The death in London on May 17 of Srichand Parmanand Hinduja at age 87 received grudging paragraphs and cursory coverage in the Indian print and television media, given to saturation coverage when politicians and movie stars with relatively modest achievements go the way of all flesh.
The seeds of the global Hinduja family were laid by Parmanand Hinduja who built a modestly successful carpets trading business in Karachi, Sindh in pre-partition India. However, this business was shut down when after Partition the family fled to India in 1947. In Mumbai, Parmanand started over as a commodities trader (onions, potatoes, iron ore) and built up a sizeable trade with Iran. But with growth and development of business in India severely curtailed by pervasive licence-permit-control raj of the Indira years, the family moved to Iran and during the Reza Shah Pehlavi years, built a formidable fortune trading in commodities. However with the return of Ayatollah Khomeini from exile and the beginning of clergy dominance in Iran, SP read the writing on the wall and liquidated, moving the family fortune to Geneva and London in the nick of time before rigid foreign exchange controls were imposed.
In the UK where business is governed by rule of law, under SP’s leadership the Hindujas purchased British Leyland’s truck manufacturing business in India (now Ashok Leyland) and the French oil company Chevron, and against all odds, established a bank in Switzerland (Hinduja Bank), made sound investments in real estate, emerging to top the Sunday Times league table of UK’s rich with a net worth estimated at $31.7 billion in 2022. Real estate assets include Carlton House Terrace, the Xanadu-style Hinduja family residence, down the Mall from Buckingham Palace and the under-construction Raffles Hotel which is slated to emerge as Europe’s most luxurious.
Unfortunately in recent years, cracks have appeared in the brothers ‘everything belongs to all and nothing to one’ wealth sharing philosophy with the next generation falling out. But that does not detract from the heroic adventures, leadership and sense of timing of SP, perhaps the last of the old-world business tycoons of the 20th century.
