“I am in Dubai,” says Gopichand Hinduja, sounding a little like a naughty schoolboy who has been caught with his hand in the sweet jar.
He doesn’t want to sound as though he is on holiday.
Normally, he is in London from where he runs the Hinduja empire. Gopi once said the Hindujas do business in 100 countries, employ 120,000 people and “exist in 48 countries in 12 verticals”.
When his elder brother, Srichand, was alive, the two would invite close friends to join them for a brisk walk in St James’s Park. The only slight drawback was that the brothers would venture out at dawn whatever the weather. They would be greeted by hundred of birds and squirrels.
But time changes everything. Srichand, who was known to everyone as “SP”, died, aged 87, on 17 May 2023. He and Gopi walked so quickly it was hard for his friends to keep up. The route would take them past the front gates of Buckingham Palace. The story goes that when the Queen invited SP to lunch, he said he would come provided he could bring his own vegetarian food with.
“Of course,” agreed Her Majesty,
And in the days when Concorde was flying across the Atlantic, SP, accompanied by a servant, would board the aircraft, with extra portions of lunch.
When other tycoons told the air hostesses, “I don’t want lobster thermidor, I want what he’s having,” SP would cunningly step in and be the typical hospitable Indian. He wasn’t surprised this was an excellent way to make business allies at 50,000 ft flying at Mach 2. But that was then.
On 29 January 2025, Gopi – often called GP – celebrated his 85th birthday. The walks are now history.
“I don’t have the same energy,” he admits.
But friends confirm that “his mind is as sharp as ever”.
He is the Hinduja group chairman but shares the burden with his brothers, Prakash, who is 79 and works from Monaco, and the youngest, Ashok, who is 74 and lives in Mumbai. The three brothers constitute the second generation of the business which was founded by their father, Parmanand Deepchand Hinduja. He was born in Shikarpur in Sind (now in Pakistan) on November 25, 1901, and began the family business when he moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1914.
The Hindujas topped Eastern Eye’s 2025 Asian Rich List with £34.5bn, up £1bn from the previous year.
The reins of power have been passing to the next generation – Gopi’s sons, Sanjay, 61, and Dheeraj, 53; Prakash’s sons, Ajay, 56, and Ramkrishan (Remy), 53; and Ashok’s son, Shom, 32.
Sanjay, who is probably the first among equals, is chairman of Gulf Oil International, while Dheeraj is chairman of Ashok Leyland, which Gopi describes as the family’s “flagship”.
One way and another, with Gulf Oil and Ashok Leyland to look after, as well as the superluxury Raffles at OWO hotel in London, Hinduja Global Solutions and Hinduja Tech, the recently acquired Reliance Capital and IndusInd Bank, business is as prosperous as ever.
But this winter something different happened.
Gopi joined the growing expatriate community in Dubai fleeing chancellor Rachel Reeves’s tax raid on non-doms.
He feels he needs to explain his presence among the Dubai diaspora.
“The weather here is nice but I will soon be going back home to London,” he confirms.
It will come as a relief to Reeves that the Hindujas are not transferring their international headquarters to Dubai to escape the government’s 40 per cent inheritance tax on their global assets. After the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Hindujas toyed with the idea of moving to America – they have an apartment in Trump Tower in New York. But in the end, they chose London. It was an ideal location from which to do business. When the money markets were closing in the Far East, they were opening in America. London was the centre of their business world.
For many Indians, Dubai is becoming a kind of second Bombay (Mumbai), barely two hours away. The Hindujas have a big set up in Mumbai and a family mansion by the beach in Juhu. But Dubai is throwing up a challenge.
“It’s much cleaner than Bombay, it has much better infrastructure than Bombay, everything works,” asserts Gopi.
Gopi’s elder son, Sanjay, who is with his father, cuts in: “I’m personally a fan of Dubai, actually.”
Gopi says that because of the tax on non-doms, “thousands of people are leaving the UK. So many have already left and others will be leaving before April 5.”
That’s when Reeves’s 40 per cent tax on non-doms kicks in.
As to how he is spending his time, Gopi says: “I am more focused on philanthropic work. One of our principles is ‘work to give’.
“We have our collaboration (in healthcare) with King’s College London. That agreement was signed in April last year. But now it’s in the implementation stage. Students are being interviewed.”
The Hindujas say they have made two “momentous” agreements with King’s College London “for nurses’ training in our P D Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai and PhD scholarships for students studying in the sciences and healthcare engineering. These two agreements will go a long way to strengthening the already close relations between India and UK, and especially increase collaboration in health, science and healthcare engineering and scientific research.”
They add that “in December 2023, King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital signed two important agreements, one with the P D Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai and the other with the (charitable) Hinduja Foundation UK. The two agreements will create a new strategic partnership to advance training, education and expand research capacity focused on healthcare outcomes.
“One agreement between King’s College London, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and the Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai will deliver King’s and GSTT training in clinical and non-clinical short courses, research capacity building and executive education to health professionals in India.
“The second agreement between King’s College London and the Hinduja Foundation UK will enable health engineering research and clinical innovation through scholarships for PhD and Masters students in biomedical engineering and imaging sciences. Together, these joint activities will create the King’s-Hinduja Healthcare Partners Academy.”
Gopi goes on: “I am also focused on a new project in India, the World Knowledge Centre.”
According to the family, SP had often spoken about the World Knowledge Centre. “Essentially, the Hinduja group recognises India’s growing knowledge and expertise in scientific and medical research. With the group’s decades long experience in healthcare provision with the Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai, the group has ambitious plans to develop a research centre. More important, the group is seeking partnerships and collaborations with leading universities and researchers in the UK and the USA – we plan to build on the Kings College London partnership and seek other collaborations for joint research projects.”
Gopi has also published a book called I Am?, which puts together his views on spirituality and the universal fraternity espoused by world religions. This reflects the Hinduja family’s way of doing business in multicultural geographies. He points out that ancient Indians had a saying in Sanskrit, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, meaning “The world is one family”.
The book carries an endorsement by King Charles, who sent his private secretary, Sir Clive Alderton, to the Hinduja Diwali party in October 2022. There hasn’t been a Diwali party hosted by the Hindujas since SP’s death. Most probably there will be a three year period of mourning.
The book also has a foreword by H.E Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, the cabinet minister of tolerance and co-existence of the UAE, in which he writes: “This important book makes us aware of the considerable common ground among the tenets of different religions and faiths. It makes the point that uniting people of different faiths and harnessing the core values that are common to all religions should lead people everywhere to work together.”
He added that I Am? “is a call to all of us to honour our common humanity”.
Only someone of Gopi’s standing could have elicited such sympathetic understanding from the devout Muslim ruling class in the Gulf. Now, even Hindu temples are allowed, which would have inconceivable in the past.
In Delhi, the book was launched by the vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar, who called it a “thought-provoking assimilation by Gopichand P. Hinduja. This launch taking place in
Bharat, the land of Sanatan, the cradle of one of the oldest civilisations and global spiritual centre, carries deep significance. This book underscores the universal relevance of Bharatiyata, virtuosity that is discernible in all faiths. It exemplifies unity in diversity.”
Gopi was inspired by the conversations he had with spiritual masters and international leaders and felt compelled to compile the book to help the younger generation navigate a globalised and interconnected world, explained his brother Ashok.
“Our businesses have flourished because promoting multicultural understanding has been an article of faith for us,” Ashok told the launch. “GP often wondered, if religion is a stepping stone to discover one’s spirituality, then how is it ‘that which is supposed to unite us’ creates division?”
Gopi has also turned his attention to another vital, indeed life-giving sector – water, especially its conservation and purification.
The Hindujas say: “Our water projects have brought life to diverse terrains around the country – from the water-positive campus at Jhulelal Tirth Dham in Kutch to the Nilgiris Eco Park built with the Indian Army at Wellington to the water harvest project with the State Reserve Police Force at Daund, Maharashtra. The Hinduja Foundation has rejuvenated springs, lakes and ponds in Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. A particularly heartwarming development is led by our women water ambassadors in six districts of Rajasthan. They are the torch-bearers, spreading the message of water conservation across Rajasthan.
“Our Uttarakhand Springshed Project has been adopted as a template to bolster the resilience of the critical Ganga Basin. To harness collective wisdom, the Hinduja Foundation is building a national water repository in collaboration with other organisations in the field. By 2025, we should be able to deliver crucial insights to the Indian social sector to improve national water-security.”
Some of the younger Hinduja women are also making their mark. A case in point is Ashok’s youngest daughter, Satya Hinduja, who lives mainly in New York, but comes frequently to London to see her uncle, Gopi. Satya works with Gopi’s daughter, Rita Chhabria, who runs an Indian charity called the Mukul Madhav Foundation.
She believes she can use the power of sound to help the process of healing in patients. Earlier this year, she visited the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to demonstrate an organisation she has set up, the “Alchemic Sonic Environment”, to patients, staff and visitors.
Satya’s website explains: “Alchemic Sonic Environment (ASE) is working at the intersection of sound, music, health and technology. We create multi-sensory immersive experiences to foster deep connections with oneself and the ecosystem. ASE blends timeless wisdom with emerging technologies, aiming to enhance physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. ASE leverages the therapeutic potential of sound for health and longevity.”
It is worth remembering that it is wealth that sustains the Hindujas’ charitable work.
A world away, Gopi is delighted that his £1.3bn hotel conversion of the Old War Office into the Raffles at OWO in Whitehall is proving to be a great success. Indeed, the hotel is becoming fashionable.
The hotel has already won numerous awards. For example, it was included among Time Magazine’s 50 top hotels last year. It’s one thing for rich businessmen to dine out on expenses in one of the hotel’s nine restaurants. Perhaps, by and by, Gopi will add an Indian restaurant for those who would rather have a masala dosa.
But rather intriguingly, The Spectator magazine, chose Gopi’s hotel for its annual Parliamentarian Awards.
“The great and the not-so-good of British politics crammed themselves into the opulent splendour of the Old War Office in Whitehall to toast, commiserate and celebrate the memories of this year,” the magazine’s diarist, Steerpike, noted. “Politicians of every stripe were in attendance.”
The Spectator was bought for £100m by Sir Paul Marshall, a hedge fund tycoon and major investor in the right wing GB News. He was a guest, as was Reform leader, Nigel Farage, who was named “New Comer of the Year”.
Among other guests were James Arbuthnot (Parliamentarian of the Year, who has done much to expose the Post Office scandal), Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner (Politician of the Year), Tina Stowell (Peer of the Year, presumably for threatening the National Trust when she was chair of the Charity Commission), Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey (Disruptor of the Year), James Cleverly (Speech of the Year), Robert Jenrick (Politician to Watch).
Health secretary Wes Streeting, who was the guest of honour, posed for a photograph with the former Tory cabinet minister, Michael Gove.
The guests – elite influencers – would have been dazzled and gone away hoping Gopi would invite them back for a free meal.
Gopi’s reputation as a man of influence has certainly grown over the past year. It will be up to Sanjay and his generation to ensure his father’s legacy and that of his uncle, SP, is safeguarded in the years to come.
