The ‘Mara Foundation’ is a seed funded social enterprise that was founded in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Ashish J. Thakkar, founder of the ‘Mara Group’. His entrepreneurial journey began at age 15 from which he has since built up the Mara Group: a conglomerate, spanning across the African continent and a number of industries, from ‘Financial Services to Technology’.

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.

Our initiatives are supported globally by our partners: Ernst & Young, UN Women, McKinsey, Emirates Foundation, President Obama’s Initiative: YALI, and Invest Africa to name a few.