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It’s difficult to imagine Virendra Agarwal sitting still or sitting quietly. Always bubbling with enthusiasm over life in general and most certainly about what Moosa Abdul Rahman and Hassan Company (MAR) is going to do next, there is one constant in this equation that is unlikely to change. As CEO, Agarwal is exactly where he wants to be, both in terms of location and his job.

As we walked into the Crowne Plaza for a coffee one Wednesday afternoon, I learned that this is his second stint in Oman after a gap of two years, with a total of 18 years under his belt.
“It’s much more interesting and exciting working here, because everything that you do, it’s like inventing something new, which is probably a characteristic of a developing market.”


He further adds that the beauty of the Oman market lies in the fact that it is extremely responsive. “You see the results of your actions and activities immediately. In bigger and more developed markets like India, when you work for a huge multinational, it may take three years before you find out whether you did a good thing or made a mistake.”


It has been six years since he joined MAR and business has been good. In fact, the word that Agarwal used was ‘spectacular’ when referring to last year. “The market has grown immensely and though my team and I can’t take all the credit for the growth of the last six years, I can say that we capitalised on the opportunities that were before us. The market has been very buoyant, but since the automotive companies are mainly private, we can’t accurately say how much the market grew by. It could be anywhere between 25 to 35 per cent and our automotive business (flagship brands being GMC and Suzuki) grew by 80 per cent. More interesting is the fact all our businesses outstripped the market so far; while some grew at 80, others at 70 but not one went as low as 25 per cent.”


Not traditionally a market for American cars like some of its neighbouring countries, in Oman the extraordinary performance of GMC has a lot to do with changing economic patterns. “Buying American cars is a function of per capita income and spending habits of people. Earlier, Oman was actually at the bottom rung compared to other GCC states and that was reflected in the type of vehicles sold here. Per capita income has risen dramatically and this has affected our business very positively.” This promises to be another good year and Agarwal is justifiably proud of the fact that MAR has just signed what is arguably the biggest automotive contract in Oman with a ministry.

After five years of tendering, negotiations and trials, MAR finally bagged the deal. As we said at the outset, Agarwal is not one to sit still. So at a time when everything is going very well and one couldn’t be blamed for sitting back, Agarwal insists that they need to constantly reinvent themselves. “What we did five years ago worked very well then but you need to keep looking at what is relevant now and this includes business, processes, people – all aspects.This is where the excitement starts again.”