Abdur Rouf Chowdhury: Entrepreneur par excellence

He was a hard taskmaster with a kind streak that belied his tough exterior and showed his true traits of affection and care. He had no time for inefficiency, but all the time for a creative, hardworking colleague.

In a sense, he was a magician. Whatever he touched, he usually made it into a success. He was not afraid to venture into something he did not know much about. He was quick to learn, fast to get involved, bold to initiate, and competent enough to emerge as successful. He had set up more than 50 companies in this process.

He was excited about The Daily Star from the moment it was conceived – as much for his love of doing new things as for those who were involved, namely AS Mahmud, Latifur Rahman, Azimur Rahman. Every one of these people he knew and respected. From the very first meeting to the very last, before Covid struck, he attended every board meeting when he was in the country.

I never knew why, but he used to call me Mehfuz (instead of Mahfuz) and would often repeat, "I am very proud of the work you are doing." If the date of a board meeting clashed with any of his other engagements, he would always opt for the Star meeting because, as he would say, "I enjoy them as I am realising the importance of the role of a quality and professionally-run newspaper."

His commitment to The Daily Star was not limited to words. Early on, when our initial budget went haywire and we ran out of cash, he offered generous advertisement support that saw us through those trying days.

Unaccustomed to the ways of the media, he used to be at times uncomfortable with the position the paper took or what I stated in my own pieces. He would ask me the reasons behind my decisions. But he never questioned them, nor did he say anything to affect my thinking. On occasions, I could see that he was facing pressure from the powers that be, but never would he allow that to affect the way I was running the paper. I was extremely fortunate to have Rouf bhai as a director who always supported the cause of the free and independent press.

I suppose he enjoyed his association with The Daily Star well enough that he expanded his involvement in the media by being a founding director for Ekushey Television (ETV), Bangladesh's first private television channel that undoubtedly marked the opening of the nearly 40 private TV channels that exist today. Ekushey TV had a seminal impact on the expansion of the electronic media scene that we are so used to now.

Rouf bhai also bought a Bangla newspaper, but discontinued it after trying to run it for a while.

For me, my relationship with Rouf bhai was something special. He was a younger colleague of my elder brother, Mahbub Anam, who had worked with him from 1967 onwards at Pakistan Nation Oil (PNO), which later became Jamuna Oil Company post-Liberation. From my Notre Dame College days, throughout my Dhaka University period, the Liberation War period, my early days as a journalist, until the launching of The Daily Star, I enjoyed his affection and loving attention. He was not fully approving of my joining leftist politics, but encouraged my activism. Thus, when the idea of this newspaper came up and I was willing to leave my UN job abroad to be its co-founder, he showed no hesitation in becoming a part of it, too.

My formal relationship with him was through the Mediaworld Limited board. He was extremely professional and even at times, I thought, too demanding. As the CEO, I constantly felt pressured to perform better, which later proved to be a blessing as it did help to improve my performance. He was very particular about dividends, which he would insist was the moral obligation of every management to deliver to an investor.

Rouf bhai was one of the most creative entrepreneurs in the country, having founded many companies in very diverse fields. A cursory glance at his various companies – from Rangs Motor, Bank Asia, Reliance Insurance, Sea Resources, The Daily Star, to ETV (later divested) – shows his extraordinary acumen for entrepreneurship. He also ventured into sectors like IT, pharmaceuticals, real estate, food processing, telecom, and electronics.

The way he built his companies and the efficiency with which he diversified his businesses spoke to his constant effort to explore new areas of investment. He had a superb sense of the market and about what new areas provided new opportunities for growth.

Rouf bhai's life's motto was to create employment. That was his way of showing love for his people and his country – and he loved them both most dearly. He told me on several occasions that what pleased him most was to see young men and women working jobs. He said, "When you can give a job to a person, you not only change his or her life but the lives of the generations that follow. I get the greatest pleasure when I see the smile on the face of someone to whom I could provide a job." And he was the cause of such smiles in thousands of cases.

May his soul rest in Eternal Peace.

Mahfuz Anam is editor and publisher of The Daily Star.