THE FUSE

Sometime around 2022, a man named Prateek Suri began appearing in the African business press. He was India-born, Dubai-based, and the story he told was a good one. He had started a consumer electronics company called Maser Group with almost nothing, built it into a billion-dollar operation across 20 African countries, and was now pivoting into mining, infrastructure and venture capital through a new vehicle called MDR Investments. Profiles followed. Gulf Business ran him. The Khaleej Times supplement gave him a spread. CEO Today Magazine put him on their pages. He appeared in Entrepreneur Middle East, in BusinessDay Nigeria, in The Citizen Tanzania, in Standard Media Kenya. Each piece called him the richest Indian in Africa. Each piece called him a billionaire. The number attached to his name was $1.4 billion.