Jaswinder ‘Jas’ Bedi has successfully built a family tailoring business into one of the largest textile manufacturing empires in East Africa.
He is the managing director of Bedi Investments Limited, a textile and garment manufacturing group headquartered in Nakuru.
The company employs over 2000 workers and supports more than 16 000 cotton farmers.
However, the business did not start on such a large scale.
Bedi Investments was started by his father and was officially registered in 1972. Tailoring had been part of the family for generations.
“My father was a tailor. My grandfather was a tailor,” Bedi said in an interview with The Star.
Bedi Investments initially focused on the manufacture of tailor-made suits, using fabrics that were imported from the United Kingdom.
At that time, Kenya’s textile industry was booming, with over 200 garment manufacturers and more than 70 textile mills.
However, the industry would face significant disruption from cheap imports as well as the rise of the mitumba (second-hand clothes) trade.
Many manufacturers collapsed under this wave, but Bedi Investments survived through constant pivoting.
In the 1980s, the Kenyan government imposed strict restrictions on textile imports. This forced Bedi senior to change his business philosophy, since he could no longer access the fabrics he needed.
He therefore sent his son, Jas Bedi, to England to properly study the business of textile manufacturing.
Four years later, the young Bedi returned to Kenya, armed with a degree in textile manufacturing from Bradford College and fresh ideas on how to run a successful business.
“I realised if you don’t make the right yarn, you’ll never make the right fabric,” he said.
He recognized that controlling production quality required controlling the manufacturing process.
Instead of just buying fabrics, he pushed the company into yarn production and textile manufacturing. This was a pioneering move in Kenya’s manufacturing industry at the time.
The journey was very difficult and expensive, with Jedi saying that they made lots of losses at first.
Their main challenge was figuring out how to compete with the rising flood of cheap mitumba imports.
To improve his competitive advantage, Bedi decided to focus on manufacturing uniforms for corporates, the police, military, and schools.
He realized that uniforms were recession-free, fashion-free, and mitumba-free. “There is no mitumba school uniform. There is no second-hand police uniform,” he said.
This became the business’ new lifeline.
Currently, Bedi Investments supplies uniforms across approximately 11 African countries. Its clients include corporate brands, disciplined forces, and multinationals.
All Shell petrol uniforms across Africa are designed and manufactured by Bedi’s production chain.
The Ugandan branch of the company goes by the name Fine Spinners Uganda Limited.
Despite his apparent success, Bedi remains committed to giving back to the community. He has built schools, employed people with disabilities, and given out tons of school uniforms for impoverished school children.
In the aftermath of the 2007-2008 post-election violence, his philanthropic ventures distributed about 200 000 free school uniforms to children from displaced families.
His vision is to establish a manufacturing footprint across five countries on the African continent by 2030, spread across East, West, Southern and North Africa.
Jedi is a former chairperson of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM), the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA), and Vice Chairperson of the East African Business Council (EABC).
He has also served at the helm and on the boards of more than 17 companies and trade associations.
His achievements have earned him numerous accolades, including the Elder of the Burning Spear (EBS) in 2017 and the Moran of the Burning Spear (MBS) in 2012.
He was also awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Desh Bhagat University in India