There are two types of billionaires: those who inherited their wealth, and those who built it from scratch. When talking about Egyptian self-made businessmen, one should mention Mahmoud Al Elaraby, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Elaraby Group.
This man story is not only impressive and compelling, but also inspiring. He is a role model to look up for.
There’s a pervasive belief that wealthy people usually inherit their money from a rich uncle or are born with silver spoons in their mouths, but the opposite is actually true. There are 2,604 billionaires in the world, and 55.8% of them are self-made.
Mahmoud Elaraby is an Egyptian businessman, former member of parliament and chairman of El Araby Group of companies which was established in 1964. He also owns several agencies in Egypt, including Sharp, Toshiba, SICO among others.
Elaraby Group is now competent in manufacturing and marketing electronics and home appliances and it is one of the major economic entities that play a developing role for the Egyptian society and economy. It also represents high quality products with an advanced technology that serve what the consumer needs and expects.
He founded the company with his three brothers: Mohamed, Mahmoud and Abdel-Gayed Elaraby, who worked together with synergy and harmony to grow a small business into a holding company that has been evolving year after year in the field of electronics and consumer durable goods.
His Humble start
He started as a salesman in a shop where he had a tendency to trade from a young age. He was a child who sells toys on the terrace of their home in the village and saves the capital and the profits to give the total amount to his half-brother, so he buys him another set of toys to sell. When his brother found out his talent, he took him to Cairo, where he worked as a salesman in several shops, and then he got a partner and they bought together their own hardware store in El-Mosky district, and started his journey to be an employer instead of being an employee.
It all started with a capital no more than 4000 Egyptian pounds yet Elaraby has now a conglomerate with a working capital that reached 20 billion Egyptian pounds in 2019, providing job opportunities for 40,000 employees in different projects.
The Group embraces eight companies working in commercial industrial and service operations and two industrial complexes running sixteen factories – all operating with the world’s latest production lines, it also has investments in a host of projects that manufacture and market products in the Arab region and Africa. Thus, it is rather hard to believe that such a mega Group had such humble beginning.
This humble origin of Elaraby Group is a continuous source of pride and inspiration to the younger generation of Elaraby family.
Mahmoud Ibrahim Elaraby has always been saying that his success in building this power houses is based on perseverance, patience and persistence for almost half of a century, established by the three brothers who came from Egypt’s countryside, possessing nothing but the power of a dream.
His Journey to Japan
In 1974, Elaraby has been to Japan for the first time in his life where he visited the factories of Toshiba Company there, then he managed to become the authorized agent for it. He asked to set up a factory for Toshiba in Egypt to manufacture the company’s products with 40 percent local components which later increased to reach 95 percent.
Elaraby focused in transforming a small factory into a large power house has been met with much praise and appreciation, not only at the local level, but on the international level as well.
The Group has received a supreme token of appreciation from Japan. The Emperor of Japan awarded the Order of the Rising Sun to Mahmoud Elaraby, for playing a significant role in his capacity as the Head of El-Araby Group in developing excellent commercial relationships between Egypt and Japan along four decades.
