From building his early professional foundation in Mumbai to developing his career in the UAE, his journey has been shaped by international business, multicultural leadership, customer understanding and a deep appreciation for Arabian perfumery.
Today, as Founder & Chairman of Ahmed Al Maghribi Perfumes, he focuses on business growth, brand development, international expansion, product innovation, customer experience and building a globally relevant fragrance business while preserving the heritage and craftsmanship associated with Middle Eastern perfumery.
His vision is to contribute to taking modern Arabian fragrance culture to a wider international audience while building an organisation defined by quality, innovation, people and long-term value.
Some excerpts from a conversation:
My professional journey can really be divided into a few important phases. I grew up in Mumbai, and from a very young age of around 18, I was doing odd jobs simply to support my family. Those weren’t glamorous years, but they taught me the fundamentals: how to work under pressure, how to take responsibility for results, and how to deal with people from every walk of life.
From there, I moved to KSA for work, where I spent several years in a supervisory role. That experience sharpened my understanding of managing people and operations skills I didn’t fully appreciate at the time, but that became the backbone of everything I built later.
The real turning point came when an opportunity took me to the UAE, and I started working in a perfume retail store. That job did something unexpected it ignited a passion and creativity in me that I don’t think I even knew I had. Being surrounded by fragrance every day, watching how customers made decisions, understanding what built trust in a brand that’s where I truly learned the market, the customer, and the basic knowledge and skills of this industry.
International exposure has therefore made me more open-minded. It has taught me to listen before making assumptions and to respect cultural differences while still maintaining clear values and business standards.
Today, when I look at any market, I do not simply ask, “How can we sell our product here?” I ask, “Who is the customer here? What do they value? What is their lifestyle? What does fragrance mean to them?” That shift in thinking has been extremely important in my journey.
The journey from Mumbai to the UAE represents much more to me than career progression. It represents a transformation in perspective.
Mumbai was where I learned to work hard, observe customers, understand competition, build relationships, and appreciate the importance of every opportunity. In a city like Mumbai, nothing is automatically given to you. You learn to create opportunities.
When I moved to the UAE, I entered an environment where ambition existed on a much larger and more international scale. The UAE showed me how businesses could think globally while remaining deeply connected to local culture.
Initially, my focus was on learning the market. I wanted to understand how consumers in the Gulf approached fragrance, retail, luxury, hospitality, and brands.
The fragrance culture here fascinated me. Oud, bakhoor, musk, amber, rose, saffron, and other traditional ingredients are part of everyday life in this region. At the same time, customers are highly sophisticated and internationally aware. They appreciate heritage, but they also expect innovation.
Understanding that balance became very important to my professional journey. As my responsibilities increased, I became involved in areas extending beyond sales or operations. My focus expanded into brand positioning, retail strategy, product development, customer experience, distribution, team development, international expansion, digital transformation, and long-term business planning.
Today, as Chairman & Founder, I see my responsibility as protecting the DNA of the business while preparing it for the future. One of my key priorities has been ensuring that growth does not dilute identity.
As fragrance businesses expand internationally, there can sometimes be pressure to become more generic. I believe the opposite approach is stronger. A Middle Eastern fragrance house should be proud of where it comes from. Oud, bakhoor and Arabian perfumery traditions are extraordinary cultural assets.
The opportunity is to present that heritage in a way that feels contemporary, sophisticated, and globally relevant. Some of the milestones I value most include helping strengthen the organisation’s retail presence, supporting expansion into new markets, developing a stronger customer-focused culture, encouraging innovation in fragrance and presentation, building stronger systems within the organisation, and preparing the brand for the next stage of international growth.
Another important transformation has been digital. Today’s fragrance customer may discover a perfume on social media, watch a creator review it, research the notes online, visit a store to experience it, and later reorder it through e-commerce. That means retail, digital marketing, social media, customer service, product storytelling, and e-commerce can no longer operate independently. We have increasingly focused on creating one connected brand experience across these touchpoints.
I also believe strongly in product innovation. Innovation in perfume does not mean abandoning tradition. Sometimes the most exciting innovation comes from interpreting traditional ingredients differently – combining oud with unexpected florals, woods, spices, fruits, musks, or modern aromatic structures.
The objective is to create fragrances with identity rather than simply following whatever happens to be popular. My Mumbai-to-UAE journey has therefore moved through several stages: learning, adapting, building, leading, and now expanding.
The moment a business believes it has learned everything is usually the moment it begins falling behind. The principles that have helped me most are consistency, humility, resilience, discipline, and the willingness to keep learning.
Earlier in one’s career, success can appear to be mainly about personal achievement – position, growth, financial results or recognition. As your responsibilities increase, the definition changes.
The fragrance industry is constantly evolving, so staying updated is essential.
I follow international perfume exhibitions, fragrance houses, perfumers, ingredient developments, packaging innovations, retail concepts, consumer reports, digital trends and emerging fragrance communities.
However, I believe the most valuable source of information remains the customer.
Our teams interact with customers every day. They hear which fragrances people are requesting, which notes are becoming popular, what customers are layering together, what younger consumers are discovering, and which products are generating repeat purchases.
Social media has also accelerated the industry enormously.
Today, a fragrance can gain international attention very quickly through creators and fragrance communities. Trends such as layering, gourmand fragrances, high-concentration perfumes, niche perfumery, oud reinterpretations and gender-fluid fragrance preferences are reaching consumers much faster than before.
But following trends does not mean copying trends. We study them, understand why consumers are responding to them, and then decide whether they make sense for our identity. The objective should always be to remain relevant without losing originality.
Product innovation will remain central. At the same time, growth must remain disciplined. Opening more locations or entering more countries is only meaningful if the customer experience and product quality remain consistent. The focus will be on international expansion, strengthening distribution, entering strategically important markets, developing our retail presence, accelerating e-commerce, increasing digital engagement, and continuing to create fragrances that combine Arabian heritage with contemporary perfumery.
Read the full story that first appeared in The Global Indian here:
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