As the advertising industry has shifted towards data-driven strategies, personalized content, and digital platforms, influential figures are crucial in emphasizing measurable results and consumer engagement. The same is true with investments, particularly venture capital, in the startup ecosystem.
Recognizing these gaps in investments and scaling businesses globally, Shafaat has revolutionized the industry by creating data-driven, comprehensive business strategies that emphasize commercial competence, efficient marketing campaigns, and hands-on client support with a focus on making businesses profitable and investible.
Shafaat Hashmi, Chairman of Stalliongates Capital and CEO of Brandbeat Global, is a global serial entrepreneur, angel investor, business strategist, and keynote speaker with 14 international offices and 25 years of business experience.
In 2007, he moved to Dubai, where he identified gaps in the advertising industry. This realization led to Brandbeat Global, a marketing agency focused on comprehensive business, marketing, and commercial strategies. One notable success was building an investment firm that focused on multiple asset classes and posted phenomenal growth year over year.
He also leads Stalliongates Investments, focusing on the real estate, healthcare, and education sectors. The firm carefully evaluates market demands and its competitive edge.
Shafaat believes that listening to and learning from his clients is crucial, which has given him the capacity to manage the ever-changing business domain. Moreover, he credits his family and mentors for his achievements, as well as the importance of teamwork, learning, and faith in moulding his journey.
Let us explore his journey:
Let’s learn about your journey to entrepreneurship. We understand that you started working very early in your family business and pivoted it to Stalliongates Investments and Brandbeat Global.
I am the fourth generation in business. During this tenure, we have failed in many ventures, exited quite a few, and, at the same time, scaled some businesses. During my childhood, at the age of six, I used to accompany my father (May his soul rest in peace) to all kinds of business meetings, including those with bankers, lawyers, business partners, suppliers, customers, and our internal teams.
I remember being quiet, observing, and then sharing my feedback and suggestions with my father every day at the end of those meetings. I used to study, but he made sure I was investing at least a couple of hours every day in the office at a very young age. I remember clearly that I was able to fill out bank deposit slips and cheque-books when I was in grade 4. I learned the basics of marketing, sales, and accounting when I was in eighth grade, applying them practically in our family businesses.
What was your first business venture that you initiated outside of the family business, and what inspired you to start one?
I was in my A-Levels and used to go daily for evening tuition by private teachers running an academy in Lahore. The day I got my results for A-Levels, I approached those teachers and requested that they open a branch of the same academy at a different location next to my home, which is one of the most posh areas of Lahore. I offered them 40% of every student’s fee, to which they happily agreed. I negotiated a
monthly rental in the basement of a commercial area, paid the landlord only one month in advance, got the security deposit and other upfront costs waived, gave the landlord 10% of our income as a partner, brought chairs and desks from home, and created a flyer to be distributed in schools, colleges, and nearby areas with teachers’ profiles, including myself, to teach business studies to students.
We were profitable during our second month, and I ran that academy for two years, ultimately selling it at approximately 2.5X valuation multiples to the same teachers who were teaching. My inspiration was to fund my own lifestyle and change my car to buy a brand new Civic, which was back then a dream car showcased in the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds,” and furthermore, spend my money on my university abroad.
During your university years, you also worked in your family business. How were you able to manage both at the same time because students usually don’t have time to do both while studying?
During my university years, we were running the second-largest aluminium manufacturing company in Lahore by the name of Pakistan ALCO. I brought innovation to that sector by being the first company to import aluminium composite panels, structural glaze, and laminated wooden floors from Korea. I used to only attend my classes at the university, and during the class breaks, I would rush to the office or take up meetings to sell our products to architects, real estate developers, contractors, interior designers, and private clients. I marketed it really well and built a whole brand around it. I sold my products to my own university and to many classmates too.
We scaled really fast as I was able to build a sales team on commissions, which saved me a lot of time to focus on my studies as well. My average day was 16 hours, and I would only take a few days off during my final exams of each semester. In the end, it really came down to time management, and I made sure that I was not wasting time on typical entertainment, parties, or get-togethers, which a typical teenager or university student usually does during those years.
What made you start Brandbeat Global in Dubai, and what was your strategy when you launched the marketing agency?
I have been coming in and out of Dubai since 1995, so my exposure to the market was there at a very early stage when my father was an investment partner in a trading company dealing in branded perfumes and watches. During 2007, when I moved to Dubai to work at a senior director-level position to lead the brand marketing for several companies, I learned that most advertising agencies were more focused on being creative but lacked the overall commercial acumen of the business.
Furthermore, they would propose media buying where they were getting maximum commissions compared to what was better for the brands commercially. In many cases, the advertising agencies may have a great account director serving you for client servicing, but the backend team was not great. There was a lot of spoon-feeding required when it came to sales strategy, commercial strategy, and creative brand communication. I also hired consultants during those years, but the problem with consultants was that they could only share their opinions but would not execute. Most of the time, the strategies they proposed were way off the mark in terms of practicality.
Brandbeat Global addressed this missing link, so I created a company that would provide a well-rounded business strategy, marketing strategy, and commercial strategy and would also execute the marketing campaigns and sales to assist our clients in practically growing their businesses locally, regionally, and globally.
What kind of businesses does Brandbeat Global serve, and what is one of the most challenging cases you would like to share?
Brandbeat Global currently serves across 23 business sectors. Over the last seven years, we started assisting startups and ventured into UI/UX design for app development, including pitch deck design. Over the last four years, we have been focused on building personal brands as well. FMCG, banking, real estate, fashion, cosmetics, retail brands, e-commerce brands, airlines, hospitality, healthcare, investment firms, educational institutes, insurance companies, ultra-high-end lifestyle brands, and a variety of B2B companies have been our clients. Over the last 14 years, we have served over 700 clients from 32 countries and turned around their businesses to scale and achieve greater profitability.
One of the most interesting case studies was about a brand that came to us with a very raw concept to create a startup incubator, but the services they wanted to offer were all over the place. It was very difficult to find a starting point and tie all of those services together into one. All we received was a 7- slide basic PowerPoint presentation that listed the service mix along with a verbal brief of what our client wanted to achieve on her extremely limited budget.
Within three months, we were able to build the whole concept into something remarkable as we worked on the complete business ideation, go-to-market strategy, brand design, brand communication strategy, and simplifying the service mix to create attractive funnels for customer acquisition. Today, they are one of the leading groups in the startup ecosystem of the UAE, and within one year of our retainer contract, we were able to help them grow by 5X.
Since you’re the chairman of an investment firm, Stalliongates Capital, and you also actively invest as an angel investor, what are your criteria for investing?
The criteria are different when it comes to Stalliongates Investments and my personal investments. Our investment firm is more focused on the real estate sector, healthcare, and education sectors. A small portion of our funds is allocated for tech-based startups. We invest in early-stage startups and also early- stage real estate development projects where we come in as a partner and board member. The few factors we consider prior to making any investment are the integrity and professional business acumen of the founder or CEO.
Another thing we focus on is the competitive edge, value proposition, and demand for their products or services, including the total addressable market. The third thing we consider is their process efficiencies and go-to-market strategy. Ultimately, we look into the financials and worst-case scenario with a stringent risk assessment and route to profitability. These are some of the surface-level factors we consider prior to screening any investment opportunities that come our way.
You currently hold a board seat in 31 startups and are growing. What is your end goal with such investments?
Startup investing is extremely high risk. More than 70% of startups fail during the first year. Less than 10% are able to make it through three years, and less than 1% achieve profitability. 0.0000001% of startups become unicorns. Therefore, we consider startup investing more of a probability game. Our end goal is to operate as a startup aggregator.
This means that our strategy is that, let’s say, we have acquired equity stakes in 12 health-tech startups. We would work on those startups from the business ideation stage all the way to GTM, and then we will see which one of those startups can be merged into one large, powerful business entity that can acquire
the maximum share of the market as a new integrated unicorn. Therefore, we aggregate those startups based on two common denominators: either a shared customer avatar or a shared business sector.
Today you have 14 offices of Brandbeat Global, another 5 offices of Stalliongates Investments, and obviously 31 startups in your personal portfolio. Not to mention that at any given time, you have hundreds of clients who require your attention for business consulting, investment advice, brand marketing, and more. How do you manage such a diverse portfolio, and how do you plan to grow these businesses further?
The key to growth is delegation, but delegation alone without empowerment is a recipe for failure. Empowerment without training is a disaster. Therefore, growth needs to be planned carefully, and I cannot stress enough the importance of having the right people, partners, and team by your side. People make businesses successful, and people are the most important asset of your company. I have been able to manage a relatively diverse portfolio, thanks to my partners, leadership teams, and every single person working like a family in our offices who take responsibility to deliver with integrity and excellence and always keep their commitment.
Our growth strategy is to further scale our businesses into entrepreneurial education, which I believe is the core reason why many startups and businesses fail. We aim to put up the first business school where our unique “Consult-Teach” methodology is applied by practical business leaders, serial entrepreneurs, and C-Suite executives teaching on a strict curriculum followed by professional consulting and execution to help our students succeed in their business ventures. Our second focus is on healthcare, and we aim to bring five new concepts to the healthcare industry, from skincare clinics to a free tele-health consulting app and AI-based diagnostic kiosks, by the end of 2024.
What do you stand for as a person, and what’s your mission in life?
I believe the best philanthropy is to create jobs. This is why I work hard because lots of families are dependent on our businesses, and I am the source of creating jobs for them so they can live with integrity. I believe it is important that we live our lives as contributors to our society and not become a liability in the world we live in. I stand for peace, and there is no cost that is greater if it has to be paid for achieving peace. I believe that peace starts in the heart of an individual, where our hearts are at peace with gratitude, humility, truth, and light. Together, if every individual tries to achieve personal peace, our family will be at peace, our community will be at peace, and ultimately we will witness peace around the world.
Who would you like to recognise and acknowledge as part of your success journey, and what do you think is the importance of having a mentor?
We live in an interdependent universe. There is no way one can achieve anything alone. I have dedicated my entire success to my grandparents, my parents, especially my mother, whom I love the most in this entire world, my children Arham and Noor, and especially my business partner, Amna Razzaq, whom I truly love as one of the most inspiring women.
During my journey, I have met a lot of people who gave me great advice, including people I worked for or worked alongside, even in my own company. But my true mentors have always been my customers. I learn from them, and I learn about them. Lastly, the one personality that has inspired me and is my guiding light to take the toughest decisions in my life is Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). His life has inspired me, and his wisdom has been my guiding light since my childhood.
What is your advice to founders and entrepreneurs?
Always give first and be original. Learn and respect those who teach you, advise you, or are willing to support you. It’s not about your vision; create a vision that is a shared vision in which people believe. This is the foundation for building global brands.
Raising funds is not a metric of success; focus on profitability, growth, and impact. Invest smartly in people and ideas, and never forget that both success and failure are always temporary. Create a brand from your heart and sell it through the power of your mind, which is intelligence. Choose your battles wisely and secure your resources ahead of your idea. Work with good intentions and work hard. There are no shortcuts in life, but consistency will offer you bonus level-ups that will change your life. There is no one-size-fits-all advice, so I have just shared some fundamentals because good advice is usually not free advice, so invest in receiving professional advice from those who have been there, done that, and are still doing it repeatedly.
