Business News


It’s a rags to riches story. When Nasir Awan came to England in the Sixties he could speak virtually no English. Today he is head of one of the largest wholesale businesses in the UK and has a string of honours to his name plus many charitable connections. Jon Griffin, Chamberlink’s award-winning columnist, went to meet the newly-appointed junior vice-president of Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce.


hen Nasir Awan came over to Britain at the age of eight he could speak


virtually no English and had no memory of his father, who had left Pakistan to make a new life in the UK six years previously. Bashir Awan had fought in the


The Griffin Report W


Second World War with the RAF on the Burma Front. Now in the early 1960s he was fighting to achieve a better standard of life for his family in the alien surroundings of mid- sixties Birmingham. Today, nearly 60 years later,


Nasir is among the West Midlands' most successful business figures, at the helm of one of the largest UK wholesale businesses. His CV for business and charity work makes for phenomenal reading, and he was awarded an MBE for services to business and international trade in 2016. He is scheduled to become the


third Asian to take on the Presidency of Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce in 2023. It is an extraordinary rags to riches saga – and it all began on the back streets of inner-city Aston at the height of the Swinging Sixties. “My father came over from


Pakistan in 1961. Because of his engineering background, he came to Birmingham. There were six children, I was born in Peshawar in the North-West Frontier near the Khyber Pass. “We came over gradually. I had


no memories of my father and from my first day at school, I spoke very little English. I have fond memories of my childhood. “It was life in the inner cities. Because of my father, bless him, we used to have a lot of friends, English, West Indian, Asians, Sikhs. I have nice memories of playing in the street with all sorts of different races – you didn't feel any different. There were no play stations or computer games, everybody would be out playing in the street.” Bashir instilled in his children the


work ethic which has taken Nasir to the prominent roles he holds in today's much-changed Birmingham business world. “My father used to set us homework, he would come back from work and test us. He


Royal honours: Nasir, in the uniform of the


West Midlands Lieutenancy and wearing his MBE, with fellow deputy lieutenant Jenny Loynton, at one of many functions he attends


‘My father used to set us homework, he would come back from work and test us’


encouraged us to join the Scouts, he wanted me to join the Air Cadets because of his time in the Air Force.” His father's determined example


and his own multi-racial upbringing on the back streets of Aston provided a young Nasir with the vital foundations for a business career which began in his late teens helping his father run his small


20 CHAMBERLINK August/September 2020


shop in Small Heath, selling radios, cassettes and other electronic goods. Life behind the shop counter


provided the humble origins of a rich and varied business life which has brought Nasir Awan MBE prosperity and public renown in the West Midlands region and further afield. It is a long way – both in decades and in profile – from the


tiny Small Heath shop to Awan Marketing PLC, which operates from a 45,000 sq ft distribution centre in Hockley, with over 40,000 lines, servicing a customer base of over 14,000 throughout the UK and exporting to Europe, Africa and Asia. “I grew up in inner-city Peshawar


in a Third World country and I am very happy with the way I live today. I live a very comfortable life. “But I have continually striven to


improve myself. It has not been an overnight success. There have been


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