Gagan Gupta

Founder & CEO | ARISE Group

Gagan is the Founder and CEO of ARISE IIP, ARISE IS and ARISE P&L, three verticals specialized in designing, financing, building and managing state-of-the art sustainable infrastructure across Africa, operating in Gabon, Togo, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Tchad, Rwanda, Nigeria, DRC, the Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone.

Starting from the ground up, he succeeded in creating ARISE Group, one of the largest infrastructure investment platforms in Africa in less than 10 years, investing a cumulated USD 2bn+ (USD 4bn+ committed to date) to develop a portfolio of 18 large-scale infrastructure projects across Africa. With more than 20 years of experience, Gagan previously held the position of Managing Director and Member of the Executive Committee of Olam.

His success derives from his unique ability to structure win-win partnerships, his unparalleled operational and execution capacity, his ability to manage all stakeholders effectively (States, private sector, civil society, etc.), and his talent for building and leading top-notch management teams.

Highly conscious of the environmental challenge, Gagan has put sustainability at the core of his companies’ operations and strategy, promoting traceability, using renewables, preserving biodiversity, and achieving carbon neutrality. In 2021, ARISE IIP’s Gabon Special Economic Zone, became the first carbon-neutral industrial zone in Africa, a year after being ranked the world’s best industrial zone in the wood sector by FDI Intelligence-Financial Times. In 2023, ARISE was awarded by the industry-reference “IMPACT Awards 2022” held by Environmental Finance for outstanding work as the Impact Initiative of the Year in Africa and the Impact Project / Investment of the year in Infrastructure.

Gagan has also recently launched an Abu Dhabi based fund dedicated to fostering Africa’s sustainable industrialization, ATIF (African Transformation and Industrialization fund). ATIF has a broad investment mandate: Industrial zones, power, sustainable EV mobility, industrial transformation units, etc.

Married and father of 2 children, Gagan is a tech passionate and also an avid runner, and has organized with ARISE, the first official Marathon in sub-Saharan Africa in Gabon, with more than 14,000 participants each year.