Zozik Group: Making of the Private Sector Powerhouse

What is your take on the business environment in Kurdistan in the view of many challenges; it is a high-risk high-reward market. The challenges range from lack of infrastructure to corruption. The advantage is a potential and return on investment.

Naturally, when we started our business in Kurdistan, we faced many obstacles and hardships related to transportation, to the area, and to the political situation in the area.

We also faced hardships related to the internal situation in the region. However, after 2003, the hardships started to ease-out. Now of course, the biggest problem we faced was the huge spread of corruption in all of Iraq, not just in Kurdistan.

Yet, we managed to overcome these hardships to a certain extent. As for the other kinds of problems related to transport or to contacting the outside countries, we came to a point where the solutions became easy.

This is especially after constructing the airport and making aerial transportation available and easy between Kurdistan and Iraq, and from one side the neighbouring countries, Europe, the United States, and from the other side the far countries like China and other South East Asian countries.

What is Zozik Group’s strategy?

Zozik group, started with construction in cooperation with big international companies, especially in the area that was under the supervision of the U.N. They led all the projects there.

By working with international companies, we gained a good world-class experience, so during that phase, we managed to build a good and experienced team. We had had a good staff even before, but we lacked the experience and interaction with international companies. After working with these companies, we managed to form specialized teams for Zozik group who show the necessary experience and knowledge to run and implement big projects like water projects and major construction projects like roads and bridges.

After that, Zozik ventured into agricultural projects. For instance, we are now preparing a complete project related to dairy products that covers the fields of agriculture, livestock and dairy. We also work on projects related to electricity, as we handle the related projects implemented by the local regional government. As contractors, we receive orders to implement these projects. It is known that the experience we have in this field was acquired from working in power plants found in the area of Kurdistan, which was under the U. N. supervision.

Thus, I can say that Zozik group is considered a local company that can compete with foreign ones when it comes to implementation and handling electrical projects in the area.

Many businessmen criticized the government for not adequately protecting local producers, industries, do you feel more should be done to protect the interests of local companies?

For sure, for us, when it comes to the investments sector of the company, and when it comes to starting any new factory or production project in Kurdistan or in Iraq in general, we care that the government will protect the local product.

It must follow quality standards that will allow it to compete with the foreign product. When you protect the local product, this will be considered as an encouragement to the local investors so that they start the needed factories to produce the goods needed by the area.

This is instead of importing poor quality products from neighboring countries, or from China, or any other country, because such will trigger leakage of foreign currency out of our country and cast negative effects on our country’s national economy.

What do you feel are the most pressing problems at the moment internally in your company, and the external factors that you feel might threaten the success in the Kurdistan region?

We are still facing challenges internally and externally, but for sure, the challenges are fewer than they used to be in the past years. However, that does not mean we are not facing any challenges now; we are trying to overcome them in the near future.

We are also facing external challenges in our areas, and as long as Iraq remains under Chapter 7, then there will be many limitations against us, limiting and affecting any business we might start.

What is your personal vision for your company, Zozik Group, and what is your vision for Kurdistan?

Our vision regarding Zozik group has always been towards developing our group, expanding outside Iraq towards the European countries and the rest of the world.
As for Kurdistan, we are looking towards a brighter future, where Kurdistan will become the oasis of prosperity within the region.

Lastly, can you give us a little bit of history about your company? How you started off and a bit of what you had to go through, how difficult it was for a local business like Zozik group?

Zozik group started in 1992 just like any other small family business owned by me and 4 other brothers. Then we used our resources and efforts to make it grow. Today, we find ourselves with numerous employeesand many projects on hand. So, the fact is that we try to put our “mark” on the commercial, industrial and construction sectors in Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq.

Is there any message you would like to address to our audience?

My message to all the businesspersons and companies working in Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq is to try to rebuild our country, to try to attract more investors, to try to develop new opportunities and possibilities and to take the opportunities found here in order to serve the citizens and Kurdistan as a whole.