Interview: Milagrow & Blue Ocean Global CEOs

As Milagrow Robots starts its operations in the Middle East region, TECHx Editor, Rabab Zehra secured an exclusive interview with Rajeev Karwal, CEO of Milagrow Robots, and Shahzad Ahmed, Chairman & CEO, Blue Ocean Global to find out about the company’s expansion plans, their key strategic focus areas & Milagrow’s strategy to meet customer expectations and face tomorrow’s challenges.

TECHx: As Milagrow is starting its operations in Middle East region now, what vision do you hold for the company under your leadership, specifically in the Middle East region?

Rajeev: I think it’s a great question and I would like to take you back to the origin of Milagrow. When I had founded Milagrow, it was with one mission and that was that one human being serving another human being for menial tasks or domestic chores should be completely replaced by robots serving human beings. Second thing is that we must also remember that in the pandemic the entire world is facing an economic recession because human lives are very important. The offices were locked, factories were locked, right? Today, nobody is manning the reception, because people coming from outside can put a receptionist in a vulnerable position. If a factory is run by robots, workers would not ask if they are required to work overtime, or would not ask for leaves etc. In a situation like this those robots would continue to contribute to productivity and then contribute in such a way to society that human beings actually enjoy doing brainy jobs. They should be controlling robots and should be doing a much better job. The time has come where the entire world should look at rescaling. This is Milagrow’s mission. And I hope that as we come into the Middle East, we are able to make this difference.

When we started, we only had floor cleaning robots. But today we have indoor cleaning robots, we have swimming pool cleaning robots, we have lawnmowing robots, we have air duct cleaning robots. We have just launched a new brand logo and identity with one tagline ‘Milagrow – Think Robots’. Whenever you think robots think Milagrow and whenever you think Milagrow think robots. That’s the idea!

TECHx: My next question is for Shahzad. After Milagrow starts its operations in the Middle East region, what will be the key strategic focus areas and what market segments you are looking forward to target under this expansion plan?

Shahzad: Blue Ocean Global is a Master Distribution House with a global footprint representing International brands in over 40 countries. We started Blue Ocean Global nearly seven years ago with the vision of being a global master distributor. At that point in time, it seemed impossible because you can imagine when you are starting off with a vision that seems like a dream and then you really have to find a way and means and action plan to make it happen. But along the line, in seven years we have become a master distributor at a global level in the sense that we cover nearly 40 markets in the world, which obviously has Middle East, Africa as the core markets. But then we have gone beyond to Asia, Pacific, Australasia, and Europe. This is exactly where we are resonating with Milagrow. Milagrow also has a vision of becoming a global, robotic company. So initially, the business is going to be here in the in the GCC, Middle East, and starting here in UAE, but the thought process, or the strategic idea is to penetrate into the world, from Dubai.

TECHx: How is Milagrow staying relevant to meet the ever-changing customer expectations and tomorrow’s challenges?

Rajeev: During the last year, we have brought so many changes to our products that even when I look back, I think that is it the same Milagrow, are these the same Milagrow products? When the COVID actually came, everybody got afraid, and they wanted to know how to kill a COVID spore lying on the floor, and then medical organizations came up with using sodium hypochlorite 1% solution to kill the COVID spore on the floor. Then we said Okay! Let us make the changes to the water tanks in our robots in such a way that the mops should also be anti-microbial and we can kill the COVID spores on the floor. What we have seen in the last one year is that the customers are buying products and brands, which provide security, hygiene, and ease of use to them, where they say I want to go to a mall, I don’t want to go to a service center, I should have a product which really makes me safe at my home. Milagro has been following that I just gave you one example of how we are staying relevant.

TECHx: Considering the digital acceleration in the robotics industry, what is the business outlook you see in this sector globally?

Rajeev: Milagrow in the last year has grown by 500% which is a five times increase. I believe that the next few years will be mind-boggling for the robotics industry where we will definitely grow in the 300 to 400% category percentage in terms of our existing markets. There are not too many brands in this field and there is no brand in the world that has the vision like we have to be almost in every sphere which touches a consumer’s life. So we are very bullish.

read more at techxmedia