The chairman of Devki Group, Narendra Raval, after winning the EY
Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in Nairobi on December 5, 2018. FILE
PHOTO | NMG
Last week’s announcement by billionaire businessman Narendra
Raval, who founded the Devki Group of Companies, that he would acquire
struggling cement processor ARM for Sh5 billion has turned a new
spotlight on the tycoon, who has built a massive business empire amid
intricate political connections.
The deal announced
Wednesday will see National Cement Company Limited, a wholly-owned
subsidiary of the Devki Group, acquire all cement and non-cement assets
and businesses of ARM Cement PLC in Kenya, cementing the businessman’s
vast interests in the construction sector.
Marriage of
money, power and politics is not strange to Kenyan business oligarchs
and Mr Raval’s rise to fame and fortune is punctuated with the hallmark
of the explosive mix.
Some of the most successful
tycoons in Kenya have behaved as Charles Darwin would advise — adapting
to their new environment by lying low and acting loyal. This perfectly
fits Mr Raval, according to analysts and observers. Observers said the
businessman has best mastered the art of cunning blandness while
courting the political class.
Mr Raval admitted on
Friday in an interview with the Sunday Nation that he has deep-rooted
friendships with the country’s top political circles.
But
the soft-spoken, astute tycoon whose rise to fame and riches is the
perfect tale of grass to grace, vehemently denied that these connections
have catapulted his business empire.
“No doubt in politics we know all as good friends and
well-wishers,” Mr Raval told the Sunday Nation. “But we never did or do
any business with government as a policy of our company. And you can't
be successful businessman if you are deepening your business on
political confection.”
However, observers think otherwise.
“He
has always played a long term game and built many interlocking
relationships across the political spectrum,” said Deepak Dave, a
Nairobi-based analyst of Mr Raval’s rise.
“Equally, by
running clean and well-meaning businesses, he has garnered the support
of powerful development finance organisations who monitor his practices,
so it shows they must be happy with his governance and tax compliance,”
added Mr Dave.
Kenyans first got a public glimpse of
Mr Raval’s dalliance with the political elite through former
vice-president Kalonzo Musyoka’s memoirs titled Against All Odds,
co-authored by former Nation journalist Caleb Atemi.
In
the book, Mr Musyoka reveals how a surprise meeting over dinner at the
home of Mr Raval days to the 2007 General Election set the stage for Mr
Kalonzo’s appointment as vice-president.
Mr Musyoka,
who had fallen out with Orange Democratic Movement’s Raila Odinga to run
for the presidency on his own, writes that he had been under intense
pressure from Mr Kibaki’s emissaries to drop out of the race and support
him.
“Efforts by Kibaki and his allies to get me to
his side had been going on for many months, even before the elections
and I had rejected all of them,” Mr Musyoka writes in his memoir.
Coalition government
Mr
Musyoka names the Kibaki allies who were putting pressure on him as
former Equity Bank chairman Peter Munga, the bank’s chief executive
James Mwangi, Nairobi tycoon Chris Kirubi and Mr Stanley Murage, a
former Kibaki adviser and strategist.
Their message was
simple; Drop out of the presidential race and support Kibaki in return
for forming a coalition government if he wins, he writes.
Mr Musyoka says he rejected all the approaches until the surprise meeting at Mr Raval’s home.
“One
evening,” Mr Musyoka writes, “Just days to the election date, I was
invited to dinner by Mr Narendra Raval Guru, the chairman of Devki Group
of Companies.
The group is one of Kenya’s biggest
players in the construction industry. In its stable are Devki Steel
Mills, National Cement and Maisha Mabati Mills. Mr Guru then lived in a
palatial home in the neighbourhood of Nairobi’s Runda estate.
“I
arrived at his house and, as we made small talk ahead of the meal, I
was surprised to see Kibaki walk into the room in the company of Stanley
Murage, his adviser and strategist.”
Mr Kibaki was
eventually declared winner in the tightly contested election and his
closest challenger Mr Odinga, disputed the victory.
Mr
Raval’s Devki Group of Companies has a regional presence with companies
manufacturing cement, steel products, and roofing sheets. Mr Raval was
in 2015 featured in Forbes Magazine ranking of Africa’s top 50 richest
people with his fortune estimated at $400 million (Sh40 billion) at the
time.
The Devki Group was already generating about $650
million (Sh65.8 billion) annual revenues by 2015, according to
information on its website.
Mr Raval owns a cement grinding plant in Lukenya (Machakos County) and a clinkering plant at Simba town in Kajiado County.
His Devki Group owns steelmaking factories in Athi River (Machakos) and Ruiru town in Kiambu County.
Companies
under the Devki Group conglomerate include Devki Steel Mills Limited,
National Cement Company Limited Uganda, Maisha Mabati Mills Limited and
Northwood Aviation Limited.
In 2017, Mr Raval announced
that he was beginning construction of two Sh3 billion cement factories,
each with a capacity to produce 750 million tonnes of cement annually.
The first plant is located in Mariakani, Kilifi County, while a second plant is in Rongai, Nakuru County.
This adds to another new cement clinker plant that he set up in Merrueshi/Mbirikani (Kajiado).
Personal experiences
His
2018 autobiography titled ‘Guru: A long walk to Success,’ documents the
journey of a boy from a little-known village of Mathak in Gujarat,
India, into creation of one of East Africa's biggest privately held
business groups straddling building, construction and aviation.
“These
practical guidelines for succeeding as a trader or an industrialist are
all based on my personal experiences in the world of commerce and
industry, not drawn from any management textbook,” he states in the
book.
The entrepreneur, popularly referred to as
‘Guru’, is also one of the country's notable philanthropists, spending
millions annually on scholarships.
In 2017, he pledged
to donate at least half of his net worth to causes in education and
health, as well as other social programmes, to benefit Kenya’s poor.
“I have decided in my will that I don’t want to go on keeping the money for myself,” Mr Raval was quoted saying.
“I will keep 50 per cent for my children and the other 50 per cent will go to charity in Kenya.”
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