The Standard Group Plc is a multi-media organization with investments in media
platforms spanning newspaper print
operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The
Standard Group is recognized as a
leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key influence in matters of national and
international interest.
Either you or your parents grew up having food prepared in a sufuria manufactured by Kaluworks Ltd founded in 1929, the year Dr Manu Chandaria, the most famous of the Chandarias, was born. Kaluworks is now part of the Comcraft Group, whose story began when Manu’s father, a semi-literate man from Gujarat in India, came to Kenya in 1915. He pitched tent along Biashara Street, where he started a shop that morphed into a wholesale and on to the Comcraft Group. The group is now a Sh200 billion industrial conglomerate, employing over 30,000 employees in more than 40 countries with interests in steel, aluminium, packaging, plastics and IT.
Dr Manu Chandaria, EBS: The alumnus of India’s Bombay University and the University of Oklahoma (BSc and MSc engineering) is one of Africa’s most-celebrated industrialists and philanthropists with $100 million (Sh10 billion) donations in health and education.
The recipient of the 2013 Forbes Africa Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2003 Order of the British Empire (OBE) for “his promotion of Kenyan economic and British interests in Kenya” was also awarded the 1997 honourary Doctor of Science by the University of Nairobi for “outstanding achievements in the industrial, manufacturing and business sectors and his contribution to the economy of Kenya.”
The chair of the Comcraft Group is also the Chancellor of United States International University Africa. He has been married to Aruna Chandaria for over 60 years.
Aruna Chandaria: Born and raised in Thika to a Kikuyu speaking father, the mother of Priti and Neal Chandaria, met her future hubby when she was five.
The trustee of Chandaria Foundation received, alongside her hubby, the Philanthropist Award during the 2012 Global Peace Awards in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of The World of Rice: One Hundred And One Delicious Recipes, a rice cookbook published in 1991.
Priti Chandaria: The alumnus of the University of London (Statistics, Public Administration and Sociology) is a Geneva-based fundraising expert who sits on the Children Action and Action Innocence committees, while her Columbia University educated daughter heads Absolut Art, a subsidiary of Absolut Vodka.
Neal Chandaria: The alumnus of Stanford University (Economics) is the Honourary Consul of Kenya in Singapore since 2011. The father of Nirali and Ayushi, the Kenyan swimmer who also attended Stanford, has been the point man for the Comcraft Group in Asia and Europe for over 20 years.
Mahesh Chandaria: The Group MD of Chandaria Group which owns Chandaria Industries (no relation to the Comcraft Group) calls Manu uncle. Chandaria Group was founded by his father, MM Chandaria, in 1964.
Mahesh joined the company in 1977 and now has a son, Darshan, as CEO while his daughter Neer Chandaria is the sales and marketing director of the group. The group has interests in hygiene products, tissue paper, manufacturing, packaging, real estate, automobile manufacturing, mining and solar energy.
