BOOK
REVIEW
TITLE:
GURU
AUTHORS:
NARENDRA RAVAL &KAILASH MOTA
PUBLISHER:
BLOOMSBURY, 2018, Rs. 499/-
Story
Of An Impoverished Ethnic Indian Made Great & Good In Kenya
Forewords to this autobiography of Narendra Naval (
nicknamed Guru), one of Kenya’s greatest Industrialists, include congratulatory
letters from Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has long known Raval, and
President Uhuru Kenyatta, the Amherst educated son of the legendary Jomo
Kenyatta.
Another is from Lord Raj Loomba of the UK, whose
charitable foundation Raval supports.
The Loomba Foundation helps widows in India, and at the behest of Raval,
in Kenya as well.
This book speaks endearingly and conversationally, in
Raval’s voice. It is cast in inspirational terms, with a plethora of slogans, pieties
and bon mots, with a clear belief in
destiny. It descends from time to time into a family and organisational scrap
book - without however taking anything away from the impressive tale at its
core.
Raval was born in a joint family in the tiny village of
Mathak in the Halvad Taluka of the Surendranagar District of Gujarat, the
gateway to Saurashtra. His father and family were thrown out of the prosperous
family home by his grandfather before Raval turned 10.
Raval’s early years were spent dodging school and book knowledge,
not only while in his father’s care, but elsewhere in Gujarat, with his
maternal grandparents, and maternal uncles.
A key turning point was his induction as a priest into
the Swaminarayan sect. It became something of a lifelong association and
network for him. It began in his late teens, as a priest, first in Bhuj, and
later in Nairobi, when he was sent to a Kenyan temple. It laid down the basis of his freelance priestly
work carried out later at Nakuru, a Kenyan hill resort.
It also has a good deal to do with his own spiritual
outlook and honesty, his caring attitude towards employees and colleagues,
animals and birds. All this combined with Narendra Raval’s extraordinary
abilities in palmistry and astrology that made him much sought after in the Gujarati business circles in
Kenya and the UK.
It was at Nakuru where the young Brahmin priest began to
be called Guru for the first time. This,
both for his priestly and astrological skills, the latter learned initially
during his time at the Bhuj Swaminarayan Temple.
It was also at Nakuru where he met President Daniel Arap
Moi for the first time in rather mundane circumstances when he had tagged along
with a couple of technicians who had gone to fix the President’s TV.
He was invited, soon after, to live in as resident priest
and spiritual adviser by the owners of Kenya’s most successful steel rolling
mills – the Kikuyu Steel Rolling Mills
in Nairobi. Raval was thus introduced, in his early twenties, to an opulent
business environment by the Dayabhai H Patel family.
He started going to the office with the head of the
family, and learnt about the steel rolling business in all its aspects. By the
time, not very long after, this family sold up and went their separate ways, to
the US, UK, and elsewhere, Raval had his basic grounding in the steel business.
He also had a renewable work permit for Kenya.
Next, Raval teamed up with some of his Nakuru friends who
ran a hardware business –Delta Hardware, and persuaded them to open a Nairobi
branch for wholesaling. Introducing more and more steel items to the mix out of
his knowledge at Kikuyu, Raval gradually took the business national, started
importing quota regulated items, and grew Delta Harware to the biggest business
in its field in Kenya. But Raval was not a shareholder, nor did he work for a
salary. The very growth he induced led to the split and closure of Delta by its
four partners. By now Raval had also got married to Neeta, a qualified chemist.
Though so much had happened, he was only 23 and not yet a Kenyan citizen.
In Raval’s life, many turns for the better, it is seen,
was always preceded by being sent back to square one.
Married and almost penniless, Raval resolved to set up for himself, opening the “Steel Centre”
in the name of Neeta who was a Kenyan citizen already. They rented a warehouse
in a new business district of Gikomba in Nairobi, even though it was in a rough
neighborhood.
But in 4 years, between 1986 and 1990, the business had
grown to Kenyan Shillings 1 million. Raval found finance from wealthy friends
and friendly bankers, all due to his priestly work of yore and his ongoing astrology that he
still dispensed to help many people free-of-charge.
By 1993, Steel Centre in turn was now the largest
hardware trading business in Kenya encompassing wholesaling and retail as well.
The two existing steel rolling mills in Kenya could not keep up with demand,
and so, Raval resolved to set up a steel rolling mill of his own. The Kenya
Commercial Bank (KCB) was instrumental in both financing Raval’s move into
manufacturing (Devki Steel Mills Ltd.) and seeing it through to stability by
1996.
And meticulous accounting, he says is: “The heart and
soul of your business. A small error, if not nipped in the bud, can bring down
a well established business”.
Gradually, Narendra
Raval expanded, acquired, diversified, and backward integrated, growing his
businesses into the “one stop manufacturer for all infrastructure products” he
dreamed of. This, in time, meant Steel, Building Materials, Cement, and
spreading out into the countries neighboring Kenya as well.
The sheer humility of the narration is impressive, coming
as it does from a self-made billionaire, and one of the leading private sector
lights of Africa.
And yes, one has to agree with the Narendra Raval of 2018,
priest, astrologer, philanthropist, industrialist, pater familias, when he says: “ Vision is the art of seeing what is
invisible to others”.
(955
words)
October
3rd, 2018
For:
The Sunday Pioneer, AGENDA, BOOKS
Gautam
Mukherjee
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