Ashish J. Thakkar is only 30, but in less than two decades, the Ugandan-born maverick entrepreneur has accomplished what only few attain in their lifetime. He is the Founder and Managing Director of the Mara Group, a diversified conglomerate with approximately $100 million in revenues, according to Thakkar. Born in the United Kingdom, Ashish and his family moved back to Africa after surviving the historic Rwandan genocide and generational exile of African families. Ashish considers himself a native son of Africa with strong Indian roots, of British nationality and a resident of the UAE.
After having built up a business in East Africa, his parents were thrown out by the Idi Amin Administration and they resettled in Great Britain, in the Midlands city of Leicester. Here, his parents started over by selling ladies’ fashions, driving vans to markets all around England, often getting up at 3:00am. Ashish and his sisters shared the workload and the rewards. “If I sold a certain amount, I would get a bike or something,” he says. In 1993, when he was 12 years old, the family sold their business in the UK and moved to Rwanda. The Rwandan genocide began just months later, subjecting the family to weeks of terror as they hid in a hotel and watched bodies pile up around them. Finally, they managed to escape in a chartered plane. “We were literally back on the street. That’s what drove me and made me want to start a business,” says Ashish.
At the age of 15, after the family had moved and restarted its life yet again, this time back in Uganda, Ashish sold his personal computer to a family friend. The $100 profit he made convinced him that there could be plenty of money in Information Technology. More sales to friends, family, even his own school soon followed, as did a kind of ‘pop-up’ shop over the summer holidays.. In 1996 at the age of 15, Ashish borrowed $5,000 to start his first IT Company whereby he bought and sold computers. Within a year, he transitioned from a high school student to a full-time entrepreneur. Since starting out in 1996, Ashish J. Thakkar has built the Mara Group, a conglomerate of IT, real estate and manufacturing companies with operations in 19 African countries and 21 countries worldwide, employing over 8,000 people through its investments and operations.
Ashish has successfully driven the growth of Mara by identifying opportunities to build businesses in under-served markets and by selectively partnering with international firms focused on expanding in Africa. Among Mara’s credits include building the leading corrugated cardboard packaging company in Uganda (Riley Packaging), founding a Pan-African IT services company (Mara Ison) and establishing an African business process outsourcing company operating in ten African countries (Ison BPO). Mara is still growing and still setting up in new countries, with operations in Cameroon, Angola and Botswana likely to commence by the end of the first quarter of 2013. Recent ventures include a 26,000-acre farming project in East Africa, a major hotel, convention centre, shopping mall and office park in Uganda, and a similar development in Tanzania. Entry into each country will present its own challenges. “Whenever we go into a new country, we map out each business, looking for areas where we’re not present, because we understand our businesses and we understand each region. Then we take advantage of trends,” Ashish says. “For example, in agriculture, we look for places where there is a shortage of food, where we could own land and where there is political stability.”
Ashish and his Mara businesses and foundations are clearly making a fundamental difference to the way business is conducted across the African continent. Certainly there must be a whole generation of Africans who are now aware of Mara and of Ashish Thakkar and who have begun asking themselves how they could do something similar. Mara Group has received global recognition for its achievements and contributions not only in Africa but also worldwide. In 2010, Mara Group was identified by the World Economic Forum as a dynamic high-growth company with the potential to be a driving force for economic and social change. Ashish J. Thakkar was appointed as a World Economic Forum Global Young Leader.
More often these days he’s referred to as a ‘billionaire philanthropist’, since he created a series of not-for-profit foundations that mentor and support thousands of African start-up companies and entrepreneurs, helping to put them on the path towards the riches he has made. Another key achievement has been establishing Mara Foundation – a social enterprise focused on encouraging and supporting emerging African entrepreneurs. The Foundation currently operates in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria and strives to create sustainable economic and business development opportunities for young business owners through services such as Mara Launchpad incubation centres and the Mara Ad-Venture Fund, a micro venture capital vehicle.
Ashish devotes much of his energy to commercial and philanthropic initiatives in Africa. African governments have taken note of Ashish’s incredible success and apparent leadership skills, and he now sits on a number of governmental advisory panels. He’s also an active member of the Commonwealth Business Council and the Young Global Leaders group of the World Economic Forum, which meets every year at Davos in Switzerland and has become a driving force for change. Ashish has been profiled by several publications and media outlets including Forbes, The Economist, CNN, Africa Business Journal, Ventures Africa, San Jose Mercury, Reuters and the BBC.
Though he left school at age 15, Ashish is a keen learner, open to the wisdom of others. He shares this habit with his hero Richard Branson, whose Virgin conglomerate is united by its founder’s energy and enthusiasm. The two have become friends and Ashish will fly on the inaugural Virgin Galactic mission, becoming the first East African in space (for a fee of $200,000). “He’s such an amazing guy, he’s a great role model,” says Ashish. “He has the ethos of being true to yourself and to the world.”
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