Uganda's richest man, Sudhir Ruparelia, was exiled from Uganda at 16 with nothing. He came back and bought a quarter of Kampala

Sudhir Ruparelia owns approximately a quarter of the buildings in Kampala's central business district. He will tell you that himself. What he does not say as often is what it cost him to get there.

The founder and chairman of Ruparelia Group, Uganda's largest indigenous conglomerate, was 16 years old when Idi Amin expelled him along with approximately 50,000 Asians from Uganda in 1972, giving the community 90 days to leave behind their businesses, their properties and their futures. His family left. He convinced his parents to let him stay a little longer on a promise he would follow. He did not keep the promise immediately. When he eventually arrived in London, he took whatever work he could find, including a job in a factory handling molten wax on test tubes without protection, sleeping in cramped refugee housing. "It was the most sickening job in the entire factory," he recalled later. "No protection, unbearable heat. I lasted five months."

He left the factory. He worked odd jobs. He kept moving. And in 1985, when President Yoweri Museveni came to power and invited exiled Asians to return, Ruparelia came back to Uganda with approximately $25,000 in savings and a mind for identifying gaps.

He started where he could. Beer, salt and sugar, imported from Kenya. Basic commodities in a country whose economy had been gutted by years of conflict and mismanagement. Demand was everywhere. Supply was thin. Ruparelia moved fast. The trading operation gave way to a foreign exchange business. The foreign exchange business gave way to Crane Bank, launched in 1995, which within a decade became the country's second-largest private bank with more than 38 branches. Then the central bank took it over in 2016 on regulatory grounds, erasing approximately $250 million from a fortune Forbes had estimated at $800 million in 2015.

He did not collapse. His real estate portfolio and hospitality holdings held. He rebuilt. By November 2023 his net worth had recovered to $1.2 billion, cementing his status as Uganda's richest individual and one of East Africa's most consequential businesspeople.

Today the Ruparelia Group spans more than 200 companies and touches nearly every sector of Uganda's economy. The Speke Group of hotels, Kabira Country Club, Victoria University, Kampala Parents School, Sanyu FM radio and Premier Roses, Uganda's largest flower exporter, all carry his signature. The portfolio earned him the nickname the Landlord of Kampala, a title he has used himself. His family's roots in Uganda run to 1903, when his great-grandfather moved inland from Mombasa after arriving from Porbandar, Gujarat in 1897. "It was said there was so much land in Africa that even a fence post would take root," Ruparelia recalled in one interview. Four generations later, the land belongs largely to him.

In May 2025, his only son Rajiv Ruparelia died in a car accident at 35. The grief was public and unguarded. At Victoria University's ninth graduation ceremony, Ruparelia and his wife Jyotsna announced the Rajiv Ruparelia Bursary, a scholarship initiative offering 100 fully funded postgraduate awards to outstanding students. "Rajiv touched so many lives through his generosity and vision," he said. "This is our way of keeping his legacy alive."

He serves as the honorary Consul of the Republic of Nepal to Uganda, was awarded Uganda's Golden Jubilee Presidential Medal in 2013 and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from Uganda Pentecostal University. He was the first Ugandan to be named a billionaire, reaching that threshold in 2014.

The factory in London paid him nothing worth keeping. Uganda gave him everything worth building.