—from Shakira’s Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)
Shakira’s 2010 FIFA World Cup anthem, which celebrated Africa’s rising spirit, is a becoming metaphor for Harpal Singh Randhawa’s audacious journey from the plains of Punjab to Zimbabwe’s unstable mining fields.
In contrast to most different international Indian entrepreneurs chasing Western markets, Randhawa carved a $5 billion fortune in Africa, a continent typically neglected by his friends. His story, marked by calculated dangers and resilience, ended abruptly and tragically in a aircraft crash when he was simply 60. However he leaves behind a fancy legacy that invitations each admiration and a few scrutiny.
From Punjab to Zimbabwe
Born on 9 August 1963, in Punjab, Randhawa was formed by self-discipline at dwelling and ambition outdoors it. After his education at The Lawrence College in Sanawar, he went on to pursue chartered accountancy in England.
Subsequently, mixing his father’s army grit with sharp enterprise instincts, he turned an entrepreneur. His sister, Iqrup Dhamija, too, turned a famous inside designer, reflecting the household’s inventive and pushed ethos. Randhawa’s son, Amer Kabir Singh Randhawa, a Stanford laptop science graduate and pilot, inherited the identical spirit however tragically died along with his father within the crash.
Randhawa’s alternative of Africa as his entrepreneurial canvas was daring and contrarian. Within the early Nineteen Nineties, as India’s financial system liberalized, spawning dozens of startups, he based the International Rising Market Group (GEM), a personal fairness (PE) agency that invested in over 100 corporations worldwide. By the point he handed away, the PE agency had amassed a $4 billion asset base.
But it surely was the politically turbulent and economically unpredictable Zimbabwe, which lastly threw off its colonial yoke solely in 1980, that turned his karmabhoomi. It’s tough to say if zeroing in on Zimbabwe was the wager of a visionary on untapped potential or a gambler’s dangerous transfer in a area fraught with instability, however his success definitely suggests foresight.
Randhawa’s automobile of development was RioZim, a diversified mining group listed on the Zimbabwe Inventory Alternate, which he purchased into by GEM. From gold and diamonds to coal, nickel, and copper, his portfolio, spanning the Renco and Cam and Motor gold mines and the Murowa diamond mine, mirrored strategic permutations to function a hedge in opposition to market fluctuations.
In contrast to friends chasing fast earnings, Randhawa invested in long-term asset administration, navigating Zimbabwe’s useful resource nationalism and forging complicated partnerships. By way of all of it, his means to learn the shifting sands of energy within the nation set him aside.
Mining in Africa typically treads a tremendous line between alternative and exploitation. Whereas Randhawa’s long-term imaginative and prescient fostered development, the environmental and social impacts of his operations stay underexplored. RioZim additionally didn’t reside as much as its promise as one of many nation’s prime gold producers and, as of 2024, posted its fifth successive annual loss.
His legacy
That’s to not deny Randhawa’s success in constructing wealth. His estimated $5 billion web price on the time of his demise positioned him in a uncommon league of African billionaires, alongside figures like South Africa’s Patrice Motsepe, a mining magnate and philanthropist, and Indian-born entrepreneur Prateek Suri.
In contrast to Motsepe, whose public philanthropy softened his picture, Randhawa operated with much less fanfare, giving little thought to private branding. Sadly, whereas his understated method contrasts with the outsized personalities dominating the narrative of India’s new billionaire class, it additionally leaves gaps in understanding his broader impression.
Up to now, Indian-origin entrepreneurs in Africa have confronted distinctive challenges, together with balancing native integration with a world mindset. Randhawa’s skilful navigation of those waters, the flexibility to thrive beneath unfamiliar authorized regimes, social expectations, and financial cycles, is a good lesson for wannabe entrepreneurs eager on treading much less standard paths.
Sadly, on 29 September 2023, a RioZim-owned Cessna 206 certain for the Murowa mine crashed, killing Randhawa, his son Amer, and all aboard. The tragedy minimize quick an uncommon profession that was marked by risk-taking and the selection of roads much less travelled. Randhawa’s story challenges the narrative of world Indian success tied to Western hubs like Silicon Valley.
His legacy is that of an outlier who created alternative in Africa’s complexity, a reminder that the world’s most compelling enterprise tales typically emerge in surprising locations.
For extra such tales, learn The Enterprising Indian: Tales From India Inc Information