The Chandarias are business moguls

Manu Chandaria. Photo: Courtesy

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.