Sometimes hardships in life become the impetus for a person to work harder and succeed. For Ashish Thakkar, who, together with his family, faced many horrors in the past, it came true. Who would have thought that he will move on from being a 12-year old child refugee to conglomerate founder today?
The Thakkars
Ashish Thakkar was born in England and he spent his childhood there before his parents decided to return to their native Rwanda. They were not from England actually. His parents were refugees who settled in England after they were expelled from Uganda. They were part of the 50,000 people of South Asian descent that were forced to leave the country in 1972 by Idi Amin.
They returned to Rwanda in 1992, bringing with them the livelihood his parents had built up from 1972 to 1993. The genocide in Rwanda happened in 1994. Again they were forced to flee and once again they found themselves back in Uganda. Unfortunately this time, they have lost everything. It is still a good thing that they were able to escape unscathed to the neighboring country.
The family’s indomitable spirit helped them to regain their footing in Kampala, although life was still difficult. Ashish wanted to stop going to school. Instead he wanted to focus on helping his family regain their lost fortunes. And it seems he had a good head for business.
Buy-and-sell
He was 15 years old when he made his first transaction, selling his new computer to a friend, which netted him $100 in profit. He thought that type of business would be easy to do, and so he bought another computer to sell. His parents recognized his business acumen and allowed him to get a $6,000 loan.
With the money he imported floppy disks and other computer peripherals and accessories from Dubai. Those computer accessories were in high demand at that time and were in fact, difficult to find in Uganda. His process of importing goods was informal. Every weekend he went to Dubai to buy as much goods as he could.
Realizing that selling IT products was the way to go, he made an important decision. Instead of being an importer selling the wares in Uganda, he established an office in Dubai and sold the goods to buyers in Uganda and other companies all over Africa.
Mara Group
The business he started in Dubai was the beginning of the Mara Group for which Ashish Thakkar is the Founder and Managing Director.
His business experienced phenomenal growth, and now has more than 8,000 employees working in the highly diversified organization that operates in 21 countries, majority of which are in Africa.
The Mara Group is involved in several businesses including ownership of vast agricultural lands, a paper mill, shopping malls, conference centers, hotels, manufacturing of packaging materials and telecoms infrastructures. The company has just ventured into financial services, with the establishment of Atlas Mara. The Mara Foundation mentors and assists would-be entrepreneurs.
Ashish Thakkar is a British national with Indian roots. He resides is Dubai and considers himself an African native. He wants to do more for Africa, believing that it is now time for the African lion to shine. A line drawing of a lion’s head is part of the logo of the Mara Group.
Photo credit: Taken by George Chernilevsky under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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