Raffia Rahaman comes from a long line of business pioneers.
So it is not surprising that she also got into business for herself.
Rahaman is the managing director of the Rahamut Group.
The Rahamut Group was established over a century ago in 1888 as a house to house cloth trade.
In 1936 the business was expanded to include hardware, cycle, auto retailing and gasoline retailing.
“Moving into business as a young child you’re part of a family of entrepreneurs with great grandparents, grandparents, then your own parents. Therefore, the course for me was very natural,” Rahaman said.
Rahaman said while not knowing exactly what she wanted to pursue as an undergraduate degree, she decided to follow what she loved about school, which was chemistry.
So she did a degree at the University of London at King’s College in chemistry and management studies and graduated with first class honours.
From there, she went to business school at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Rahaman said she spent a lot of time working abroad, exploring the world and understanding business from an outsider’s perspective having worked many years for McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm.
She eventually left there as an associate principal and returned to T&T.
However, because of issues around personal safety concerns Rahaman said, she decided to head back to the US where she went into finance working for a hedge fund.
“And eventually I was comfortable and I wanted to come back to Trinidad to join my family’s business, not only for joining the business, but I come from a very close-knit family, and I wanted to come back to be here and present as my parents grew older,” she said.
Rahaman returned in 2008 and has been the managing director in the family business since then.
Last year, she opened the Check Point Service Centre which falls under the Rahamut umbrella.
“This is the first major step out that I have taken essentially on my own,” Rahaman said.
“I may have done lots of other things in terms of equity investments alongside my family, but this is the first thing I can say I have put 100 per cent of my own stamp on and it is very much about how I would like to be serviced and how I would like to be treated,” she said.
Check Point Service Centre is a state-of-the-art automotive service centre providing a range of services from oil changes, to undercarriage, suspension repairs, tyre repairs, alignment and balancing and air conditioning repairs.
The service area is accompanied by a spacious customer waiting area providing free Wi-Fi internet access for customers, and light refreshments for purchase.
While the centre will be open to everyone, the emphasis is placed on women customers so that they have a safe space for good business.
The first centre was formally opened on November 29 and is situated within the semi-commercial community of Duncan Village, San Fernando.
Rahaman told the Business Guardian that Check Point was conceptualised and built from a marketing and concept development perspective by women.
“It is designed with women in mind but offers many great things for the men in our lives as well,” she said
“But yes, it has been built by women for women in addition to others,” Rahaman said.
Rahaman said while she personally had not experienced being taken advantage of by services providers she could only speak from what research would have said and commentary from other women.
“It is difficult to generalise and it is not correct to generalise but what Check Point chooses to do is to ensure that its customer is given very transparent and honest advice,” she said.
“It is all about making sure the customer gets what they need to get. Honesty and integrity are definitely at the core of what we do,” Rahaman said.
“Personally I think women for most of our lives have delegated the maintenance of vehicles to same male figures in our lives, whether it is a loved one, a family member, or the mechanic down the road and all of those people may make good decisions but we are just trying to put women back into the driver’s seat if they wish to be engaged in making that decision,” she said.
Rahaman said the plan was to eventually expand Check Point to other parts of the country.
“We really want to make a difference. We want to build our clientele and try to change the narrative,” she said.
Rahaman said to her the keys to success are having a strong team and believing in yourself.
“My advice for anyone would be first to surround yourself with a core team of people that you can trust, who can give you good, hard, honest advice. That can be family members that can be your friends, that can be people you work with,” she said.
“The second thing would be in many ways we are not reinventing the world so to find people whether you know them or not but be brave to go out there and meet people who have done what you want to do or have skills or experience that can be helpful to you.
“And the third thing is in order to have progress, you have to take risks and if you want to do something you have to believe in yourself and understand that through any initiative or undertaking, the term failure should be removed because everything is a learning experience. But taking a risk is to try to find a way to mitigate the risk as best as you can and along the way, if it not working out, it is about what have I learnt and next time what can I do differently,” she said.