156 Years On: How the Khimji Family Built Oman's Retail Empire

Long before Muscat had a stock exchange, a shopping mall, or an airport, it had traders willing to bet everything on a single sea voyage. In 1870, a father and son from the Kutch region of Gujarat, India, sailed the Mandvi-Muscat-Zanzibar route and decided to stay in Oman. That decision produced one of the Sultanate's oldest and most diversified business houses: the Khimji Ramdas Group.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Khimji Ramdas traces its roots to 1870, when merchant Ramdas Thackersay and his son Khimji Ramdas settled in the Port of Sur, as detailed in Oman Observer.
• The group helped build Oman's first airport at Bait Al Falaj and the country's first HSBC bank branch, and sold the region's first Ford automobile.
• Today the family conglomerate spans four clusters (lifestyle, consumer products, projects/logistics, and infrastructure), employs over 5,000 people, and represents hundreds of global brands including SPAR, Rolex, and Cartier, according to the company's own corporate history.
• The family has produced community icons, such as Sheikh Kanaksi Khimji, credited with founding Oman's Indian school system, and modern executives like fifth-generation director Kanan Khimji, the group's first female leader.
• The business has continued to reinvest in digital tools, including SAP-based enterprise systems, even as it holds on to founding-era values of trust and long-term relationships.

⛵ From Dhow Trade to Diversified Conglomerate

Ramdas Thackersay and his son Khimji Ramdas were merchants who regularly sailed from Mandvi on India's western coast to Zanzibar and onward to Muscat. According to Oman Observer's account of the family's history, the pair found the trade profitable and the hospitality welcoming enough to stay permanently in the Sultanate rather than continue the circular voyage.

The firm's earliest business went beyond simple trading. It moved into financial services, extending loans to local merchants and, notably, to Oman's ruling family, a detail that underlines how tightly the Khimji story is woven into the country's pre-oil economic history.

The next generation broadened the base further. In 1920, Khimji Ramdas's sons Gokaldas and Mathradas expanded into dates, rice, dried lime, and construction, while also becoming a key supplier of essentials to Allied forces during both World Wars, per the same Oman Observer feature. By the mid-20th century, the family firm had a hand in some of the country's most consequential infrastructure milestones: it helped build Oman's first airport at Bait Al Falaj in 1956, opened the first HSBC bank branch in 1960, and is credited with selling the region's first Ford automobile.

🕊️ Kanaksi Khimji and a Legacy Beyond Business

Business success alone does not explain why the Khimji name carries such weight in Muscat's Indian community. That is largely down to Sheikh Kanaksi Khimji, who led the group for decades and was widely described, on his passing in 2021 at the age of 85, as "the most iconic figure of the Indian diaspora in Oman," as Gulf News reported.

Kanaksi Khimji was instrumental in establishing the first Gujarati Medium School in Muttrah in 1941, a seed that grew into a network of 21 Indian schools across Oman. Indian schools across the Sultanate closed for the day in tribute when he passed away, a rare gesture that speaks to the depth of his community role. He also served as founding member and chairman of Oman Cricket, a sport the family has continued to champion for generations, and led the Mahajan Community as its president, focusing much of his philanthropy on marginalized groups, according to the same report.

🏏 The Next Generations: Business, Diplomacy, and Cricket

The family's influence extends well past retail shelves. Pankaj Khimji, a director within the group, was appointed Foreign Trade Advisor to the Omani government by Royal Decree in January 2022 and sits on the Oman-India and Oman-Singapore Joint Business Councils, according to Global Indian Network. He also took over as chairman of Oman Cricket from his father in February 2016, a tenure that included Oman co-hosting the 2021 ICC Men's T20 World Cup, and later became an ICC Associate Member Director and vice president of the Asian Cricket Council.

Meanwhile, Kanan Khimji became the group's fifth-generation director and its first female leader, having built her track record running the consumer products cluster since 2014. In an interview marking the group's 155th anniversary in 2025, she described her approach to the family's balancing act between heritage and modernization: "Innovation doesn't mean discarding tradition; it means enhancing it with better tools and newer perspectives," she told Entrepreneur Middle East. She also framed diversification as a survival strategy rather than a growth gimmick: "Innovation to me is about solving real-world problems more effectively, and diversification builds resilience through relevance."

💻 Keeping Pace With Technology

A trading house that started with dhows and dates now runs on enterprise software. Khimji Ramdas has built its retail, supply chain, finance, and logistics operations on integrated SAP systems, using digital tools to manage a network the company says reaches roughly 95% of Oman's population through more than 3,500 direct distribution points, according to the group's own corporate overview.

That digital backbone supports a retail footprint that includes the SPAR supermarket franchise, which Khimji Ramdas has operated in Oman since 2014 and grown to more than 20 outlets serving thousands of shoppers daily, alongside luxury retail partnerships for brands such as Cartier, Rolex, and Swarovski. The group now operates across roughly 40 business verticals and 150-plus retail outlets, per Entrepreneur Middle East's 2025 profile of the family. The pattern echoes a theme this site has explored in Omani family enterprises before: the SME founders behind ventures like the ZabonEx Story are, in a much smaller way, following the same playbook the Khimjis pioneered a century earlier, using new technology to widen distribution without losing the trust that built the customer base in the first place.

🎓 Lessons for Today's Founders

Several threads run through the Khimji story that remain relevant to Oman's current wave of entrepreneurs:

• Bet on relationships, not just transactions. The family's earliest advantage came from financial trust built with local merchants and the ruling family, not product margins.
• Diversify deliberately. Each generation added new verticals (construction, banking infrastructure, retail franchising, technology) rather than defending a single product line.
• Plan succession early and on merit. The move to a fifth-generation, first female director reflects governance built around capability rather than birth order alone.
• Reinvest in community, not just the balance sheet. Kanaksi Khimji's education and philanthropy work shows how business legitimacy in Oman has often been built alongside, not instead of, commercial success.

🇴🇲 Why This Story Still Matters in 2026

Oman's Vision 2040 leans heavily on diversifying the economy away from oil, encouraging private investment, and building a knowledge-based, digitally enabled business sector. The Khimji Ramdas Group's own materials describe its trajectory as running in parallel with the country's, moving "from being part of the early days of commerce to actively supporting national development initiatives." For a family enterprise now in its sixth generation, still adapting its systems and leadership structure more than 150 years after that first voyage from Kutch, the throughline for Oman's founders and policymakers alike is that longevity comes from continuous reinvention, not from standing still on an early success.