Nairobi News

Retired pilot Ronald Karauri has opened up about how his gambling addiction led him to co-found Sportpesa. This betting company made Sh12.6 billion in its first five years of operation.
“My entry into Sportpesa is an interesting one. I had become a gambler. I still play poker to this day. What happened is that I got interested in poker by watching some ESPN shows and playing at home, then one day I decided to play in a casino because I thought I had become a better player.” Karauri, the MP for Kasarani reveals in a recent podcast with pilot Eric Mutiso.

His frequent visits to a certain casino in Nairobi to play poker earned him friendship with the owner of the establishment and one thing led to the other.
“That’s when the conversation started because he said he was going to start a sports betting firm I took an interest in it and said I’m going to be part of it. That’s actually how it started,” he adds.

Being a poker player, Captain Karauri says helped shape his understanding of gambling and the people he interacted with within the gambling space.
“The beauty of poker is that you can immediately tell the character of people by how they play. How they interact, how they react to losing and winning money. It’s easy to know someone’s character and click. So once we got to know each other, that’s how we ended up having this conversation about Sportpesa,” Karauri who is also Sportpesa’s CEO further states.

With no time to lose, the partners set about registering a company and finding investors.
“With a company, it’s an investment and the conversation between us is how many shares do you want? At that time the only thing I had that could raise some money was a piece of land that I sold for about Sh25 million,” Captain Kariuri reveals.

Being a new idea,  investing such a huge amount in such kind of unchartered waters would have raised a lot of questions amongst his family and close inner circle.
However, the pilot says he chose not to reveal too many details of the Sh25 million Sportpesa investment to his family, especially his wife Ruth who is also a pilot.
“Of course, it was a big conversation with my family but it was a matter of trust and nothing else. I also don’t think I shared too much of what was going on. I never disclosed all the details and because of the trust it was never an issue.” The MP goes on.

In its infancy, Sportpesa started as an SMS betting platform.
“When we did SMS betting, it had never happened anywhere in the world. Back in 2015, apps weren’t as big as they are now for people to download and do something. Not everyone had data or a smartphone.”

At the time, Karauri had not yet retired from his job at Kenya Airways as a Boeing 737 captain.
“The company was operational, Sportpesa was up and running for a year and a half while I was still a pilot. When Sportpesa started, I wasn’t involved in the day-to-day operations at all, I just received the updates. The request to become the CEO came later from my partners that I should come and be involved in the running of the company. That’s when I started thinking about whether or not to quit my job at KQ.”
Captain Karauri finally decided to quit his job as a commercial pilot after 11 years. He retired from KQ in 2015 and took over as SportPesa CEO a year after he co-founded the firm
“My experience in business up until that time was that I needed to be there. Having had shares in Skylux Lounge, the problem we had running Skylux was that we, the directors, were never there most of the time. For Sportpesa I wanted to be there and so one day I made the decision to resign”.