Pakistan
 Sent to London public school, eshton hall in Yorkshire dales in 1950
 He graduated in Mining Engineering from Newcastle University UK
 Obtained his Master degree in Business Administration from Columbia
university NYC, USA in 1968
 DESCON

QUICK RECAP

 DESCON started with just four engineers

 Abdul razzak daud transformed it in less than one decade having 1600 engineers and forty thousand employees
 15 businesses in engineering, chemicals and power under their portfolio
 with 0.9 million man hours/year of engineering capacity
 72 million man hours/year of construction capacity.
Story of thought leadership:

 He introduced a new brand for ladies called “Layla”.

 it was rejected by big brands like HKB, Bombay Cloth House etc
 We ran a TV commercial and bang; it was a hit, we advertised Layla for PKR
80,000/- budget over 4 months
 Used to walk down to Anarkali with his father and used to listen to the
shopkeepers, the customers, their demands, likes and dislikes in order to set
our strategy.
 Then he became the CEO of Dawood Hericules
 The day when I said, I have faith in my Pakistani engineers.
 We kept on fishing for the first few years.
 Our first job came at Havellian for electrical wiring and we took it to open up
our electrical department.
 Soon realized, consultancy is not the way to go
 In September 1981 we landed a fantastic job in National Refinery Karachi
 They hunted a maintenance job in Saudi Arabia at SAFCO managed by a great
Pakistan Ahmad Kidwai
 They went to Abu Dhabi
 They made a very low bid against a Spanish company
 In fact 30% below the next bidder
 ‘Hassan Salman, we believe in long term. I was actually buying my entrance
fee to get into ADNOC.’
 “Do you want to be the time teller or a clock builder”.
 Size of balance sheet is not the definition of success