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Vraj, Kamal and Sunil Pankhania

Vraj, Kamal and Sunil Pankhania

FOUNDER and now chairman of Westcombe Group, Vraj Pankhania has led the business to become one of the UK’s most successful residential property developers. The family-owned business is now run by Vraj’s sons Kamal, who is the chief executive and managing director, and Sunil, chief operations director. The business specialises in renovating and converting Grade I and Grade II listed buildings. In January, Acre Hotels, the hospitality arm of the Westcombe Group, opened their latest hotel, Hampton by Hilton London Old Street, a £13m property at the heart of Shoreditch in east London.

It has an unusual double basement design, with two separate basements of five metres and 10 metres depth, and has an ‘Excellent’ rating from BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), one of the most popular and internationally recognised green building rating systems in the world. “I’m proud to see the hotel open and taking in guests to enjoy our hard work. As with any large-scale building in central London, it is not without its challenges, but we’re experts in dealing with sites like Old Street, and I want to thank all of our team who have made it a success,” Kamal said. “We are confident that the hotel will serve its customers and the local community well. We are delighted to have worked with as established a brand as Hampton by Hilton, and look forward to building more hotels with them in the future.”


The brothers have been overseeing the day to-day running of the business since 2003. Ka mal has played a significant role in expanding the company’s activities outside of London. After studying construction management and real estate development at University College London, Sunil joined the family business es as chief operations officer, and has been leading the management, development and progression of the company’s projects. “Family plays a vital role in the running of the Westcombe Group. I was keen to ensure that my sons, Kamal and Sunil, understood the importance of hard work, perseverance, and the value of money from a young age – there fore, they have been working in the business since they were teens,” Vraj has commented, after winning the Family Business of the Year award at the 2022 Asian Business Awards.

He started the Westcombe Group in 1975, using a £5,000 loan, and grew the busi ness over the decades to one of the UK’s top 25 property developers through his perseverance, hard work, and savvy entrepreneurialism. Overcoming myriad planning and development challenges, he has led the company in creating beautiful new developments at sites, including St Bernard’s Hospital, Ealing, Connaught Barracks, Woolwich, and the Chocolate Factory, Old Street. Westcombe Group launched the Dholak Partnership in 2019, an affordable housing subsidiary.

It began letting properties to key workers during the pandemic, ensuring that they had a safe and local accommodation for them and their families. The family plans to grow the Dholak Partnership to over 1,000 properties by 2030, so that as many key work ers as possible can access such housing. “It is no secret that London is at the centre of the UK’s housing crisis. One in 10 London households in need of housing are stuck on waiting lists for as long as five years due to a ‘chronic shortage’ of affordable homes. That’s why Westcombe Group set up Dholak Partner ship Ltd, the business’ own so cial housing association, to provide affordable homes among their developments, as part of a wider move by prop erty developers to register their own housing association arms”, Vraj previously told the GG2 Power List. Pankhania’s family originally hails from Gujarat, India, and travelled to East Africa over a century ago. Born in humble circumstances in Kenya and having been forced to relocate to the UK in 1968, Vraj successfully started his own property development after spending his early years in London, dabbling in car dealerships, selling and buying motors. “My father started working for the British Army in the construction in dustry, building camps and he has always been in construction. So the property business runs in the blood,” he has said. The family has never forgotten its humble beginnings, and created the Westcombe Foun dation in 2008, supporting a wide range of phil anthropic projects around the world as part of their commitment to give back. Over three decades, the Pankhania family has donated millions of pounds through the foundation and Vraj is personally involved with every project, from transforming cancer treat ment after witnessing poor facilities in India, distributing artificial limbs and funding cata ract surgeries in Kenya, to rebuilding schools in earthquake-torn Nepal.

In Britain, he support ed Centrepoint, Crisis and the Trussell Trust to help those in dire poverty as the cost-of living crisis gripped the nation. At the 25th anniversary of the Asian Business Awards in November 2023, the family were honoured with the Phi lanthropy Award in recogni tion of their charitable work. “My experiences of poverty in my formative years have stuck with me throughout my career. I vividly remember my father still giving back to society despite not having much for himself. As such, I have always made a conscious effort to pass down that same burning desire to create posi tive change to my sons, Kamal and Sunil,” Vraj wrote in Eastern Eye in March last year. The foundation has been a four-year principal sponsor of the highly prestigious Royal Charity Polo Day, sponsoring sit-down dinners for 1,000 people. These events raised £1million for the charities Tusk Trust and Sentebale, the chosen causes of Prince William and Prince Harry. Vraj was admitted to the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), the ociety for the encouragement of commerce, manufacturing and arts, as a Fellow last year.

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