Manilal Premchand Chandaria OBE CBS EBS (born 1 March 1929) is a Kenyan businessman of Indian descent who was born in Nairobi. He is a senior member of the Comcraft Group of Companies, a billion dollar enterprise that has a presence in over 40 countries, and is on the boards of several prominent East African companies. He has won several awards in East Africa and internationally in recognition of his entrepreneurial endeavours and is also a noted philanthropist. In 2003, Chandaria was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. In December of the same year, he was awarded the Elder of the Burning Spear by former president Mwai Kibaki, one of the highest civilian honours in Kenya. He has been hailed as "one of Kenya's leading industrialists". Early life Chandaria's father, an Indian merchant from Saurashtra, Gujarat, moved to Kenya in 1915 to start a provisions shop along Biashara street in Nairobi. He, Chandaria, grew up in the Ngara area of Nairobi in a house that was home to three other families, where he assisted his father in the shop. Chandaria has conceded that while he, "wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, there were at least spoons in the house." Education Chandaria attended various schools in Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya from where he proceeded to India for his undergraduate studies. He graduated from Jamnagar India University, Bombay in 1949 with a Bachelor of Science from whence he proceeded to Oklahoma in the US. He graduated in 1950 with a bachelor in engineering and continued with his Master's, which he obtained in 1951 from the University of Oklahoma. It was from here he returned to Kenya to find a prospering family enterprise and thus a platform where he would apply his swift business acumen to wrest a multinational conglomerate from the provisional shop that had once been. Business Shortly before Chandaria and his brother's return to Kenya, their family had amassed substantial holdings that made it possible for their entry into the lucrative steel and aluminium industry. Chandaria's future father-in-law had organised a group of ten individuals to acquire saucepan manufacturer Kenya Aluminium, an enterprise that had folded during the depression, from an Indian merchant in 1929, although this group eventually broke up to pursue different ventures some twenty years later. Such were the earnest beginnings of the future $2.5 billion Comcraft