Its founder, Zainal Alireza, started off trading food, textiles, and other merchandise from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.
[3] Abdullah Alireza Zainal's son, Muhammad, became the second Minister of Commerce from 1953 to 1958, and later served as the Saudi ambassador to Egypt and France.
The House of Alireza has since expanded its businesses to include real estate, representative agency rights for the shippers that delivered their cargo and joint ventures with construction and engineering companies with whom they contributed to the Saudi Arabian infrastructural development.
In 1929, the business was renamed Haji Abdullah Alireza & Co., and received first commercial registration in Saudi Arabia (license number 1).
His surviving sons, Khaled, Mohammed, Abdullah, Hisham, Yousef and his daughter Mariam, as well as some of their children, Aamer, Hatim and Sulaiman serve as executives for a number of the House of Alireza's commercial interests, including SISCO, Tusdeer, and Xenel (a phonetic homage to Zainal Alireza).