Business Profile
“I think I just like solid, tangible assets, I don’t like goodwill or fresh air or intellectual property rights – they can come and go.
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everybody else and that’s pretty much how I live my life. The other thing is I’m ridiculously funny. I’m not going to be very funny today during this interview, [smiling] but if you ask friends, they’ll tell you I love pranks and jokes, but again this misunderstood bit – people wouldn’t think I was deeply religious, they wouldn’t think I’m remotely funny without knowing me, so they’re the two surprising things!
You have many letters after your name, but CBE, are they the ones you’re most proud of? I don’t think about the letters after my name at all, a few of my mates call me the Commander for a bit of fun [laughing], but that’s probably only because I have nicknames for all of my friends! It was a great day. To tell you the story, we were actually on holiday and the volcanic ash swept over so we couldn’t fly back, so there’s me, my wife, my son, my youngest daughter, my nephew and three of my daughter’s 19-year-old friends stuck in Marbella. The Buckingham Palace ceremony was getting closer and closer, so I hired a driver and a people carrier who drove us from Southern Spain, through France, Biarritz into Paris. We turned it into a really good road trip, got on the Eurostar, landed in London, checked into the Dorchester, had a Chinese meal, my other daughter drove up to meet us and the next morning we went to Buckingham Palace. It’s a lovely honour, more to recognise everybody else in my life than me.
You’re an owner of Asha’s, how did that come about? I’d like to think there’s a Mr Big style story behind it – you liked the food so much you bought it! [Laughing] It’s hard sometimes to articulate what happened, but let me tell you the real story! I’d never heard of Asha’s, because I was based in West Brom. A friend asked me to meet him at the restaurant and despite knowing Birmingham, I had to ask where it was. When I walked in I thought ‘nice ambience’, I obviously know Indian food very well and thought the meal was excellent. For the next couple of
weeks if anybody wanted to go to eat I’d say, let’s go to Asha’s. I was there with Pops one day (Pawan, co-owner of Asha’s) and I overheard who owned it, it was a plc, and it was the middle of the recession and I knew they were in trouble. So I rang the guy and told him I was about to open up an Indian restaurant, which I was not, and suggested that before we compete with each other (and I also added that I’d like to think I’d be more successful as I know the market, I’m Indian and know everyone in the area so they’re going to come to my restaurant, which isn’t necessarily the case) would he like to sell me Asha’s? I knew full well that they hadn’t got two pennies to rub together, so we made him an offer and four days later we bought it. Asha’s is managed by Pawan [Kenth], one of my closest friends of over 30 years and Domnic Norunha. I think it’s one of Birmingham’s best restaurants and it is frequented by many leading businessmen, politicians and celebrities including Simon Cowell, who orders his curry from Asha’s when he’s in town!
Can you recall how you celebrated your first big deal? I’m not one for celebrating, I’m not a big drinker, but I do encourage everyone around me to celebrate and as I’m getting older I think I’ll practice more of what I preach, as for me the work always starts once the deal is done! But everyone around me needs recognition and so we encourage them to celebrate. We did a deal a few weeks ago and the team went out to celebrate, but I wasn’t even invited as they knew I wouldn’t go and that’s fine with me. I’ll celebrate family things, Priya is 50 next year and we’ll have a really big celebration for that, we finally decided to get married after being together for 25 years and we did so in Dubai at the Burj and it was the biggest bar bill I’ve ever had in my life. You’ll laugh Katie, but I probably should have been a lecturer or priest, I couldn’t be a priest as I messed around when I was younger [laughing], but I like the teaching and I’ll probably do more of that later on in life. I’ve got two doctorates and I enjoy mentoring and changing the lives of kids and that’s far more fun and rewarding than drinking in a bar.
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