The 8th annual Middle East Retail Academy (MERA) Awards Gala Dinner took place on Wednesday 13th May in conjunction with DISTREE Middle East. The ICT and consumer electronics (CE) channel event was held at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr in Abu Dhabi. Hundreds of senior vendor, distributor and retail channel executives attended the Gala Dinner.
The awards included three sets of individual awards: Retail Executives of the Year; Distributor Executives of the Year, and Vendor Executives of the Year. In the run-up to this year’s MERA Awards ceremony, companies were invited to nominate individuals from within their organisation for an award. These nominations were used to create online polling forms that were then distributed for the final round of voting.
Farouk Hemraj, Director and Co-Founder at DISTREE Events at DISTREE Events, said: “The individual executive accolades are always a highlight of the annual MERA Awards. There is a great deal of work that goes on behind the scenes to collect the nominations and then create the online polls that are used to determine the overall winners.”
Retailers were invited to complete the online polls for Vendor Executives of the Year and Distributor Executives of the Year. Vendors and distributors were invited to complete the online poll for Retailer Executives of the Year.
The full list of winners for the individual executives categories at the ‘MERA: 2015 Awards’ is as follows:
- UAE Retail Executive – Rahul Anand, Carrefour
- Saudi Arabia Retail Executive – Tariq Siddiqi, Emax
- Bahrain Retail Executive – Kannan, Lulu
- Kuwait Retail Executive – Babu Wasim, Lulu
- Oman Retail Executive – Pradeep Nair, Emax
- Qatar Retail Executive – Anand Govindan, Emax
- Egypt Retail Executive – Mohammed Tolba, CompuMe
- Jordan Retail Executive – Nouredine Nusair, Carrefour
- Lebanon Retail Executive – Joy Yazbeck, Khoury Home
- UAE Distributor Executive – Liju George, Max Electronics
- Saudi Arabia Distributor Executive – Rawad Ayash, Redington Gulf
- Rest of Gulf Distributor Executive – Mohamed Youssef, BDL
- UAE Vendor Executive – Vineet Wadhwa, Sandisk
- Saudi Arabia Vendor Executive – Mark Zhao, TP-LINK
- Rest of Gulf Vendor Executive – Husam Alif, Seagate
- Egypt & Levant Vendor Executive – Wael El Kady, Quantum
Hemraj added: “We congratulate all the winners of the individual executive categories at the ‘MERA: 2015 Awards’. Individual relationships between executives at vendors, distributors and retailers are the foundation of the Middle East retail channel. There is a real sense of channel community in the Middle East and these executives form an important part of this business network.”
