The Hinduja family
Global Business
£33.5bn £3bn
THE most significant event to take place in the
Hinduja family in the last 12 months has un-
doubtedly been Srichand Hinduja’s passing on
May 17, 2023, at the age of 87.
Although he worked closely with his three
younger brothers – Gopichand (83), Prakash
(78) and Ashok (73), and their sons – SP was
very clearly the head of the family. But in a
way, it has been business as usual in troubled
times. In the last five years or so that SP had
been ill, it is Gopi who has been running the
show. And it’s a big show – a dozen verticals
with nearly 200,000 employees in some 50
countries.
On the business side, the most high profile
legacy project was the September opening of
the restored Old War Office in Whitehall, now
known as the OWO Raffles Hotel, with Princess
Anne doing the honours. Significantly, Nitin
Gadkari, India’s road transport and highways
minister in Narendra Modi’s cabinet, visited
Ashok Leyland’s Chennai factory to commem-
orate the company’s 75th anniversary.
In the IT world, Hinduja Global Solutions
has become a major international player and
has picked up some important clients in the
UK, among them the Government Digital Ser-
vice, which forms part of the Cabinet Office.
The Hinduja owned-Gulf Oil – a brand
which has presence in more than 100 countries
across five continents – has acquired a control-
ling interest in Tirex Transmission, an Indian
company which manufactures fast chargers for
Electric Vehicles (EVs).
In India too, the Hindujas appear to be rea-
sonably confident of being able to acquire the
financial services company, Reliance Capital,
for nearly £1 billion.
Back in Mumbai, the five-storey Hinduja of-
fices in Worli overlooking the Arabian Sea are
due to be replaced by an eco-friendly 32-storey
tower over the next four years.
In London, too, the Hindujas have move out
of their headquarters in New Zealand House in
the Haymarket while the building is modern-
ised. They haven’t had to go very far – just
round the corner in Charles II Street next to His
Majesty’s Theatre where Phantom of the Opera
has been playing since 1986. The tale of the
Hindujas is also the stuff of operas.
Gopi’s temporary offices are, if anything,
rather more elegant than his old one. In a wait-
ing room, there is a print of a drawing of cows
by the artist Olivia Fraser, who lives in Delhi
with her author husband William Dalrymple.
At the entrance, though, next to a statue of
Ganesh, there is a portrait of SP alongside a lit-
tle flame on a diya. There are other portraits of
SP in Gopi’s office, along with photographs of
their father, Parmanand Deepchand Hinduja,
who founded the dynasty.
He was born in Shikarpur in Sind (now in
Pakistan) on November 25, 1901, and founded
the family business when he moved to Bom-
bay (now Mumbai) in 1914.
SP, too, was born in Shikarpur on Novem-
ber 28, 1935. The family horse was brought
to Bombay during partition. SP claimed
family treasures were left behind, buried in
the sand.
According to the Hindujas, P D Hinduja
“entered the international arena with an of-
fice in Iran (the first outside India) in 1919.
The twin pillars of the business were merchant
banking and trade. The group remained head-
quartered in Iran till 1979. It then moved to
Europe. Spanning across continents,
the Hinduja group went on to
strengthen its businesses
with diversifications in
the fields of Mobility,
Digital Technology, Me-
dia, Entertainment &
Communications, In-
frastructure Project
Development, Lu-
bricants & Specialty
Chemicals, Energy,
Real Estate and
Healthcare.”
SP’s death
has marked a
seismic
change in
Gopi’s life –
and in the
Hinduja fami-
ly. The two
were very close.
Their daily rou-
tine was to go to
the Iskcon Radha-
Krishna Temple in So-
ho just after dawn and
then take a brisk walk in St
James’s Park where they would feed hundreds
of birds.
“Malik jo chahta hai, wohe hota hai,” said
Gopi in Hindi, meaning ‘Whatever the Amighty
wants is what ultimately happens.’
He misses his elder brother (though SP’s
daughters, Shanu and Vinoo, have taken legal
action over family assets).
After SP’s death, life became a “big wreck”
for Gopi, he tells the Asian Rich List 2024. “You
know how close we had been. One thing is that
he got relief after suffering for the last three to
four years. But whenever I met him, he used to
open his eyes [in recognition]. It [his death] re-
ally depressed me. My missing him is the maxi-
mum [among family members]. Time is the on-
ly cure. But it won’t happen overnight.”
He and SP had adjoining flats in the same
building. “We used to have lunch together, din-
ner together, everything was together.”
Now the challenge will
be to ensure SP’s val-
ues are passed on to
subsequent gener-
ations. Gopi has
two sons, Sanjay,
59, and Dheeraj,
51; Prakash has
two, Ajay, 55,
and Ramkris-
han, 52; while
Ashok has one,
Shom, 30.
“SP’s legacy was
to follow the princi-
ples and
val-
Eastern Eye Asian Rich List | 2024
Leaving a lasting and iconic
legacy for Britain
The Hindujas forge ahead despite a major personal setback
Asian Rich List
Gopichand Hinduja;
(left) paying
respects to the
patriarch; (opposite
page, top) the late
SP’s portrait at the
Hinduja office; (bot-
tom) Princess Anne
with Hinduja broth-
ers at the lauch of
The OWO Hotel