Frankly if your father is worth $ 1.1 billion you don’t need to work, but for Alisha Moopen, daughter of Dr Azad Moopen and Nazeera Azad, work is worship, money is just a by-product. She is full of life and a fitness enthusiast. While she started a boutique yoga studio, she also invested in a franchise of restaurant chain, Kauai in Dubai to add to the options of healthy eating! The feisty Director – Strategy at Aster DM healthcare says that working for her father’s company is the hardest thing she has done so far. She feels that to do justice to the role she has to work three times harder than others. Yet, she is thankful for what she has and strives to work harder towards the company’s goals. A graduate from the University of Michigan, Ann Abor with a concentration in Finance& Accounting she worked with Ernst & Young in England for seven years and qualified as a chartered accountant (CA) before joining DM Healthcare, as Finance Director for Medcare. After, a year she was posted to look after corporate strategies and affairs for the group. More recently, she has stepped into an operational role, overlooking the Aster clinic vertical of the group. In an e-mail interaction she talks about her work and legacy.
On her father Dr Azad Moopen’s Legacy
I think all children, especially daughters grow up in awe of their fathers. I was no exception but as I was growing up, I came to understand that it was not just our family and friends who adored him; his reach and influence was much further than that. My father is fundamentally a man of very strong principles, he believes in always doing the right thing. He believes that there is God’s hand in everything, in bringing you to your destiny but one needs to work with passion and determination to ensure that luck turns in your favour.
I have always grown up watching him balance work, family and his social commitments beautifully.
He worked and still continues to work long hours each day. But for him, it is not work. It is a purpose he has chosen for himself. Playing a pivotal role in providing good quality healthcare for people is what drives him and inspires him! As a doctor, he used to see close to 100 patients a day but he knew as a single practitioner, this was the ceiling. The only way he could reach out to more people was to get more like minded professionals who believes in making a difference to the people that they serve. Illness and the need to reach out for healthcare requirements is inevitable for people from all walks of life. He wanted to create a system whose primary intention is to ensure the best care for the patients, he believes very vehemently that in healthcare, profit should only be a by-product but never the aim.
He was joined by people who like him were passionate and driven by the vision he had. He surrounded himself with people who thought of the company as their own and worked tirelessly to expand it at an exponential growth rate. Excellent physicians, healthcare professionals and support staff were drawn to work for Aster DM Healthcare with the dream of working for Dr Azad Moopen. He has become an institution that resonates with goodness and kindness, as a place that treats all its stakeholders with respect and fairness. It is a legacy of 28 years, a legacy of one man’s vision. Repeated incidents where he has shown caring for his people has resulted in the people taking care of the company and further propelling the company to grow organically at such a rapid rate. Once the foundation was set, the expansion was very fast, especially with the participation and entry of our private equity partners. The incredible part of the company is that the culture and the values that were set in stone by my father still runs just as strongly and thickly amongst our 10,000 strong DM family just as it did decades ago. There is only so much one man can do on his own, but the combined strength of the people around him who adopted his vision as their own has brought Aster DM Healthcare to where it is now.
There are only few people who can manage to inspire and motivate people to the extent that my father does. He believes in the people around him and he empowers them whilst still guiding them as and when required. He always rewards behaviours and never just outcomes, to ensure that the values of the institution are kept intact and the philosophy of the institution becomes stronger with each passing year. He is able to extract extraordinary performance with an ordinary team and make them all exceptional as a team, together where they can draw on each other’s strength and ensure that the whole is much bigger and more powerful than the sum of its parts.
On learning from her father
The answer to that question will be unending and it is an ongoing journey for me that I cherish and am incredibly grateful for. The two most important principles I have learnt from him is to always do the right thing and to work hard and passionately. As humans, we are all wired with the basic realisation of what is right and what is not. He always told us to be good human beings first. It is our basic responsibility that we have to honour in this world. He believed that in interactions with others, always try and come up with win-win arrangements, even if that meant our benefit is reduced as it is most important to build meaningful relationships with all the people around us. Looking out only for ourselves will promote selfish behaviour and will never lead to a sustainable and desirable future. He always advised us to be empathetic and ensure that we listen actively to the people around us and come up with arrangements which makes both parties better off than they were. He was a big believer in Stephen Covey’s win-win philosophy and always suggested that the world would be a much better place when we try to inculcate this behaviour in all aspects of our lives.
I was lucky to have born into a good family with great opportunities. But my parents taught me never to take anything for granted. They made sure I toiled and worked hard and earned my own pocket money during school and even in college. I did odd jobs such as working in cafeteria, dormitories and got some scholarships, all of which helped me realise how lucky I am to have support whenever I need it.
Even after my graduation, he did not want me to come back and work with him until I had worked for a professional company first. He insisted that the experience, exposure and the learnings that I would have working elsewhere would be monumental. I was sceptical at that point as all I wanted to do was learn from him and work with him. But now, looking back, I am so glad he suggested that route to me. Having worked at EY for six years was a wonderful experience for me. I was able to learn at my own pace, learn from a world class institution, get a reputed qualification as a Chartered Accountant and good exposure to numerous industries. To go back to dad’s company, would seem like the easy option. But for me, that was the hardest option. Leave aside the pressure from others to perform and the natural comparison to dad which is inevitable, but for me the pressure I put on myself was beyond all of that. I had to work three times harder to ensure I felt that I am giving it my all, to feel that I am doing justice to this wonderful platform that he has given me and not let down my father, my mother or all the people around me who believed in me to follow in his footsteps and keep the torch of the company shining brightly. My father understands that I am not a replica of him, neither does he ever suggest that I should be a copy-paste version of him. He gives me room to display my own leadership and execute my own ideas for the company’s future. He has given me a protected environment to work under him, he is always there to mentor and guide me along with the senior management team and to most importantly, ensure that the organisation is moving in the right direction. The organisation is bigger than any of its employees, including me, and I have pledged to work alongside all my Aster DM family as a team to realise the goals we have set for ourselves.
On her goals for Aster DM Healthcare
My vision for Aster DM healthcare is aligned to our collective vision that we set out in a workshop three years ago where all the top management, country heads and CEOs came together to carve out our future plans for the company. We aim to be one of the world’s largest healthcare providers in the world, recognised by others as providers of best outcomes and excellent service levels where patients feel safe, taken care of and in good hands. The company is growing very fast but my primary aim is to ensure that we hold on to the basic pillars, our building blocks throughout our growth and has invaluably contributed to helping us move from strength to strength. The essence and the DNA of Aster DM healthcare is rooted in our people’s minds, etched in their working styles and consequently displayed in our service delivery to our precious patients. It is a cycle that we is well oiled, with good practices as well as forward looking and innovative thought processes combined with a sensible balance of our deep rooted philosophy of care and compassion.
The geographies that we expand to and the horizons we move towards will be crystallised as opportunities present itself. I believe in planning ahead but leaving enough room and flexibility to seize opportunities, and not allow for rigid business plans to take over our decision-making capabilities as the landscape changes. But the most important factor for sustaining the growth and success that Aster DM has achieved will be to continue having an uncompromising team of professionals that work towards the common aim to provide quality healthcare to our patients, be it in Asia, MENA or the Americas. The culture of care and compassion will be the same, no matter which border we cross to operate in. I commit to promoting and building an institution that will work towards ensuring better access and quality healthcare availability for the communities that we serve. This is a basic right of humanity and we want to be facilitators towards this noble cause.
On her mother’s influence on her career
My mother is a simple and intelligent lady. She has always instilled in us the importance of being professionals with careers of our own. She never got a chance to complete her education and always remembers with a tinge of sadness not being given a chance to pursue higher studies. Therefore, she has always motivated and encouraged us to do well in our education, give it undivided attention for a strong secure future. She always stresses that knowledge is the biggest investment that one can make for themselves and always prompted us to be top students! She has been the source of our strength and the glue that binds us together. She always reiterated to us that we should never take our blessings for granted and should strive to be independent as much as possible.
On her earliest memories of being in her father’s office
Dad’s clinic was close to our home. I used to visit it sometimes to see lines of patients waiting for him always. The gratitude, the hope, the trust that they displayed through their eyes and gestures were unforgettable. I grew up wishing to be a doctor like him so that I could also help those who were ill and unwell. I remember always being touched by his personal care for his patients and staff; and he used to be very clear that it was looking after people that drove him and never the business of making money. He believed vehemently that in healthcare, profit should be a by-product and never the aim.
I can’t even recall the time when I learnt he was in any list for millionaires or billionaires. As a family, we don’t attach ourselves to such lists as making money or being rich has never been something we actively seek out or value. We have been blessed with enough and more, but we have always been grateful and humbled by the blessings of Almighty.
On her relationship with her father
My father is my role model and someone I look up to immensely. I have always admired him. The more I work with him, I admire him not only as a daughter, but as a colleague, a mentor and as a human being. My parents have always instilled the essence of basic values in us. Once these are embedded in our system, life becomes easier as choices seem less complicated, as they help us see the world in simpler form. My dad is someone who has always been there for me whenever I needed him. Be it a report or when I am stressed about exams or when I go through difficult and challenging personal or professional lives, he is always there for me. No matter how busy he is, or how little he has rested, he always took time for us whenever we needed him.
My father is my biggest source of inspiration and I work to learn from him, to be a better person like him, and to make a difference in people’s lives as much as possible by creating a healthcare system that we can take continue to take pride in.
On her siblings and who inherits his entrepreneurial genes
I think we all have inherited various qualities of our father.
It is hard to tell who inherits his entrepreneurial genes as my youngest sister Zeba is still studying in college. My second sister Ziham started her own chain of nurseries as education and children were her passion and she looks after that independently.
I have gone slightly broader with my horizon and dipped into a couple of businesses that suit my interests. I have a boutique yoga studio as I am a keen Bikram fan and I also started the franchise of a restaurant chain, Kauai in Dubai to add to the options of healthy eating in Dubai! These are two areas that I am keen on and it has been fun ventures for me to do on my own.