Raed Alammari, Founder, Rubber Future
Rome was not built in a day. Likewise, achieving remarkable success in business and marking oneself in the business world is no piece of the cake. It takes years of hard work, determination, and excellent business acumen to overcome all odds in the journey to be successful. Many business leaders have transformed their dreams into reality through dedicated endeavors and spearheaded the company to the glorious heights of success. One such prominent leader who has established himself as a brilliant entrepreneur is none other than Raed Alammari, Founder, of Rubber Future. Even though he established the business in 2019, his journey as a professional business leader began much earlier.
An Accomplished Visionary
After graduating college in 2001, Raed planned to work for 5 years as an employee to gain basic working knowledge while he build up saving to start his own business. “I have enjoyed what I was doing since then till I realized that I invested 15 years of my life in the career job but still having the enthusiasm lightening in my mind to structure my own venture.”
Throughout his career, Raed spent considerable time in business development in banking, investment, and asset management. He also dealt with ultra-high-net-worth individuals all over the world including those who structured corporate brand names instead of using their own. During his journey, Raed came across several business leaders listening to the stories of how they started their ventures, success & failure stories, challenges, achievements, excitement, and frustration moments.
As a certified wealth manager and financial planner, Raed was mandated to advise clients on their investments, portfolio allocation, cash flow management, structuring, and legal framework. The entrepreneur addressed their queries by understanding their business operation, strategies, plans, challenges, and investment opportunities to provide suitable guidance to the client base. “This experience helped me over circa 20 years to dive deep on a vast and wide range of experiences that structured my entrepreneurial mindset,” says Raed.
Raed’s Entrepreneurial Journey
Since childhood, Raed is an environmental and recycling advocate. “I remember a decade ago, one of my colleagues just got back from Australia after finishing his master studies and mentioned that Saudi is missing a lucrative opportunity in waste management and started describing Australia and how they are benefiting from recycling electronic waste,” shares Raed. This discussion further led Raed into this industry from a business perspective and coincidentally a couple of years later, while he was still an employee, they acquired a company that operates in waste management. This was a perfect opportunity for Raed to connect between theories and the real world where he saw the vast untapped opportunity within the circular economy and waste management.
“At that moment, I made up my mind it is time to take the move and follow my enthusiasm. I stepped down from my position and set up several ventures in waste management where Rubber Future is the most recent one,” says, Raed.
With Rubber Future, Raed is building a unique tire recycling facility that produces high quality & durable environmentally friendly rubber products while consumers are confident they are playing a major role in solving the issue of stockpiling scrap tires all over the Kingdom’s landfills. The company’s products are used in several aspects of consumers’ life such as kindergartens, schools, sports fields, gems, homes, offices, roads, vehicles, etc. It also helps in reducing carbon footprint which in turn improves society’s quality of life. Rubber Future provides rubber applications that can be produced from scrap tires and the company mainly focuses on roads, flooring, sports fields, equestrians, running tracks, and landscapes. The company’s scrap tires can also be used as alternate fuel in heavy industries.
Sharing Wisdom
According to Raed, the responsibilities of an entrepreneur include persistence, patience, the big picture, walking the talk, being decisive, building support for people, holding good virtues, being responsible, and taking care of people around. He believes that a leading entrepreneur is always perceived as strong, clear-minded, and available to tackle issues and obstacles. While failure happens from time to time, an entrepreneur should always keep trying in different ways till achieving his/her goal and should not surrender when hitting a roadblock.
“Once upon a time, my boss and business godfather taught me a famous quote of Gandhi that goes, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then then they fight you, then you win”. You don’t achieve the true meaning of winning if you don’t enjoy the whole journey. You won’t enjoy that journey if you’re short-sighted,” asserts Raed.
Marching Ahead
The ardent entrepreneur treats his employees like a family and believes that people are the cornerstone of the company’s values. While utilizing the latest available technologies in the operations, the company’s intellectual capital is spearheading all its initiatives. Raed says, “I always tell any team member, we should do whatever it takes to make sure we wake up every morning desiring to come to the office rather, should go to the office. The moment we feel we’re forced to go to the office, we lose the game.”
“I always aspire to that moment when I witness the achievement of my goals and once stable growth is achieved, I use that excitement and energy to start a new journey and challenge. A couple of years ago, Rubber Future was just an idea and now I’m in the middle of seeing my dream come true,” concludes Raed.
