By Sananda Sahoo, special to EO and journalist for The National

With a background in computer science, Hassan Abbas Al Hazeem was apprehensive about taking over a family mattress business his father had built up over a quarter of a century. That was in 1999.

Fourteen years later and Intercoil has grown from one showroom with a single manufacturing unit to a company employing 350 people with two manufacturing units and 24 showrooms in the UAE, Arabian Gulf, Lebanon and Jordan.