Former Oman resident’s team bags prestigious US award
MUSCAT: A corporate team headed by an Indian expat, who grew up in Oman, has been conferred a prestigious $100,000 prize.
Indian School Ghubra (ISG) alumnus and Kerala native Riaz Hakkim heads the Innovative Marketing Analytics division of IBM at New York headquarters and is at the centre of this achievement.
Association of National Advertisers (ANA), United States, recently announced the Genius Awards for 2017, and IBM New York was selected for its achieve- ments in “Innovative Marketing Analytics.”
Hakkim’s team helps companies sell their goods and services more efficiently by making use of data. His team won the award for its outstanding achievement in demonstrating marketing’s impact on business outcomes through analytics.
IBM created an artificial intelligence-based management system that integrates its various data systems and analytics solutions and models into one central platform to help over 5,000 marketers make better data-driven decisions.
Winners of the ANA prize are selected by a panel of industry experts from some of the most prominent global brands, including New Corp, Coca Cola, Mondelez International, and Prudential Advertising, to name a few.
Every year, the award recognizes the most innovative and ambitious efforts in advanced marketing analytics.
Riaz’s father VMA Hakkim, executive director of KIMS Oman Hospital, said he was very happy about his son’s achievements, adding that it was a proud moment for the Indian community in Oman.
“More than being proud, I’m grateful to the teachers and the people who moulded him. It is because of them that he has been able to succeed in a highly competitive environment,” he noted.
Academic prowess
Riaz joined the famed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur for an engineering degree after graduating from ISG. He was the only student from Oman to get into an IIT in that year.
He went on to pursue his MBA from a top business school in the United States. He was selected by IBM in a campus interview and trained for their Business Strategy Division.