Ajay Bhojwani

Regional Managing Director at MCI Group

Judge

An Indian by origin, Ajay has lived in the Middle East region for over 30 years. With an MBA in marketing and a diploma in software engineering, he has had a varied working experience from working with market research companies involving consumer marketing, assisting brands in their outreach to working with software companies on their regional sales outreach. He has spent 20+ years in the meetings industry working for brands like Informa and MCI Group. In his current capacity as Regional Managing Director – Middle East and Africa for MCI Group, he looks after an operation spanning over 250+ events annually spread across 20+ countries through 5 offices and nearly 100 talents. And during the pandemic, he also led the major transformation for his team to deliver events digitally followed by hybrid events. Over the 16 years at MCI, he has not only opened new markets with physical offices and teams in Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia but also led several large association meetings strategy and supporting them with rotation around the world through government partnerships, tourism endorsements as well as strategic sales & marketing efforts to grow the events year on year. Ajay has also spent many years in working with associations from North America and Europe in developing Go-To Market strategies that have helped these organisations in expanding into markets like India, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and many more countries in the region

In addition to his full-time role with MCI, he holds several positions, which include being on the board as a council member for International Association of Professional Conference Organisers (IAPCO) as well as ambassador for The Iceberg – an industry communication publication led by the Joint Meetings Industry Council (JMIC). And, he is also the current president for the The Events Group (TEG), a not-for-profit registered organisation bringing event professionals from various facets of the industry in UAE together.