The Life Beneath the Work
The story the ventures grew out of
The Early Chapter
The Story
Jigar Sagar’s story begins two generations before him, in a village called Kodinar in Gujarat, where his grandfather worked as a goldsmith. In 1952, his grandfather boarded a ship to Dubai to join a younger brother who had made the same journey two years earlier via Aden. The two set up a workshop in Deira’s Gold Souk.
Jigar’s father arrived in Dubai in 1972, at seventeen. He worked in the family workshop for a few months, then took a sales job at a Bur Dubai electronics store, was sent to Stuttgart for training, and came back with a more modern commercial instinct. In 1977, the family opened a shop in Sharjah’s Irani Bazaar. His father grew it into the business it is today, and it is still open in 2026.
Jigar was born into that shop’s second decade. He spent his afternoons there from a young age, picking up bookkeeping, invoicing, and purchase management before most children learned algebra. The business ran on the same principles his grandfather had built it on. Repeat custom, reputation, trust before transactions. He was eight years old the first time he understood that money was just access, and ten the first time he chose to earn his own.
School was diligent rather than distinguished, but he was quick with numbers and quicker still at reading a room. Finance, when he found it, felt less like a discovery than a vocabulary.
He read for a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in Finance, both with honours and both on the Dean’s List. At his graduation, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum was conferring the degrees. When Jigar’s honours were read out, HH shaking his hand, said he looked forward to seeing him work for the UAE. It gave him something he hadn’t gone looking for: a sense of obligation to the country he lived in.
The Building Years
The UAE he came home to was in the middle of the 2009 downturn.
Corporate offers came anyway, the kind young finance graduates spend their degrees praying for. So did an offer to become finance manager at a months-old business setup firm in Dubai, at a salary that barely covered his fuel costs. He took the fuel money.
Named Among Good CompanyNamed Among Good Company
Beyond The Boardroom
Jigar travels often, less for the destinations than for what a different culture teaches him about his own. Formula 1 has held his attention for years, followed with the discipline he’d give a market. And his investment in Kensington Barbers reflects a longer-standing interest in menswear and grooming, and in the quieter idea underneath it:
that how something presents shapes how it’s received.
Get in Touch
Tell him what you're building, what you're stuck on, or what you'd like to talk about.
To schedule an interview or keynote, write to pr@jigarsagar.com or use this form.