Sanjeev Kapoor
Sanjeev Kapoor started his journey at age 22.5 when he left Mumbai (India) in 1978, took a leap of faith in moving to what was alien territory to him. That was Nigeria, needless to say, he never looked back and now calls it home. Sanjeev is now armed with 41 years of experience in Nigeria and still has the passion and determination to give the people of the country new and improved products.
Sanjeev started at Far East Mercantile and till date pays tribute to the lessons that he learnt at his time with the team. He has always been passionate about FMCG and mainly consumable and has built businesses on his own, in partnerships and on a whim of faith on people, being the first of his kind in ‘angel funding’ when it did not have the title it does today. Sanjeev is invested and in love with Nigeria and working here, he is robust at age 64 and determined to build more businesses in his lifetime.
Sanjeev built a successful pharmaceutical trade, manufacturing and distribution company with own brands called Vital Pharmaceuticals ltd. His products became household names and staples across Nigeria. Sanjeev sold his business 10 years later to Strides Acrolab India, the largest conglomerate of pharmaceutical business at the time. He remained a shareholder for 19 years until 2018.
He then built Vital Products Plc with the flagship brand ‘Vitavite,’ since then, his passion lies in product innovation and he has launched 60 new products, had private equity investment and built a new factory with national & international distribution facilities.
Sanjeev, has a consortium of businesses in which he is a shareholder, investor and a part owner, this conglomerate of businesses are often referred to as the Vital Group, they are all completely separate entities but expertise and resources are shared amongst all of them. It’s not secret Nigeria is a complicated place, but it helps that Sanjeev is able to facilitate his experience and expertise in multiple businesses in order to ‘mend the gaps.’
He is very much rooted in Nigeria and often says, “I am Nigerian, just small yellow.” He has invested & partnered in industries such as: construction, alcohol, tobacco, fertilizer, trade and telcom.
Simultaneously and separately to building Vital products Plc, Sanjeev and his 3 partners: Gavin Stewart, Dilip Shah & Richard Johnson have built Stella Beverages, WATCO, FMCG Distribution and Sambukka company (www.fmcgdistribution.com) the company are the Nigerian distributors for Japan Tobaco, they manufacture & distribute their own label alcohol and trade in fertilizers. Sanjeev has a construction company and built a luxury residential apartment building in Victoria Island, Lagos, along with a few other partners.
Sanjeev has a wife & 3 children, his son, Jai and eldest daughter, Saloni both live in the UK and his second daughter Malvika moved to Nigeria in 2014 to expand Vital Products Plc, she is today a director on the company board and CEO of the company.
Malvika Sanjeev Kapoor
Malvika’s background is in Corporate Social Responsibility & Psychology. Her degrees are; Bsc Urban Planning, Design & Management, Msc: Town & Country Planning and Msc: Psychology. She has been taking over Vital Products Plc, her family business and restructuring the business since 2014. She has developed new internal processes and launched 30 of the new SKUs into the trade.
Malvika is the CEO and a member of the board of Vital Products Plc. She is as invested as her father in the business, she is diligent and determined to keep growing her family business against all odds. She is also actively involved in the other businesses in which the family are shareholders and investors in. Malvika will continue to grow and develop strategies for Vital Products and leave behind the legacy, brand and name her father built.
