Andrew ‘Desh’ Kananura, the owner of the also well-known rally tea, that shares his name, is celebrating 20 years of business.
Uganda’s only notable high-end niche car dealership is experiencing strong growth in perhaps the ultimate proof that there’s nothing we won’t buy or sell with the right ethics.
It’s not about hard selling. Not any more.
Spend an hour or two with Desh at his Kololo hangout and parking Panamera — and you’ll soon learn that the process that delivers prestige cars into the hands of new owners no longer involves old-style persuasion.
Neither do Desh and his team want it that way. They’re well aware that today’s luxury car buyers arrive with a pretty good idea of what they want (having usually done prior research online) and they have an even clearer view of how they want to be treated. Dealers are for helping them realise their dreams and emphatically not for coercing them into unwanted actions.
Kananura, a quietly spoken 40 something-year-old Ugandan who studied during day at Barking University (Hearts) UK and worked at night, so as to pay his bills, had precious little knowledge of the luxury car game before he arrived in back in Kampala with He with two sleek cars from the UK and sold them to start business but believes his experienced eyes have helped progress the business in new directions.
Desh is getting off to a flying start in 2018 with celebrations to mark two decades business and an increase in vehicle sales in the first quarter of 2018.
“My story began in June of 1998 when I wrote my last exam at university in England, I returned with two cars, a BMW 850CSI and MBEZ C220 CDI. That’s all I had and needed to start my car business home and away,” Desh says about how he started out in the business.
“I single handedly changed the motor industry consumers culture in Uganda by providing other alternatives than Toyota a lot of Ugandans had money and could afford but we’re scared of maintenance, URA will know we have money etc. I spotted the gap and the niche I went for it.”
Desh was in born in early 1970s in Nsambya to Stella Kagandi Kananura, a banker and late Mzee James Kananura, who was a top director in the now extinct Shell BB, he got the name ‘Desh’ from his pals who used to mock him about his light skinned colour, saying he is a crossbreed of the departed Asians from Bangladesh.
When the business worked out, he started importing posh cars most of which carried personalised number plates. Among his first swanky rides was a BMW 850i, which had customised number plates ‘4 Desh’.
The perks have grown but Desh is still considered as Uganda’s best auto trader in high-end niche cars.
After little more than a decade, Desh has developed close relationships with the luxury car companies and resellers in Europe— who know full well he commands one of the East Africa’s most powerful luxury dealer groups and have recently learned of his ambitious plans to expand more.
