Maharat – Designed to be the best in training

Maharat is a specialized training provider and strategic training partner in the vocational and technical realms catering to both the public and private sectors in Oman. Akshay Bhatnagar and Kavita Nair-Fondekar caught up with Sir Charles Shaw, CEO of Maharat at the minty new office premises at Knowledge Oasis Muscat (KOM) recently.

Can you tell us a bit about your association and commitment to Oman?

It is a long-term association. I was a major in the British army and in 1982 I was loaned to the Omani army for two years. Once you get the sand between your toes in Oman, it’s very difficult to get rid of it. I am an African and I could relate very easily to the Middle East. The entire two years I only spoke in Arabic to my soldiers because they did not speak English and I believe that if you want to get along with people and motivate them, you need to speak their language. It also helped me make a lot of friends who remain friends till today.

I left the army in 1986 and went into business. But throughout the time I was in business, in the UK and the US in SMEs, construction, property, IT and in training, I always kept in touch with Oman, socially as well as commercially. My partner and I set up a travel and tour operating business that exclusively focussed on bringing upmarket clients from the UK to Oman. It became a very successful business venture on the tour operating side and that gave us the excuse to come back to Oman off and on. We enjoyed the place so much that we bought a place in Muscat Hills, which we used as a holiday home. I then came back here permanently around two years ago with the idea of working and living here. This is a wonderful country and today I am totally focussed on Oman as my home.

How did Maharat happen?

The long story in a nutshell is that when I was a soldier here I had over a 100 Omani soldiers. There were a few Americans and a few Jordanians but the majority were Omanis. I saw that in the practical world, Omanis are very good in the practical aspects and that is what got me thinking. I thought back then that we have to get the practical trades Omanised. Practical training is what I would love to give back to Oman so that people can have a career path in the practical world. That was the essence of the birth of Maharat a long time ago.

When I started returning socially to Oman I saw huge development, which was fantastic and there was a lot of focus on the academic side. People were going to universities in the UK, the US and other parts of the world to get their masters and PhDs. I thought we needed to develop the practical oriented people too in addition to the academic ones. I discussed my idea of providing practical training tuned to employability with HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser Al Bakri, Minster of Manpower and Dr Muna Al Jardania,Undersecrtary at the Ministry of Manpower  three years ago when I gave them a presentation. At that time I had my own business called Leadership Dynamics, which had an affiliation with Pearson.

Pearson was looking for a partner in Oman so they asked me to research the Omani market and report my findings. I received candid feedback from all the Ministries, CEOs and Chairmen of various companies that I spoke to about what they wanted as employers. They confirmed and strengthened my resolve that it was practical learning at a quality standard that was required. That is how Maharat came into being.

Who are the partners in this venture?

We are unique as an organisation. We aim to remain an independent training provider. We are the only training company in Oman who has owners including Government Pension Funds and Private Equity Funds. The great thing about these investors is that they do not merely give us the money. Every one of them is directly involved in education and training themselves. They all understand training and challenge us to get the best ideas on board.

What would you say is your organisation’s USP?

Maharat is a 100 per cent Omani owned company and is the only training company with an SAOC. We are well funded, well respected as a professional organisation, have the government behind us and we are an Omani funded business to train the Omani workforce. That is our reason for being. We are focussed on Omanisation and despite being a young company we are nearly 40 per cent per cent Omanised.

We now have an international Centre for Excellence. We did that by initially partnering with Pearson, which is the largest training company in the world. We comply with and meet the exacting standards in the creation of our on course content as well as training that Pearson expects. We are BTEC, ISO 9/14/18000 and CILT accredited and our trainers have to deliver training that is of international standards and every accredited course that our learners complete can be Pearson Assured. It is mandatory for every employee of Maharat, whether an in house trainer or an associate, to undergo the Train the Trainer program.

There are over 150 training service providers in Oman but there are only 30 that are grade 1 and can provide a consistently high level of service. It is quite difficult to acquire the grade 1 status from the Ministry of Manpower in Oman and it does separate the quality from the rest. We have worked hard to get to that. We also want to be nationally Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) approved and we are in the process of acquiring the HSE approval for PDO, scheduled from 1 January 2016.

We are achieving good partnerships with some of the big companies in Oman as they can recognise that they get good return on investment. We ensure we acquire detailed feedback from the trainees, the trainers as well as the CEOs and training directors of our clients. These are measures put in place to ensure we receive continuous business from existing clients and I think that around 60 per cent of our business in the next few years will be from our existing clients. Everything is designed around international standards of customer service.

Which are the sectors that Maharat is focussing on currently?

Well, considering the sway over the GDP of Oman, Oil and Gas is a major segment and in addition there are others including manufacturing, aviation, SMEs and rail. Our Centre for Excellence is set up in such a fashion so as to cater to any of the major sectors in Oman. Some of our clients include Oman Rail, Orpic, PWC, Muscat Finance and Sodexo and we hope to begin working with PDO by the end of the year.

We are totally agnostic and are committed to providing services as per the requirements of our clients. We focus on designing, developing and delivering courses as per the customisation standards required by our clients. We also do some standard online courses like Health and Safety, English, IT and administrative course for the Public sector.

Currently we do not have workshops for training in welding, carpentry, mechanics and others. We are looking to incorporating these towards the end of 2016 if the companies ask for them. These are areas that have to be tackled with vigour to foster Omanisation in these skill development areas.

I would like to emphasise that we are not looking at the academic side at all. We are focussed on the practical education in the various fields as per the requirements of our clients.

How many people on an average has Maharat trained so far? 

We acquired two training companies initially who have merged with us and that expedited the birth of Maharat and gave us some of their trainers, clients as well as around eight years of track record. So quite a lot have been actually trained by Maharat in the government and private sectors.

We are not keen on merely being training suppliers. We are keen on forming partnerships and I would rather have 20 partnerships all giving me long-term business than multiple small master-servant kind of engagements that are low cost and low benefit.

Do you have anything for the SMEs?

I am an SME specialist having run them in various countries. 90 per cent of the companies in Oman are SMEs but they contribute a mere 14 per cent to the GDP. I think the imbalance here is because the definition of the word SME here is too small. There are a lot of Omanis out there who are aspiring to convert their ideas into commercially viable enterprises. There are few people who can actually do that and there are very few organisations that can train people to do that. We have two clients, one in the oil and gas industry and the other from the professional industry who want to sponsor SMEs. They are giving us a certain amount of money and stating a certain number of SMEs whose employees they want to train. We have designed a SME training course where from day one we give them a business plan template and we will train them to create and complete their own business plans on the template. It covers all areas of developing a business plan including creating their Vision and values, analysing their markets and competition to establishing their own goals and strategies to achieve those goals. This will give them a much better opportunity and a tangible boost to setting up their SMEs though we cannot guarantee that they will succeed.

I would personally love to get involved and not merely as the CEO of Maharat to help shape the way in which SMEs work in this country.

Under the current conditions where the oil prices are low and expected to remain so for some time, companies are focussing on In Country Value. What are your thoughts on the promotion of the ICV strategy in Oman?

We are in a recession kind of environment. Raoul Restucci, Managing Director of PDO came up with a cracking term the other day when he said, “Why waste a crisis?” He is absolutely right. We are very fortunate in Maharat that we are very new and we do not have any legacy or huge overheads. We are focussed on keeping the costs low. It is true that training budgets have been slashed by around 40 per cent and we have to admit it is a problem, but training is still required. There is still the mandatory training like HSE and first aid and we focus on such areas too.

The second thing is that Omanis are used to going abroad for training but now all the government and private companies are finding it financially prohibitive to send these individuals to various parts of the world for training. They need the training to happen in Oman. Maharat is totally geared for that with the International Centre of Excellence and we have the expertise to provide international level training right here in Oman.

An organisation like PDO spends millions on training and that is one area, which will unlikely be cut. We can now offer international and dedicated training for logistics and transport supply chain. Maharat is also focussed on Quality Assurance training in addition to important segments like Employability Skills, Technical English, Soft Skills, Logistics, Transportation and HSE for ICV.

How much of your course content is created in-house?

More than half of it. It does take a while to construct these courses and it is highly competitive too. We have found that clients are prepared to pay a bit more for a properly customised designed course and we are happy to do that.

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