After nearly three decades as an employee—more than half of them as chief executive of Crown Paints—Rakesh Rao longed for the day he could start a business of his own.
Entrepreneurship, he believed, would finally give him “peace of mind." In an April 2021 interview, he said he had given himself about three years—around now, as his two sons settled into their paths—to actualise the dream.
This week, he left Crown Paints, ending a 20-year run at the helm of the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed manufacturer. Before his official exit, local dailies reported C-suite shake-ups: Mr Rao was said to have been stripped of the Kenya general manager role as six senior executives departed, amid alleged complaints about “centralised decision-making.”
It was hardly the environment to deliver the peace he might have sought.
What prompted the departure remains unclear. Mr Rao joined Crown Paints in 2005 from India and helped grow turnover from Sh1.2 billion to Sh13.45 billion by the end of 2023, cementing the company’s dominance in decorative paints.
On Thursday, Crown Paints announced that Mustafa Turra would replace him effective October 1. If the new chapter closes the book on one of corporate Kenya’s longest-serving CEOs, it also reopens a question that was posed to Mr Rao four years ago: is it too late to be a first-time founder?
Mr Rao grew up in a middle-class family in Indore, central India—a city he has described as “the cleanest in India,” and one with a deep education culture. His parents prized academic excellence; his mother, in particular, preached the gospel of positive thinking, he said in a past interview.
Scholarships nudged him forward. He earned a Bachelor of Commerce, worked at the Tata Group for two and a half years, and later completed a master’s in sales and marketing.
Thereafter, he started his career in sales—and in paints. “Paint is in my blood; my DNA is paint,” he said in a past interview.
Stints at Mitsubishi and General Electric followed, with management roles that broadened his view of supply chains, quality systems and commercial discipline. Then came a life-altering invitation from Nairobi.
When he landed in Kenya in 2005, it was his first time in the country. He knew no one. The advantage he carried was habit: listen first, sell second. “If you come to Africa and push yourself, people will accept you,” he said in one interview. Before moving, he had devoured books on body language and mindset to help him settle quickly.
His first order of business was audacious: lift sales by more than 20 percent. In a company where growth had been anaemic, the target sparked murmurs. Mr Rao responded the only way a career salesman knows—by getting out of the office.
He criss-crossed job sites and hardware corridors, listened to contractors and fundis, and came back with a list: shore up dealer relationships; tighten credit and collections; guarantee colour consistency; accelerate deliveries.
Inside the plant, he found brittle links. The IT system was obsolete; procurement was slow; processes were cumbersome; customer complaints often took too long to close. He pushed upgrades and re-mapped workflows.
Aged 60, he is married and has two sons, whom he hopes will do well at school and marry as well. Marriage is a big deal to him: “I think to be a successful man, you need a family to complete you,” he said in an earlier interview. In the same interview, he said he would not consider divorce even if he were unhappy in his marriage.
He starts his day with yoga at around 6.30am and meditates for about 30 minutes. Yoga and meditation, he says, helped him through a rough patch in his 40s, when targets were missed and stress mounted. He has also said he does not eat breakfast, opting for two meals as part of intermittent fasting. On weekends, he plays golf. Competitive gold, he emphasises.
Besides the growth in turnover, Mr Rao oversaw a number of landmark changes at Crown Paints.
Following a resolution passed at the company’s 55th AGM on June 21, 2012, the firm rebranded from Crown Berger to Crown Paints Kenya Ltd.
This followed Crown Paints Kenya’s acquisition of Crown Tanzania and the relinquishing of the Berger business and brand in both Kenya and Tanzania.
He also led the company through a rights issue on May 7, 2021, to raise Sh711.8 million by issuing and listing 71,181,000 new ordinary shares on the NSE. The process was successfully completed in June 2021.
But it has not always been smooth. In 2018, Crown Paints was among four paint manufacturers whose premises were raided by the Competition Authority of Kenya as the watchdog sought information on allegations that the firms—controlling much of Kenya’s paint market—were colluding to fix prices.
Yet, as he exits the corporate scene where he has been a constant fixture, the question remains whether he will dive into entrepreneurship this late in life.
He had noted that in three years, he would consider starting his own business, if only to set his mind free.
“[My biggest regret in life is] that I never became an entrepreneur,” said Mr Rao in an interview in April 2021.
