African leverage: Ashish Thakkar creates a multi-million dollar Mara Group in Uganda with just $5,000

Ashish Thakkar says the biggest mistake investors and companies make about Africa is to consider it a country rather than a continent.
“There are 46 countries in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Each has a different culture, history, languages and regulations. Generalizing the continent is like an Indian company taking a strategy or product that has worked in India to Sri Lanka or Bangladesh and hoping it will work,” he adds.

Thakkar knows what he is talking about since his Mara Group operates in 19 of the 46 sub-Saharan African nations, besides the United Arab Emirates and India.

With a presence in sectors ranging from information technology to financial services, and a headcount of 8,500, Mara has attracted attention as a rising group in a continent which has become an increasingly viable destination for multinationals.

No Ordinary Odds to Overcome

Thakkar’s paternal great grandfather moved from Gujarat to Uganda in 1890 to trade in maize, cotton and other commodities. But his family had to leave Uganda in 1972 when the country’s dictatorial leader Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of Asians. His parents moved to the UK, where they set up a business trading women’s fashion goods and where Thakkar was born.

The family was itching to get back to Africa so they moved to Rwanda in 1993, only to be forced to leave again two years later by the bloodcurdling genocide there which claimed over half a million lives.

“We lost everything, financially, twice — first in Uganda and then in Rwanda,” says Thakkar, on a call from Dubai where Mara is headquartered.

A year after the family relocated to Uganda in 1995, Thakkar dropped out of high school to sell computers and their parts like hard drives, floppy disks and CD ROMs which he would buy from Dubai where he would travel on weekends. He was all of 15 then and his dream came to fruition with a $5,000 loan.

Three years later, Mara ventured into the packaging business. “I had this crazy fascination with being an industrialist and wanted to get into manufacturing,” says Thakkar, now 32.

With plants in Uganda and Kenya, Riley Packaging makes corrugated cardboard boxes for fast moving consumer goods and agri products. Though Thakkar is loath to discuss Mara’s financials, when asked if group revenues could be $200 million, he says they are higher.

Why Africa is Attractive

After losing its way in the 1980s and 1990s, Africa has lately been on the growth path, with its share in world output growing from 1.85% in 2000 to 2.73% in 2010, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Africa’s GDP grew at 5% in 2012, higher than that of developing economies and more than twice the rate of growth of developed economies.