Manu's father quit employment to sow seeds of a multi-billion business empire

Businessman Dr Manu Chandaria gave a talk to students and innovators at USIU University in Nairobi on June 22, 2023. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

When Manu’s father Premchand Chandaria found out that he could not save the 4,000 rupees that he needed from his employment, he quit, borrowed cash and bravely founded his own shop, Premchand Popat & Co.

He entered into a partnership with his brothers-in-law, Somchand Meghji and Bagwanji Meghji Khimasia in 1917.

To his surprise and delight, he saved more than the 4,000 rupees sooner than he had expected. He did not close the shop and head back to India.

He dissolved Premchand Popat & Co and with his younger brothers Maganlal and Chaganlal, set up a provision store at Ngara in Nairobi trading as Premchand Brothers Ltd. The three families operating as a unit, owned and ran Premchand Brothers hence the term family business.

It is noteworthy that many of the Indian-owned companies operating in Kenya at that time belonged to close relatives.

 The Premchand Brothers store catered mainly for an Asian (as Indians came to be known in Kenya) clientèle and retailed assorted imported goods and food provisions.

Establishing themselves as merchants, the Chandarias set up a second store in Mombasa designed to serve both African and European customers.

Premchand Chandaria had demonstrated to himself, family and fellow Indian immigrants that he could take risks, work hard and save and expand businesses.

 This stood him in good stead for his next move in which he and his brothers teamed up with Premchand Vrajpal Shah, also a Jain, an Oshwal and a Gujarati.

Premchand Shah arrived in Kenya in 1912 to join his two elder brothers, Kachra Vrajpal and Devraj Vrajpal, who had migrated in 1908.

 Premchand Shah started in Nairobi as an employee before moving to Maragwa and later Thika, where the family established itself as a leading trader in agricultural produce in central Kenya and beyond.

In 1919, when Premchand Chandaria was setting up his shop in Mombasa, Premchand Shah was moving into industry by establishing a flour mill alongside his flourishing trading business.

 In 1929, he entered into a partnership with Meghji Petraj Shah, also known as MP Shah, and his brothers and founded Premchand Raichand & Co Ltd, which in the same year, bought the Kenya Aluminium & Industrial Works Limited (KAIW), a maker of pots and pans in Mombasa.

However, the factory fell on hard times during the Great Depression and was repossessed by a bank. Premchand Raichand & Co Ltd, operating as Kenya Cotton and Produce Company Limited, built ginneries in Sagana and Meru,

The Kenya Tanning Extract Company Ltd factory in Thika in 1933 and the Limuru Tanning & Extract Company in Limuru. Premchand Raichand & Co was also a retailer of the goods produced by KAIW.

 At this time, Premchand Shah had emerged as the top businessman and leader in the Oshwal community in Kenya.

He was a believer in and defender of social justice.

He was arrested, tried and jailed for leading traders in a protest against the government’s policy on the distribution and sale of produce in Fort Hall in 1918.

Premchand Shah was also a leader of the Oshwal community.

In 1933, Premchand Shah proposed a marriage between his eldest daughter Pushpaben and Premchand Chandaria’s eldest son Devchand. They got married in 1936, further strengthening the ties between the two prominent Oshwal families.

 In 1939, Premchand Brothers Ltd and Premchand Raichand & Co Ltd merged their businesses, with the latter clearly the bigger partner given that it had branches around Kenya and combined retailing and wholesaling.

Premchand Raichand/Premchand Brothers had become the largest group of companies owned by businessmen from the Oshwal community.

 Each group owned stock in the other’s companies and besides produce, Premchand Raichand & Co Ltd were also commission agents, exporters, importers (of petroleum products) and grocers with branches in Mombasa, Nairobi, Thika, Kisumu, Ruiru, Maragwa, Fort Hall (Murang’a), Sagana, Karatina, Meru and Nanyuki.

 The partnership involved at least 10 people in which the families of Premchand Chandaria, Premchand Shah, and MP Shah were the key players.

Not long afterwards this expanded group bought Muhoroni Sugar Works Ltd in what is now Kisumu County, broadening its product portfolio as well as geographical spread.

 Hitherto, the Chandaria and Shah families had competed until a decision was reached to merge their businesses, forming a strong group that became the top business in the (Oshwal) community.

 Henceforth, for ill or good, the business and social lives of the Premchand Chandaria and Premchand Shah families would become inextricably intertwined in Kenya and on the Indian subcontinent.

 Indeed, following the outbreak of World War II senior members of the two families, which had stood together during the trying times of the Great Depression from 1929, and the younger ones, were sent back to India in 1941. 

In India, Premchand Chandaria and Premchand Shah ventured into new businesses in what appeared to be a plan to further spread their geographical reach as well as establish a maritime link between the East African and Western India coasts.

They set up a textile mill, an oil milling and refining plant, a salt extracting venture, and a dhow passenger service between the ports of Bedi  Bundar and Mombasa.

 In 1957 and 1958 the family launched two companies, namely Associated Nail Manufacturers and Steel Holdings. Keen to diversify, in 1959, they acquired the East African Match Company Limited, a European-owned firm that was in liquidation and turned it into a profitable outfit and from a public entity into a private one.

 Whenever they lost money in the increasingly volatile trade, they turned to their Kenyan operation to bail them out.

Their partner, MP. Shah, who had given speculation a wide berth, would only advance them money in exchange for their shares in Premchand Raichand & Co Limited.

MP Shah who had been a minority shareholder ended up as the holder of the majority shares in the company as a result of which we (the Shahs and Chandarias) lost most of our wealth.”

A blame game followed and the company split, and as Manu puts it, the Chandarias were left with the provision store, their original business, Premchand Brothers.