Mr. Tarannum Malik
Achiever's Success Story
Creating gold out of garbage
Ms Tarannum Malik, Chairperson and Managing Director of Al Aliyo Hydrofarms, a pioneer of hydroponic fodder farming on an industrial scale in the UAE. Additionally, she is an honours graduate in finance and accounting from the Alliance Manchester Business School, UK. She was born in India and raised in the UAE. Two Asian cultures established her ethnic roots of simplifying life by maximising resources through intelligent work.
The idea that every problem has at least one workable solution was ingrained in herfrom a young age.
However, she applied this knowledge only when she moved to the UK for her academic pursuits. As a young college student in the UK, time was always short, and the chores were forever piling up. Taking the garbage out was one task she disliked to the core. Blame it on the nippy outdoors, but that pile of thrash got her thinking there had to be a better way to reduce the global impact of waste generation. She did not want to be a keyboard warrior. She wanted results at the grassroots. Hence,she crafted her waste management methodologies and systems after thorough research and extensive industry insights. Cut to six years as Founder and Managing Director of Ocean Recycling LLC, and she created gold out of garbage.
And then the Covid-19 Pandemic changed the world as we knew it.
Among many restrictions, the monitored grocery shopping drove home the necessity of food security, particularly in harsh environments. Amidst this uncertainty, she realised humans would realign their needs based on the available resources, but what about the animals?
The UAE does not have arable land being a desert region. And so it imports over 90% of its agricultural produce to meet its demands. It puts us in a tough spot regarding food security and import dependency. That’s how Al Aliyo Hydrofarms, UAE’s premier industrial scale hydroponic fodder company, was conceived to relieve the dependence on imported animal feed by promoting sustainability and self-reliance.
Al Aliyo Hydrofarms is changing this equation by providing fresh, green fodder of barley, and wheat. Hydroponics is an ancient Greek concept where plant production occurs via water, in a monitored sterile environment sans human interference. Al Aliyo Hydrofarms has been at the forefront of this revolutionary agriculture method. They aim to bridge the UAE import gap and reduce the carbon and water footprint in the food sector. Their objective is to contribute to the UAE government’s food security efforts by providing top-notch green fodder to farmers at an affordable price.
They have reimagined innovation to combat climate change and are on the cusp of a livestock farming revolution, one feed at a time. Al Aliyo Hydrofarms has gone from an ‘idea’ to an ‘idea that works’. Even as they are poised to upscale, they are now thinking, ‘What next?’