Net Worth: $425 million Ashish J. Thakkar is a Dubai-based British entrepreneur. He is the founder of Mara Group and Mara Foundation, and he is a co-founder of Atlas Mara. Thakkar was born in the United Kingdom, but he moved to East Africa as a teenager before founding Mara Group, a Pan-African conglomerate, at the age of 15. Mara Group's operations and investments span 22 African countries. He is the author of The Lion Awakes: Adventures in Africa's Economic Miracle.

Entrepreneurship

The Foundation incorporates three key integral platforms, maintaining a set focus on developing an SME eco system to support entrepreneurs with a particular focus on youth and women entrepreneurs in line with the founder’s vision to create change for a sustainable future. In developing countries, young and women entrepreneurs face structural and financial barriers in the seed, incubation and growth period of starting a business. The Mara Foundation’s aim is to address this challenge by developing an ecosystem. Ashish’s meticulous passages as an entrepreneur in Africa has subsequently proliferated his desire to develop such an ecosystem to create impact and drive change for a sustainable future for the youth and women of today.