Meet Mahesh

While he was growing up, Mahesh helped out after school at his father’s small grain shop in Nairobi, Kenya. Sometimes, he ran the store by himself, attending to customers buying soaps, grains and oils.

After college in India, Mahesh returned to Nairobi and eventually joined the British-owned Export Finance Company as an auditor. In 1981, with the help of friends and family, he purchased 100% shares of the debt-ridden company, whose employers had decided to wind up. 

Mahesh had seen the immense value in its supply chains. Instead of selling British imports across Africa, the chains could be reversed to flow exports out of Africa. Nearly 40 years later, that company, now known as Export Trading Group, has grown into one of Africa’s most powerful agricultural conglomerates. 

Family

Mahesh lives with his wife Rekha Patel in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. They have three children, Disha, Nina and Jai, all of whom are involved in ETG in different capacities.

Turning farmers into friends 

For the first 10 years, ETG operated out of a one-room office at the Embassy Hotel in Dar es Salaam. It started with Mahesh and his small team travelling to remote areas, procuring leftover produce from local subsistence farmers that was aggregated at the village level and transported back to the city. 

He encouraged the farmers to start growing food crops commercially. Slowly, foreseeing the need for basic processing of produce to obtain the best market price, Mahesh invested in amenities, access roads, tractor-driven carts, warehouses and skill development programmes. 

Throughout all of this, Mahesh was driven by an unwavering focus on farmers. ETG guaranteed them a market for their produce and considered it as their responsibility to pay them the best price. 

An emblem of Africa’s progress

ETG grew steadily, replicating its model of sourcing locally and supply chain diversification in other African countries. With Standard Chartered and the giant Mitsui & Co. joining as major stakeholders in 2012 and 2017 respectively, expansion took place exponentially. Between 2005-2015, the economy of Africa as a whole increased by 50% in contrast with a world average of 23%. Mahesh Patel and ETG became the shining stars of the success story.

As the rest of the world climbed onto the IT bandwagon, Mahesh recognised that technology and automation was the future, and that IT skills would be a huge enabler for African youth to access better opportunities. Subsequently, he  established Techno Brain in 1997, by setting up the first IT training institute of Sub Saharan Africa in Dar es Salaam. 

Techno Brain has since evolved into one of the leading IT companies in Africa that has supported global enterprises and Fortune 100 companies through the provision of  technology, consulting and outsourcing solutions. Today the company operates in 23 countries. They have won many accolades from prestigious organisations such as Google, Microsoft, KPMG and many others. Techno Brain has trained more than 500,000 Africans in IT skills.