Funny guy who scores a bullseye

Profile: Ishwar Chugani, executive director for Giordano Middle East, talks about running a clothing brand, dabbling with stand up comedy and winning the first UAE darts championship way back in 1982.

Known to his employees as 'IC', the regional executive director of the clothing chain Giordano stuck to his guns even when his family doubted he would make his mark in the UAE. He has also proved his prowess at darts — and his comedic skills are not bad either. Rory Jones reports

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Ishwar Chugani walks into his office and quickly points out a framed newspaper clipping on the wall. Dated 1983, the fading article reports on his victory in the first UAE darts championship.

Mr Chugani, 53, has been the executive director in the Middle East for the clothing brand Giordano since 1993. In 1980, he started the successful children's entertainment centre Sinbad's Wonderland at Al Ghurair Centre mall in Deira. And before that, he was at university. Somewhere in between, he won that darts championship.

Mr Chugani has been part of the retail scene in Dubai for essentially the same time it has existed.

"I actually hated retail," Mr Chugani explains as he takes a seat in his office. "I was going to be the fourth generation in my family running a store and thought there was no freedom in that life."

His parents ran a retail business in the Philippines, and it was expected that after university, the wide-eyed Ishwar would return home to the shelves.

But he had other ideas and instead replied to a newspaper advertisement for a job in Dubai with the ETA Ascon Star Group, a diversified conglomerate and part of Al Ghurair Group.

"At that time, nobody really knew where Dubai was, so nobody knew what I was getting into," he says. "Everyone in my family said 'let him learn the hard way. He will be back in six months'."

Some 30 years on, he has proved himself - and proved his family wrong - as he heads a retail clothing brand with more than 200 stores in the Middle East, North Africa and India.

Giordano's philosophy of selling colourful, simple clothing that is suitable for all is reflective of Mr Chugani's vibrant personality.

But his current office and regional headquarters are not. They look as if they also won a competition in the early 1980s - for the best use of faux-wood panelling and hermit-like desk cubicles.

Entering the reception, it was surprising not see the cast of Footloose arguing about who gets to play next with the Rubik's Cube.

But despite working in a time warp, Mr Chugani has moved on from the 1980s and his halcyon days at the top of the darts scene.

"It is not like it used to be," he reminisces. "At that time we would all play each other. It was really nice and friendly, but now you have too many groups. The Indians have their own league, so do the Filipinos, and the British are in Jebel Ali."

But this fragmentation is not the only reason he packed up his darts. More important is that his wife and two children are not big fans, or at least they hate the inevitable side-effect of his dart playing: he comes home smelling of hops and cigarettes.

"It is a smelly game, and I get thrown out of the house. [My family] say 'don't come up until you have taken a shower'," explains Mr Chugani with a giggle.

Considering that he is managing a rapid expansion of stores in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, he has a little less free time than he once did.

But not a lot less, because he is used to working long hours.

Mr Chugani ran the ETA Group's Sinbad's Wonderland in the region's first and then biggest mall, Al Ghurair Centre.He initially launched Giordano as a franchise in the UAE in 1993 and followed up with a joint venture between ETA and Giordano International.

"He's got a track record over here, for sure," says Ashish Panjabi, the chief operating officer for Jacky's Electronics. He often bumps into Mr Chugani at industry events.

"People usually get to the top because they come from international retailers or they are second or third-generation family members," Mr Panjabi says. "In his case it's neither. It's sweat and hard work that's got him there."

Born in the Philippines but of Indian descent, Mr Chugani grew up in Bacolod, a mid-sized city where his father had set up a shop in 1955. His grandfather had emigrated from Sindh, now part of Pakistan, in 1924, and the family boasts more than 300 members in the Philippines today.

He describes Bacolod as a city of "smiles" but seems to have had itchy teenage feet and soon moved to Manila, "the big city", where he studied business management at De La Salle University.

It is here he concedes a lot of his time was spent in the Red Lion, a local pub where he and his friends played darts.

"Manila was a big city, so I made sure I had balance of work and entertainment. That's when I got hooked on darts," he says.

Fortunately, his studies did not suffer, and he graduated with a thirst for travel and was in Dubai within months - along with his darts.

"When I moved to Dubai, I didn't know what to expect, so I brought my darts and have the same darts today. I'm so possessive of them. They have been with me for 35 years," Mr Chugani says.

He is often asked if his curious mix of Indian and Filipino heritage makes him well suited to the population demographic of the UAE, which is dominated numerically by these two nationalities.

"Growing up in the Philippines, I can now speak to anyone," he says. "Filipinos are always smiling. They get along with all nationalities."

He says the reserved Indian nature has certainly now left him, so much so that he has a large collection of jokes and often considers doing a stand-up routine.

"I can see him doing that," says Narain Jashanmal, the general manager for print media and book stores at Jashanmal Group. "He certainly has the personality, that laconic, sarcastic sense of humour."

Others agree that Mr Chugani could become the next Eddie Murphy or Jack Dee.

"Ishwar? He's a fun guy," says Eisa Ibrahim, the general manager of BurJuman Mall. He met Mr Chugani in 1986 while also running a Sinbad's entertainment centre, but in Oman. "He's a fun guy when you go out for a bite."

Mr Chugani, or "IC" to his employees, even brings his buoyancy to work and will often send motivational emails to his staff such as: "The key to survival is not assets, not funds, not systems, not process but PEOPLE and their ATTITUDES."

Mr Jashanmal used to visit Sinbad's when he was a youngster and would see Mr Chugani running a tight ship. Now, however, Mr Jashanmal goes to him for occasional business advice rather than learning how to complete an arcade video game.

"When we were thinking about entering new markets where he had experience, he would give positive feedback about the industry and his experience," Mr Jashanmal says. "He's got a great retail mind."

Mr Ibrahim says his old friend is wholly committed to the retail industry in Dubai - and is the only retailer on the advisory board of the Middle East Council of Shopping Centres.

"He's a real voice for them," Mr Ibrahim says.

By all accounts, Mr Chugani gives 100 per cent to everything. His next step is to reach 250 stores by 2015 and perform strongly in Africa by franchising the Giordano brand.

Given this hard-working mentality, the Indian heritage might not have wholly left him after all.

"Growing up among the Indians, my dad would always keep me busy even while studying to help out in the store. They didn't want me to be a bum or idle," he says.

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