By SHAMLAL PURL
A rich crop of Kenyan tycoons and millionaires from Uganda and Tanzania have been honoured with a listing in the prestigious annual Rich List produced by the British national newspaper the Sunday Times.
The silver jubilee edition of the annual list released with the 21 April issue of Sunday Times is painstakingly compiled by Philip Beresford. It charts the fortunes of 1,000 tycoons featuring the rise and fall of their wealth in the past 12 months.
Hospitality giant Dr Jasminder Singh, 62, leads the list at 106th position. His Edwardian Hotels group has a fortune of about Sh107.8b (£836 million), up by about Sh52.7b (£409 million) from last year. His group owns a chain of 14 luxury hotels in Britain under the brand name of Radisson Edwardian.
Accountant in UK
Jasminder was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1951 but his family moved to Kenya. He arrived in Britain from Nairobi in 1970 to be an accountant and later entered the hotel business with a relative. Edwardian Group was established after he bought the interests of his relative.
After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, he founded the Edwardian Group in 1977 and led it to join with Radisson in 1993 to become the Radisson Edwardian Hotels group.
He was honoured with a Doctorate by the University of Stirling. The Queen awarded an OBE to him in 2007 for services to the British hotel industry.
Jasminder hit the headlines last year after a family feud, involving his ageing parents, former Kenya residents Bal Mohinder Singh, 85, and his wife, Satwant Kaur, which ended up in the court here.
Navin Engineer arrived in Britain from Kenya in 1969 with £75 (Sh 9,675) in his pocket and a burning desire to work for himself.
His father worked in the Kenyan civil service for many years. To support himself while studying Pharmacy, Navin worked at a Wimpy burger restaurant in Oxford Street of London. He owned 14 pharmacies but wanted to climb the ladder even higher. He is worth £620million and ranks 145th in the list. Both Jasminder and Navin Engineer have beaten Lord Sainsbury, owner of the national supermarket chain, Sainsbury who is in the 150th position. Kenyan entrepreneur Osman Murgian makes a new entry in the Rich List at 291th position.
The 79-year-old founding director of Winton Capital Management is worth about Sh37b (£286 million). Kenyan-born brothers Bhiku and Vijay Patel have a true rags-to-riches tale.
They were brought up in poverty in Eldoret. Vijay came to Britain at the age of 16 with just Sh645 (£5) in his pocket and a secondary school education. He took some menial jobs to pay through his high school and College of Pharmacy education in Leicester.
The brothers built a multi-million pound business empire, supplying medicines to hospitals and pharmacies through their pharmaceutical company Waymade Healthcare. Last year the company had a fortune of about Sh58b (£450 million). The Patels have not forgotten their Kenyan roots.
They have funded several schools in the country especially in their former hometown of Eldoret.
Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia fled Uganda with his family during the 1972 exodus at the age of 13. He grew up in London and worked on stalls in Liverpool Street and Petticoat Lane markets selling small items.
He developed a keen interest in the automobile industry and at the age of 18 was offered a chance to buy Highway Autos, a car parts shop in north London that had gone into bankruptcy.
He borrowed £5,000, which could now be about Sh645,000 from his family and a bank loan to start Euro Car Parts in London in 1978.
After that he did not look back. His company, headquartered in Wembley, north-west London, became the largest distributor of aftermarket car and van parts in the UK. It established 132 branches nationwide serving 98 per cent of the UK’s population. It has an annual turnover of Sh59.6b (£400 million). The Uganda-born Sikh is worth £300 million and ranks 277th in the Rich List.
Idi Amin’s regime
Shiraz Dharmshi Tejani ran a successful coffee business in Uganda before being forced to flee Idi Amin’s regime. In 2012, Tejani and his family were worth Sh19.4b (£150 million) in the 2012 Rich List.
Their fortune was generated through the Leicester-based LPC Group, the UK’s largest independent manufacturer of tissue-based products. The company was set up in 1980 originally to supply local shops with paper products and tissues.
The Tejani family is ranked 572 in the Rich List. Firoz Kassam earned his about Sh31b (£214 million) fortune from his hotels and property businesses.
The Tanzanian-born 58-year old businessman was valued at about Sh28b (£217 million) last year lost Sh387m (£3 million) from his assets.
He made his fortune buying run-down hostels and hotels and was paid by the Government to house homeless and asylum seekers. Kassam who is the former owner of Oxford United FC spent Sh3.2b (£25 million) in 2012 to buy the 1.6-acre Hornbeam estate in Hampstead.
