Botswana tycoon Ramachandran Ottapathu wins approval to buy Engen but must sell 67 stations

Ramachandran Ottapathu can buy 70% of Engen Botswana, and the price of approval is 67 filling stations he already owns.

Botswana's Competition and Consumer Authority cleared the acquisition by Fusion Spark, the vehicle behind the purchase, subject to conditions covering employment, independent dealers and local ownership. The transaction is listed as merger notice 14 of 2026 and was argued at a public hearing, an unusual level of openness that reflects how central fuel retail is to the Botswanan economy.

The divestment is the hardest condition. Ottapathu has an interest in Ajantha Proprietary Limited, which holds 75% of the Reddy Group, and Reddy holds interests in 67 retail station sites. Ajantha must sell that entire stake before the Engen deal can complete, and it must sell to Botswana citizens or citizen-owned companies, with first-time investors specifically included.

The separation has to be total. For three years after implementation, Ajantha cannot be associated with the Reddy Group in any capacity, as principal, agent, partner, representative, shareholder, director, consultant, adviser or financier.

The whole transaction exists because of a problem the regulator created two years ago.

Vivo Energy, owned by the Swiss commodities house Vitol, bought Engen Limited from Malaysia's state oil company PETRONAS in May 2024 and inherited the 70% of Engen Botswana that came with it. Vivo already ran Shell-branded stations in the country. The authority concluded that one company holding both brands would substantially lessen competition, and ordered it to sell.

The numbers show why. Engen and Vitol together operate 163 of the 356 dealer-operated service stations in Botswana, a combined 45.79%, against a dominance threshold of 25%.

Vivo did not want to go. Chief executive Stan Mittelman said the company would have preferred to keep Engen Botswana but respected the decision, adding that the sale preserved competition while giving certainty to employees and customers. It signed the agreement with Fusion Spark on April 17 after what it described as a competitive sales process.

What Ottapathu is buying is a listed company. Engen Botswana trades on the Botswana Stock Exchange, the 70% comes from Petroleum Investment Holdings within the Vivo group, and institutional investors hold the remaining 30%. It runs a nationwide network of stations and supplies commercial customers with fuel and lubricants.

It would also be the largest thing he has ever bought.

Ottapathu is best known for Choppies Enterprises, which he co-founded and still runs as chief executive, having built it from a small Botswanan grocery operation into one of the larger supermarket chains in Africa. He has since moved into property through The Far Property Company, healthcare and retail distribution through Kamoso Africa, and fuel through Ajantha, which already owns stations. Engen takes him from operating individual sites to controlling one of the two dominant brands in a sector held by multinationals for its entire history.

Who exactly is buying depends on which document you read. Vivo describes Fusion Spark as a consortium of the Mount Meru Group and Ottapathu. Records at Botswana's Companies and Intellectual Property Authority show Ottapathu as the beneficial owner of Fusion Spark with 100% of the shares.

Mount Meru is a Dubai-headquartered energy and logistics group founded by the Mittal family and active in more than a dozen African countries. It has separately agreed to buy Vivo's fuel businesses in Rwanda and Malawi, making Engen Botswana part of a wider unwinding of the Vivo portfolio. Director Atul Mittal called Botswana stable and well governed and the purchase a long-term commitment.

There is a further layer. MMPG Limited, one of the controlling shareholders of Fusion Spark, owns Acer Logistics Botswana, which hauls fuel. The transaction would therefore put fuel transport, logistics and retail under related ownership.

The conditions attached to the approval work against exactly that kind of concentration.

Independent dealers operating Engen stations must have their existing agreements honoured, covering supply, pricing, payment, equipment and maintenance. Renewals after the deal must be negotiated at arm's length on terms no less favourable than before. Any material change to pricing formulas, rebate structures, credit terms, supply volumes or supply priority requires consultation first, and the company must report annually to the authority for three years on every non-renewal, material change or termination, with reasons.

Convenience store operators at Engen sites must be given equal and non-discriminatory access on objective criteria, and the company cannot favour any particular store brand.

Within twelve months the merged business must run an open, competitive process to appoint at least five citizen-owned companies or transporters as fuel distributors, report progress six months before that deadline, and apply for an extension sixty days in advance if it cannot comply.

Employment is frozen for three years. No merger-specific redundancies among citizen employees, though voluntary separations, early retirement, resignations and refusals to be redeployed are excluded.

On the competition arithmetic that remains, the merging parties will hold 16.1% after the transaction, below the threshold. The authority noted that relatively larger players remain in the market and would continue to exert pressure on the merged company.