Can one be both an architect of Malagasy capitalism and a guardian of its cultural soul? Hassanein Hiridjee seems to have decided the answer is yes. Before an enthusiastic audience at EHCP Business School, he develops his approach to business with passion. He explains that there is only one guiding principle: "Respect your market." To launch the latest financial product from the Axian group, he went even further: "Respect tradition and culture." By taking into account the informal networks that already drive the real economy, he extends this respect to the men and women who depend on it. Thus was born Tisndai — in Malagasy, ty sy nday — literally "you give and you receive." It is a digital platform enabling money exchange, in the manner of the takalo of our ancestors, revisited for the digital age. This approach might surprise if one didn't already know the businessman's close ties to the cultural world. The unexpected doesn't lie in his economic success — it follows the almost classical logic of a brilliant heir who modernizes and internationalizes the business. What sets Hassanein Hiridjee apart — a member of the Khoja Indian community, established in Madagascar since the late 19th century, prosperous, discreet, long perceived as economically integrated but culturally withdrawn from the Malagasy national narrative — is having chosen to defend, through his H Foundation, a culture and heritage that is not, strictly speaking, his by origin, but which he fully claims as his own. Listening to Hassanein Hiridjee speak of business as others might speak of books, paintings, or sculptures, everything seems natural: one must build society, one must work with society.
Rondro Ramamonjisoa