Nikhil Patel

Some Lesser Known Facts About Nikhil Patel

• He has more than 18 years of experience in the TMT industry across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the United States of America.

• Nikhil is a certified transformation life coach and an accredited Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner.

• After his birth in London, the United Kingdom, he spent his initial years in Wales, the United Kingdom, along with his grandparents.

• Nikhil loves playing football. He started following Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as Tottenham or Spurs, in 1987; Spurs is a professional football club based in Tottenham, London, England.

• After completing a Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in Business Information Systems and Laws at Middlesex University London, Nikhil moved to Frankfurt, Germany, where he joined a digital agency, ‘Razorfish,’ as a mobile technology consultant and worked for almost a year. While serving at Razorfish, he worked on various projects for multinational companies including ‘Siemens,’ an automation company, ‘Deutsche Bank,’ an investment banking company, and ‘Audi,’ an automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles. One of his tasks involved researching how these companies would be benefited by integrating mobile technologies within their current user interfaces.

• In 2001, Nikhil moved to the United States of America and switched to an Italian company, Capari Group Inc., in New York that deals in the beverage industry. After working as the Director of Strategy and Development in the company, he was later promoted to the designation of Managing Partner of the company. He was instructed to look after advising and negotiating deals with renowned hospitality groups including IHG, Choice Hotels International, Inc., and Best Western. During his almost seven years of work period in the company, Nikhil travelled approximately 5-10 days domestically per month.

• In 2009, he joined ‘Gensource RX LLC,’ a pharmaceutical company, in the New York metropolitan area as the Director of Business Development. He dealt with management accounts, strategic partnerships, and large account negotiations with C-level executives and stakeholders and worked for nearly 2 years.

• After moving to Johannesburg, Africa in 2011, Nikhil Patel joined ‘mi-Fone,’ the first African mobile devices brand, and worked as the Chief Operating Officer for three years. In May 2015, he was promoted to the post of Managing Director in the company and was asked by the board of directors to relocate to Nairobi, Kenya to set up a new African headquarter and expand operations and strategic direction throughout more than 20 countries in the east, central and SADC regions of Africa. Nikhil held the post of the Managing Director of the company for almost a year.

• In October 2012, he co-founded ‘Oju Africa,’ the world’s first Afro emoticons that received worldwide acclaim from the tech and media world after launching on the Google App store. Nikhil joined the company in  Johannesburg Area, South Africa and continued till May 2015. Later, he moved to China, where he learned about the mobile phone’s manufacturing and eco-system, and in 2013, he moved to Mauritius.

• In September 2016, Nikhil joined ‘iROKO Partners,’ one of the world’s largest African entertainment companies, in London, United Kingdom. He worked as the Chief Commercial Officer in the company till August 2019.

• In September 2019, he joined ‘Watu,’ a financial institution in Mombasa, Kenya, as the Chief Growth Officer.

• In November 2020, he collaborated with a venture firm that invests in early-stage tech and tech-enabled startups in Africa, ‘Sherpa Ventures.’

• In July 2022, Nikhil became a board member at ‘ARC Ride,’ a manufacturer of electric vehicles in Nairobi, Kenya.

• Nikhil is fluent in many languages including Spanish, German, French, English, Gujarati, and Hindi.

• He loves travelling and often shares his travelling experiences on social media.

• Nikhil consumes alcoholic beverages occasionally and posts about it on his social media handle.

  

• He works for the welfare of society and is associated with a non-profit organisation named ‘ROCK: Reaching Out with Compassion in Kibera,’ which aims at teaching children from the Kibera slums in Nairobi, Kenya.

  

• Nikhil likes sharing his life experiences with people. He has spoken at various events including Africa Tech Summit and TMT World Congress, an event where the leading industry, finance, and advisory executives gather in London. Nikhil has shared his professional and personal experiences at various prestigious institutions including Yale School of Management, Sciences Po, a selective research university in Paris, and Afrobytes Paris.

  

• Nikhil Patel, on his official website, mentioned that he received an opportunity to speak about growing up in a multicultural family in the United Kingdom in front of a gathering of around 1500 people including British MPs when he was 16 years old. He wrote,
  

  I had the honour of speaking in front of over 1,500 peers & British MPs about being raised in a multi-cultural family in the UK as a “BrIndian” or “BrAsian”.” ^[3]Nikhil N. Patel

• On his official website, Nikhil wrote about his major life incidents, which included spending time in a jail cell in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country in Central Africa, crossing land borders to Liberia illegally, getting stuck in Sierra Leone during the Covid era, and losing one of his family members in the 2019 DusitD2 complex attack in Nairobi, Kenya. ^[4]Nikhil N. Patel

• Nikhil Patel is fitness conscious. He wakes up at 5:02 in the morning and heads to the gym. Nikhil, through an Instagram post, revealed that he went through a massive physical transformation in 2019. He had mentioned that he weighed about 175lbs (79kg) at over 35% body fat and was pre-diabetic and had high cholesterol. Nikhil added that he decided to become fit for a shoot, which was supposed to be done in August 2019; the shoot was postponed till October 2019. Nikhil hired a fitness trainer named Adam Hayley and worked on his fitness. He achieved his target of being fit by the shoot. Nikhil, along with Adam Hayley, took a train to London at 8 am and completed the shoot with a photographer named Craig Williams.

  

• On 3 January 2023, Nikhil got engaged to Dalljiet Kaur, an Indian television actor, in Nepal. In an interview, Dalljiet talked about her relationship with Nikhil and revealed that they both met at a friend’s party in Dubai. She added that they both talked about their children from their first marriages and eventually fell in love with each other. Dalljiet said,
  

  I met Nick at a friend’s party in Dubai last year. I only spoke about my son, and he was talking about his two daughters, 13-year-old Aariyana and eight-year-old Aanika. He wore blue nail polish on his toes, and when I asked him about it, he replied, ‘I am a proud dad of two girls.’ Romance wasn’t in the air back then; it was just two single parents chatting. Love happened with time. It was our love for our children that connected us. While Anika lives with her mother in the US, Aariyana will live with us.”

• In February 2024, reports of Dalljiet and Nikhil’s separation arose after she deleted photos with Nikhil and removed his surname from her social media profiles. Her team then stated that Dalljiet came to India with her son for her parents’ surgery and would not make further comments. ^[5]NDTV

• In May 2024, Nikhil took to social media to confirm that he and Dalljiet had separated. Dalljiet had earlier shared a post on social media accusing Nikhil of an extra-marital affair.

• In the same year, when Nikhil was seen with his rumoured partner Safeena at the Mumbai airport, Dalljiet Kaur was heartbroken and published an emotional note about it on her Instagram account.