This Entrepreneur Raised $140 Million In Just 12 Months Of Operations To Take On Amazon And Shopify
The world is your oyster, and it is up to you to take chances in life and make things happen. Omair Tariq, shaped by events early in his life, is going big.On the DealMakers Show Omair shared his incredible journey of going from a humble beginning in Dubai, to the USA to pursue academics which led him to entrepreneurship, growing and building businesses, and now empowering others doing the same. This is astory of challenges and a reminder to take chances in life.
After listening to the interview, you will learn to take risks and chances to grow businesses from the ground up yourself too.
Early Life
Omair Tariq was born and raised in the late 80s in Dubai. At that time, the country had only just discovered its oil. Omair was ambitious and driven from an early age by astrophysics and applied math. It was fascinating for him to study the subjects and understand the principles of science. He was good with numbers and physics and pursued continued his studies abroad and got his AL in Astrophysics from Cambridge.
First Business
Later on, Omair was studying for a finance degree in Houston. Seeing an opportunity to become an entrepreneur in his own right, he decided to open a small stall at a flea market with his wife to sell jewelry.
Even then, he needed money to start up. The $1,000 budget which he could not secure from anyone individually he decided to get in the form of $100 loans from 10 different people. A resourceful entrepreneur from the start, once he got up and running, he set his sights high and grew the business from scratch.
By the age of 24, he was making more money than he thought he could ever make his entire life. He was Head of Finance at Blinds.com, and it caught the attention of many other commerce businesses who wanted to acquire it.
Blinds.com was eventually acquired by Home Depot and Omair assumed the CFO/COO role at the e-commerce subsidiary of the home improvement retailer giant. Though, at the beginning of the acquisition process, the founder was afraid that the deal would fall apart, or the new company that they were merging into was not a cultural fit for them.
He was, however, able to help blinds.com grow from a $20-30M company to a company worth 100s of millions of dollars.
After five years at Homedepot.com, he set his sights on a new venture, cart.com. It is an end-to-end ecommerce platform with a fully integrated vertical system that was intended to compete with Amazon.
Cart.com helps businesses create an Amazon-like ecosystem outside of Amazon by choosing a direct-to-consumer business model. New businesses can access marketing, online storefronts, fulfill business operations and extend their reach.
Cart.com has adopted an aggressive growth strategy and has raised over $140M in just 12 months of operation.
There are a lot of investments in the infrastructure and at least 7 mergers and acquisitions have been completed in the company's short span of operation.
Their talent includes at least 320 employees, with room to grow to 600 in the next year. The company has already onboarded 2,700 brands with plans to increase it to at least 5,000 in the next year.
Listen in to the full podcast episode to find out more, including:
How to look at the positive side of disasters · Learning to challenge yourself at each turn · Having the courage to start a business when all the odds seem against you · The value of good talent and good company culture · How to handle mergers and acquisitions successfully
