After Moeez Nakhoda, BS ’91, graduated from the UB School of Management, he returned home to Singapore to join F.M. Noordin & Co., the trading business his family founded in 1895.
Today, Nakhoda and his brother, Aamir, serve as co-directors of the firm. They each manage different product lines, ensuring day-to-day continuity by fulfilling pending orders, overseeing documentation and supervising the export process from invoices to packing lists and delivery logistics.
But Nakhoda says he didn’t jump right to company leadership when he was fresh out of college.
“The way the family business was run was that you start from the lowest depth of the ocean,” he says. “I was a dispatcher, an office cleaner, worked in documentation, and was a typist and courier before becoming director, which gave me a perspective of the entire business from the ground up.”
Initially, Nakhoda’s leadership role consisted of taking over what previous managers were doing and continuing the product lines F.M. Noordin & Co. was already trading in, like spices and produce from southeast Asia. Today, he works to ensure the company stays competitive and relevant in an evolving market.
For example, as customer preferences changed, manufacturer demand for the company’s desiccated coconuts declined due to their fat and oil content. So, Nakhoda led the company to shift its supply chain away from desiccated coconuts and over to cocoa powder, which remains high in demand.
“A lot of companies are going under, not because they have become inefficient or were outpriced in the market, but rather they became redundant,” he says. “My goal is to ensure that my customers find me relevant, so how I conduct business very much depends on the ever-changing goalposts that we have in this business climate.”
Nakhoda says his time in the UB School of Management gave him the skills and confidence to position his 130-year-old family business for the future, most notably by trading in new products such as wastepaper used in packing materials. This product is still in high demand in developing countries in particular, where it is used for packing fruits and vegetables.
“There’s an Asian saying that you have to have thick skin to weather the storm,” he says. “My time in the UB School of Management gave me the confidence to communicate with my customers, sell my products and withstand the forces that come along in the real world.”
In addition to giving him the business skills he needed to succeed, his time in the School of Management also inspired him to give back. In 2007, when his family was looking to support education, his late mother, Amena, guided Nakhoda to establish the Amena and Hatim Nakhoda Family Scholarship Fund to support students in the School of Management.
“I was blessed to have an overseas education in those times,” he says. “In the ’80s it was a real challenge for parents to send students to study internationally because the rate of exchange was quite expensive. So after I graduated, I felt that need to give back to society in whichever capacity I could.”
Outside the office, Nakhoda enjoys spending time with his wife, Sharul, and sons Amir and Arif. He also continues to play soccer, picking up from his time as captain of the intramural team, “The Foreigners,” when he was at UB.
“Soccer is great for de-stressing,” he says. “I loved the UB environment because whenever I saw someone playing I could ask to join in, play for a bit and then get right back to my classes.”
Written by Kevin Manne