Jamal Abdulla Lootah, Group CEO of Imdaad

Through their nine business divisions – FMS, ENV, Isnaad, Homepro, Nigma, Vision Safety, Farz, Imtedaad, and Imdaad Al Batinah – they offer a full spectrum of offerings ranging from hard and soft FM services and environmental solutions to waste management, fire prevention, and home maintenance.

Their extensive experience, unique portfolio of solutions, and stellar track record in delivering services with excellence and by market-leading quality standards have helped them grow their business rapidly and profitably. This reputation is evident in the strong growth that they have seen in new contracts, client retention, and satisfaction rates over the past years.

What makes them truly influential is the diversified product offering combined with an adaptive business model and a highly experienced and agile team that enabled them to mitigate the impact of the virus outbreak and emerge stronger. Similarly, their keenness to pursue innovation to meet the clients’ needs and expectations was manifested in strong customer loyalty during the pandemic period.

Jamal Abdulla Lootah, Group CEO of Imdaad, elaborates on the initiatives, key highlights, and the vision for the company in the coming year. 

COVID-19 Initiatives 

As the extraordinary global health crisis unfolded, Imdaad, like other businesses around the world, faced tremendous challenges in the beginning. However, our robust business continuity strategy enabled us to quickly adapt to the rapidly evolving situation and put in place measures to ensure that there is no disruption to any of our critical operations.

Imdaad’s comprehensive pandemic response plan represented our unremitting commitment and constant desire to serve the company’s loyal customers with the highest standards of offering regardless of internal or external eventualities. Not only did we deliver on our existing contracts and commitments, but we also catered to their new needs that sprang up from the pandemic. Also, we allowed great flexibility in contractual obligations by helping our clients with delayed payments while continuing to provide them with our services.

It is worth highlighting that one thing has remained constant since the outset of the pandemic – our keen focus on the health, safety, and welfare of our employees. We took extensive measures to safeguard them from the deadly virus including the provision of safe and secure accommodation facilities for our frontline workers.

2020 Highlights

Despite the Covid-19 situation, 2020 has been a strong year for Imdaad as we sustained growth across our business divisions by turning challenges into opportunities. Our Facilities Management Services (FMS) division has been more profitable than last year as it won many new projects across various sectors in addition to renewing 97 percent of its existing contracts. FMS remains the service provider of choice for major seaports and banks across the UAE. Similarly, our Environmental Services (ENV) secured several new contracts wins, including lake management services for Dubai Motor City, during the pandemic.

The biggest milestone in our efforts to enhance our capabilities was the opening of Farz, a state-of-the-art Material Recovery Facility (MRF) in Jebel Ali. Working around the clock, Farz is capable of diverting 1,200 tons of municipal, commercial, and industrial waste from landfills daily.

The unprecedented crisis offered the opportune time to diversify our offerings and cement our market leadership. For instance, Nigma, a subsidiary of Imdaad that provides world-class, tailor-made services and solutions for a comprehensive range of automated products, ventured into portable lifts. Similarly, our Pest Control team forayed into disinfection services. During the pandemic, we also ensured the timely collection of medical waste from healthcare facilities and its transportation to the Dubai Municipality’s incineration facility. Our dedicated team and special purpose vehicles for biomedical waste management handle over 500 tons of medical waste each year, which is about a quarter of the total biomedical wastes generated in Dubai. 

In line with Imdaad’s long-term strategy, we continued to further deepen the company’s market presence in its home market of the UAE over the past year. With two new contract wins in Sharjah, we steadily expanded our footprint in the Northern Emirates. Similarly, Imdaad was awarded contracts for two mosques by the Ministry of Presidential Affairs (MOPA) in a testimonial to our reputation as the preferred FM partner for the government sector.

More importantly, with its diverse capabilities, Imdaad contributed actively to the UAE’s national disinfection program aimed at preventing the spread of the virus. Isnaad, the subsidiary of Imdaad providing comprehensive soft facility management services, launched a range of customized disinfection packages for multi-level protection from germs in both residential and commercial facilities, playing a vital role in supporting a clean and healthy UAE.

Vision 2021

With the promising breakthroughs in the development of Covid-19 vaccines already providing a much-needed boost to the global economy, one can confidently expect that 2021 will witness a strong recovery across various industries. As businesses gear up for a comeback, we at Imdaad are hopeful of new opportunities to further grow our business.

Sustainability, technology, and customer experience will be at the heart of our strategy to thrive in the “new normal” that the world is currently embracing. The modernization of tools and equipment and the eco-friendliness of raw materials such as cleaning solutions will be among top priorities for the next year. We will continue to place a strong emphasis on harnessing innovation to develop new value-adding, energy-efficient, environment-friendly solutions.

Employee safety will remain a top priority, especially for our Environmental Services division that attaches great importance to the safety of drivers who operate a fleet of over 300 vehicles. Farz will explore new local and international partnerships to expand its supply chain and our Pest Control team will focus more on the B2B segment of the market.

Overall, the enhancement of our human resource capacity will be a key area of focus moving forward. While looking to hire new talent to grow our workforce, we would also invest in upskilling and re-skilling our people to enable them to deliver on our mandates efficiently.