Sharif Shaham

Director of Marketing & IT at Elite Force

Is it possible to create a properly organised security industry in Bangladesh? Sharif Shaham, Director of Marketing & IT at Elite Force, Bangladesh, strives to achieve this by creating new dimensions to Bangladesh's security industry. With a degree in Business Administration & International Business from North South University, Shaham is the youngest member of the management team at Elite Force.

Although Elite Force is owned by his father Brig. Gen. Sharif Aziz (Retd), Managing Director of the company, Shaham started off as a Junior Executive in 2002 and slowly worked his way up to eventually become the Director of Marketing & IT in 2010. The company was established in 1999 and even when he was a student, Shaham contributed to the formulation of marketing strategies for the then young security company back in 2000.

Every business faces problems in its initial stages and the story was no different for Elite Force. “The biggest problem we faced was that the perception of security service in Bangladesh was very low back then,” explains Shaham. “People didn't understand the scope of the service we were trying to provide. It was not respected, and on top of that, the price clients were willing to pay was extremely low.

“Customers disregarded the idea of paying a premium rate to get good quality security service. Moreover, the security industry was disorganised and there was no benchmark to measure ourselves with,” says Shaham.

Despite this, the company is running very successfully now and Shaham's modernisation of the company through the incorporation of elements like branding, HR, R&D, IT and CSR in its culture has made the Elite Force reach new heights. The knowledge he gained from his visits to a number of international security companies abroad has proved to be invaluable to his local company. In 2010, a garments unit under the name, Elite Apparels, was launched under the same banner. A state-of-the-art training centre, Elite Academy, just 10 minutes away from their Baridhara Headquarters, in Vatara has recently been developed. Training and education is provided to security personnel through professional teaching methods, an up-to-date syllabus, and practical training modules that offer hands-on experience to trainees.

“One of our goals was to create job opportunities for the unemployed rural youth and tap into this vast pool of resources. We were able to encourage young unemployed people from different villages and then train them to be security operators,” says Shaham.

In February 2011, Sharif Shaham was awarded the “Best Young Entrepreneur of 2010” at the Arthakantha Business Awards by the Commerce Minister of Bangladesh. He was also nominated at the “Business Asia” Business awards in September 2011 and has been nominated again for the award of “Best Young Entrepreneur of 2011” to be announced in March 2012. Arthakantha Publications published a feature on him in 2011 as one of the "100 Top Young Entrepreneurs of 2011." The July 2011 edition of Business Asia Magazine did a cover story on him titled, “Taking the Security Industry to a bold new future.”

“Our next objective is to take this business beyond the borders and go international at some point. We want to put Bangladesh on the map where security & logistics services are concerned,” says Shaham. “We also hope to expand into other fields of business in the future where we can excel and contribute to the development of this nation.”

by Zaheen Zaema Khan