Rupin Banker is an entrepreneur and investor with more than 30 years of experience across international trade, infrastructure finance, supply-chain management, real estate and private investment.
In 2012, Rupin Banker founded Royal Fort Infracom General Trading LLC as a leading operator at the intersection of global supply chains and infrastructure programmes in the Middle East. He is also the founder and chairman of The Banker Group, a private family holding company with diverse investment interests, and co-founder of Strategic Global Alliance, a strategic financial advisory business working principally across South and South-East Asia.
Rupin established Royal Fort in the United Arab Emirates in 2012 to provide procurement, trade and infrastructure supply services to businesses and projects operating across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Royal Fort’s work includes sourcing materials, coordinating suppliers and managing the commercial relationships required to deliver products across different jurisdictions. Its activities are focused particularly on developing infrastructure and industrial markets, where dependable procurement and supply-chain coordination are important to the delivery of projects.
Under Rupin’s leadership, Royal Fort has developed relationships with clients, suppliers and commercial partners across its principal markets. The company’s approach draws on his experience of international sourcing, trade and business operations.
Rupin began his career at the age of 18 in his family’s timber and plywood businesses in India. The operations employed more than 3,000 people and gave him practical experience of manufacturing, international sourcing, commercial distribution and workforce management.
His family’s business history dates back to the 1940s, with activities that included textile manufacturing, coffee and pepper plantations, timber importing and production. This background provided Rupin with an early grounding in the operational requirements of running businesses across complex supply chains.
In 2003, Rupin Banker founded The Banker Group to manage his family’s commercial and investment interests. The Group holds investments across sectors including pharmaceutical intermediates, healthcare, real estate and education, alongside interests in venture capital, private businesses and public markets.
Rupin later co-founded Strategic Global Alliance with Ishtiaq Khan. The firm advises governments and project developers on the structuring and financing of infrastructure projects, with a particular focus on emerging economies in South and South-East Asia.
Royal Fort was founded from a clear demand for dependable procurement and supply chain support in developing infrastructure markets across the Middle East, Asia and Africa. A weak, unreliable supply chain can be a blocked to major infrastructure projects, both at conception and development. Over the last decade and a half, we’ve become the backbone of some of the region’s most important builds, contributing to the vast development in the Middle East that we see today.
The change has been significant, impressive and rapid. The sheer scale of transformation in that time has been huge; the UAE was a different place and market even just a decade ago. In that time, there has been a clear shift towards economic diversification – away from natural resources and towards tourism, professional services, entertainment, logistics and much more. None of that is possible without new infrastructure. Our role has been to support that quietly in the background, enabling companies and public bodies to build new economies and sectors.
Essential. One of the big risks that is priced in is operational and project delivery, and the reliance of materials, supplies, resource, equipment and more sits at the heart of that. Institutional investment firms will scrutinise how strong the project’s supply chain is; they are looking for bankable investment opportunities that are founded on an efficient and robust procurement strategy.
All three companies are separate and distinct in their own way. Royal Fort is focused on procurement, trade and infrastructure supply, the Banker Group manages private commercial and investment interests, while Strategic Global Alliance works on infrastructure finance and advisory assignments.
The common thread is an interest in how capital, trade and operational delivery come together. In infrastructure markets, finance and execution cannot be considered separately. A viable project requires an appropriate financial structure, but it also needs a dependable supply chain and a realistic plan for delivery.
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