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The Hindujas


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GOPI HINDUJA, co-chairman of the Hinduja Group, has put forward detailed plans to Narendra Modi’s government on how Indians living abroad – Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs) and non-resident Indians (NRIs) –could help the Indian economy recover from the pandemic.

“The OCI and NRIs are the real wealth of India,” he declares. “You get $80 billion (£58bn) every year from non-resident Indians. The total savings for the Reserve Bank is $480bn. The OCIs and NRIs may be living abroad but their heart is in their motherland. They always like to see what best they can do for India but they have to be given red carpet treatment so that when their investment comes they don’t have to struggle from state to Centre and from Centre to state.”

“Why don’t they form a state and centre joint commission?” he suggests. “Life will become much easier and NRIs will get encouragement to bring in foreign investors as well. Geographically, India is well situated between East and West. And here I am talking from my personal experience of the last 60 years.”

He is proud that although the Hinduja empire employs 120,000 people across the world, “not one person has lost his job because of the pandemic”.

The Hindujas set up in pre-partition India, established themselves in the country after independence, flourished in Persia and shifted their headquarters to London after the Iranian revolution in 1979. Today, as Gopi points out, the Hindujas do business with 100 countries and “exist in 48 countries in 12 verticals”.

This includes everything from banking and financial services to healthcare, energy and power generation, automotive, oil and gas, IT and BPO, media and cable, real estate, trading, defence – “and, of course, philanthropy”.

The Eastern Eye Rich List published in 2019 ranked the Hindujas at number one, with net worth

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