The company is now the undisputed market leader in building materials in the emirate, with 38 offices across the Gulf, India and China and 1,800 employees. Sajan told Arabian Business in December the company was on track to record about $760 million in revenue for 2015.

Sajan has also jumped to the other side of the fence, launching his own real estate company, Danube Properties. The developer’s first project, Dreamz by Danube, sold out in hours in 2014, and it now has five projects on the go, worth more than $400 m in total.

The most recent is an $82m affordable homes project in Al Furjan, while three ‘Glitz’ towers are being built in Studio City.

Sajan’s success began in the 1990s, when he was forced to flee Kuwait, where he had been working for his uncle, amid the Saddam Hussein invasion. The pair moved to Dubai and resumed their work, but Sajan later branched out to establish his own brokerage business buying and selling building materials.

Sajan told Arabian Business in December that he remained “bullish” about the Dubai property market despite concerns it had reached saturation point.