Heshan De Silva. If you Googled his name today, you’ll call up hundreds
of glowing articles and interviews romanticising Heshan’s struggle with
alcoholism, attempted suicide and rise from the ashes to the billionaire
club. PHOTO | FILE
One of my favourite Twitter bios goes “sometimes I want to give
it all up and become a handsome billionaire”. Few people have the luxury
of going through life with the ‘B’ word prefixed to their name, but
Heshan de Silva, 26, had that.
Or did he, really?
I
first met the Kenyan-born Sri Lankan in mid 2013. He reached out to me
on social media and I was intrigued. He was young, a billionaire, a
Christian dating a Muslim pilot, and a philanthropist.
He
had just sold “Africa’s largest tea processing factory” to Unilever for
upwards of Sh2.4 billion and was awash with cash. He had dropped out of
university and started his business with just Sh10,000, or so he said.
This chap would make for a good profile interview.
Hesh,
as everybody came to call him, is short but he didn’t seem to come with
a “short man syndrome” or the obligatory need to compensate in other
areas. Overall, he appeared and sounded quite well adjusted.
The smoking gun was when his public relations company dumped him on the last day of March in — what else? — a press release.
“Glass
House PR will no longer represent Heshan De Silva the brand due to...
ambiguity and inconsistency presented by the brand,” founder and
managing director Mary Njoki explained.
PHOENIX RISING
Now, let us back up two years. When I first met “the brand” there was almost no news article about him.
If
you Googled his name today, you’ll call up hundreds of glowing articles
and interviews romanticising Heshan’s struggle with alcoholism,
attempted suicide and rise from the ashes to the billionaire club.
As
I was still doing my due diligence on him, he went on the TV show
'Young Rich' to talk about his success, show off his girlfriend and
Range Rover Sport and introduce some businesses he had invested in.
I
had emailed him on August 2, 2013 asking for any verifiable evidence of
his wealth, details of the Unilever buyout or anything else to work
with.
“I have spoken at length with
Unilever and have been advised that NO ANNOUNCEMENT can be made about
the acquisition of our former tea/coffee/sugar/rice arms till Unilever
announce it through their press department at the end of their fourth
quarter of 2013,” one of his acolytes wrote back.
In
the intervening period, he invited me to dinner at his house in
Lavington, where a chef prepared a wonderful meal. He opened what he
assured me was a Sh555,000 ($6,000) bottle of wine though he didn’t
drink any, being a teetotaller. He started to do interviews regularly
and the story started taking on new dimensions.
The
de Silva Group became a venture capital firm and the original source of
his riches kept changing. That Unilever announcement never came.
Heshan
went off social media last week, vowing not to do any more interviews.
“I am far too sensitive for my own good and I’m just not built for it,”
he told me on email about his social media exit. “Without immersing
myself in all that where I then become a threat to myself, I’m better
off being out of it.”
He says it became “very difficult” to work with Glass House PR and together they decided to go separate ways.
But the publicists seem to have been worried about how fundamentally his story changed from one interview to the next.
He told Julie Gichuru one tale only to go on Jeff Koinange Live and spin a completely different one.
So, is he really a billionaire?
MORE TO LIFE
“I’ll
never be defined by a number. For all I care, people can write me off
as a thousandaire,” he wrote back in that email. “I’ll never live for
the approval of people or flash wealth in front of them for their
approval.”
In our conversations, he talked about his beach houses in Mombasa and Durban as well as his holiday home in Florida.
Despite
having spent the first five years of my career as a business reporter, I
couldn’t find any independent proof of his holdings or any public
transactions.
Not even that Unilever one. Now he says the sale never happened after the Egyptian revolution.
Nation
FM cancelled a show Heshan pitched before it even launched after he
failed to present documentation to support any of his claims.
“At
26 I can manage the rest of my life without having to work again. That
is a blessing,” he told me. “So if the main gripe people have with me is
if I’m a millionaire or billionaire I want to politely tell those
people that there’s more to life than that.”
And now I’m confused.
______________
FEEDBACK: DAVIDO IN KENYA
Nigerian artiste, Davido during a past performance. PHOTO | FILE
On how Nigerian musician Davido made it so hard for me to interview him on #TheTrend
AGE LIMIT:
Larry,
next time put an age limit for “celebrities” who come to your show.
Some juvenile behaviour is way below a show like #TheTrend. But you
acted maturely as if the fellow was making great sense. Thumbs up!
Meanwhile, ’hope to see better stuff like Obama on your show sometime in
July!
Esau Busiega.
LIKE A TOT: Larry,
I agree with you. Davido behaved like my three-year-old son, twisting
around in his chair and barely following the interview. My 20-year-old
niece, who presumably would be among Davido’s target group, was quite
unimpressed with his behaviour. Proud of you for writing this article.
Mugure Mugo
DISRESPECTFUL CHAP:
Larry, I’m a fan of #TheTrend and I must say I was not pleased with Davido’s mannerisms.
It’s
a pity that a young man like him, who is supposed to somehow be a role
model, was not only disrespectful but also haughty. Please do not bring
such people to the prestigious show.
Mama Ivy.
TOUGH JOB:
Larry,
I was particularly disappointed by the Davido interview but your
article has clearly depicted the kind of life you guys face as
journalists — often forced to deal with people of questionable
character.
Continue entertaining us on Fridays. I love your show.
Hillary Kangogo
SNOBBED NTV BEAUTIES:
Larry,
even for such a gracious host like you (Davido) couldn’t help but be a
jerk; swinging on the seat, playing with his hood, inappropriately
licking his lips.... The interview didn’t annoy me more than how mean he
was to Vicky and Yvonne.
Seriously, what man in his right mind would snob such beauties (I’m straight!).
You pulled it off despite the hostility.
Peaceloise Mbae
NOT THAT SUPER:
Larry, this man values his ego more than anything else.
Who
is he by the way in the eyes of Alaine, who is so down-to-earth, jovial
and who did the interview (on #TheTrend) wholeheartedly?
Just because some people know him and he got that superstar welcoming doesn’t mean he is that super.
His performance was worse than the interview; I even don’t remember any point were the micrphone was near his mouth.
I pity those who had paid Sh8,000 for VIP only to get to the venue and be told the show was over!
Shantel Kimuyu
NEVER AGAIN!
Larry, you are either a patient person or very cultured to have endured that guy (I forget his name).
It was painful to watch the guy being discourteous on national TV. Hope you never bring him again, ever!
Alice Ondeche
___________
Lightning strikes the same person twice?
On
Tuesday, Garissa county’s new county commander Njenga Miiri asked
residents to work closely with security agencies to improve security. On
Thursday, the Garissa University College was attacked at dawn, leaving
at least 150 lifeless. You know where Njenga Miiri was before Garissa?
Lamu. The same Lamu that was hit by terrorist attacks several times last
year, starting with Mpeketoni. That is just one of the odd things about
that incident. The other is about the elite GSU Recce squad that
couldn’t fly to the scene until late evening because their bosses were
using the choppers. When they finally landed, it took them less than 20
minutes to end the siege and walk out of there. The third thread is that
the attack occured on the first anniversary of the killing of
controversial Muslims preacher Abubakar Shariff aka Makaburi. The fourth
is… never mind. Connecting dots is a painfully depressing process.
___________
Obama has many relatives to mourn
I
hope President Barack Obama knows he needs to go and “stand at the
grave” of not just one, but dozens of relatives who have died since he
was last here.
He must mourn them in
proper Luo tradition by walking solemnly to each grave, mumbling some
inaudible sounds and closing his eyes for an acceptable period of time.
It
is also of great concern to many at home that a man of his stature
still does not have a simba at his ancestral home in K’Ogelo.
If
he were to die today, God forbid, the village would have to keep his
body in limbo until a grass-thatched hut is quickly assembled before he
could be buried.
These are by far
the most pressing matters that he must apply himself to while visiting
in July, and I wonder if he’ll even have time to attend that Global
Entrepreneurship Summit he’s coming for.
There
are frankly too many important issues to dispense with that have all
built up since his last tour here as a “junior senator from Illinois”.
Alfred
Mutua, who said that in 2006, is governor now, while Obama is the
leader of the free world, so I guess that whole junior senator thing
didn’t turn out too badly, no?
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