Billionaire Bharat Shah has built one of East Africa’s most diversified manufacturing businesses, with interests in confectionery, footwear, culinary products, beverages, and stationery.
The chairman of Kenafric Industries Ltd. has an estimated net worth of Ksh4.5 billion ($35 million), according to Africa’s billionaires, making him one of Kenya’s wealthiest industrialists.
He has risen to the position through decades of calculated risk-taking, diversification, and regional market expansion.
Born into a Gujarati-Kenyan family of traders, he rose from small-scale wholesaling in the 1980s to building his million-dollar empire.
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Early Hustles and First Failures of the Billionaire
Shah’s entrepreneurial journey began in the early 1980s, when Kenafric was primarily a distributor of wholesale goods, including sugar, maize flour, cooking fat, confectionery, sanitary paper, and pharmaceuticals.
However, in 1982, political instability in Kenya nearly wiped out his business.
By the mid-1980s, Kenafric ventured into furniture manufacturing, but Shah quickly realized the business had limited growth potential.
He then sold it, and around the same time, the Shah family expanded into polyvinyl chloride (PVC) footwear, producing slippers, gumboots, and school shoes under the “Dancing Queen” brand.
The shoes gained quick popularity, but success came with imitators. Competitors with bigger machinery undercut Kenafric’s prices, sparking a brutal price war.
Then came the Iran-Iraq war of 1989, which sent oil prices soaring. Since PVC is a petrochemical byproduct, Kenafric was left vulnerable as input costs skyrocketed. With rising prices, the Kenyan consumer stopped buying.
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The Rise of the Sweets Business
That same year, the family closed down their distributorship to focus on manufacturing confectionery.
With second-hand machinery, Kenafric began producing hard-boiled candy, bubble gum, and ball gum.
However, in the early 1990s, currency fluctuations and frozen donor aid made foreign exchange scarce, and Kenafric struggled to pay for gum base imports from Belgium.
Later, their attempt to enter the chocolate market misfired, as Kenya’s middle class was not yet ready to pay premium prices.
Over time, Kenafric diversified beyond confectionery into culinary products (under the flagship OYO brand), beverages, and, most recently, stationery.
Its acquisition of Economic Industries in 2024 positioned it as Kenya’s second-largest stationery manufacturer, producing exercise books and office supplies.
Kenafric now operates in more than 14 African countries, serving an estimated 40,000 retail outlets across the region. Its products, from lollipops in Uganda to spices in Malawi, are part of everyday African life.
Investments and Expansions
In 2017, private equity firms Amethis Finance and Metier invested in Kenafric’s food and confectionery unit.
In 2022, India’s Britannia Industries acquired a controlling stake in Kenafric Biscuits Limited, thereby gaining a foothold in Zambia and other Southern African markets.
Today, investor interest in Kenafric is so high that Amethis and Metier are reportedly looking to sell stakes worth over $100 million.
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