From Indian entrepreneur to UK multi-millionaire

Wednesday, February 09, 2011 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: India | Tags: business, entrepreneur, interview, Bespoke magazine

Gurbachan Chadha arrived in the UK with just £10 in his pocket. Now he’s a multi-millionaire who was cited in The Sunday Times Rich List as one of Britain’s top Asian entrepreneurs. Here, Gurbachan Chadha reveals how his sense of humour opened the doors to doing business in the UK.

“I’m like a joke machine,” says Gurbachan Chadha. “Always have been, it’s true. Name anything, I have a joke for it. Go on, name anything.”

“Er… ok, how about cars?”

“I found two men taking off the front wheels of my car. ‘What are you doing?’ I said. ‘We’re taking these wheels,’ they said. ‘You can have the back two.’ ‘But that’s my car!’ I said. ‘That’s what we’ll say, too, if anyone comes.’”

Now in his 70s, Chadha lives in Whitefield, just outside Manchester. He was about to catch a plane to India when we spoke. Having already been runner-up in a British TV comedy competition, he was off to discuss a TV show over there, and to attend a wedding.

Weddings, marriages and wives crop up regularly in his routine. The jokes tumble from him effortlessly. “In Paris I saw a lady wearing her wedding ring on the wrong finger. When I asked her why, she said it was because she was advertising she had married the wrong man, and she was still available…

“The phone rang and my wife answered. Usually for every call she talks for an hour, but this time she put the phone down after half an hour. ‘Who was that?’ I asked her. ‘Wrong number,’ she said…”

Being funny is Gurbachan Chadha’s true passion. Only now that he has made his fortune has he had time to indulge it. He arrived in England in 1971 with just £10 and soon set up his own wholesale business, travelling to seaside towns to sell fancy goods to shopkeepers and gradually building more credit as people began to trust him.

He opened a shop in 1976 and built up the business to such an extent that by 2003 he could sell out for a whopping £45 million, and was cited in The Sunday Times Rich List as one of Britain’s top Asian entrepreneurs.

His sense of humour opened the door to a lot of people.

“There was this guy in Blackpool. I tried to see him seven times, but he was always too busy. One day his staff offered me a cup of tea because it was raining and cold outside. I brought some cake in from my car, started telling some jokes, and the boss eventually came out and asked what the laughter was about. His secretary explained and he invited me into his office. I got a big order from him. This sort of thing often happened. It got to the point where people said, ‘Come on, give me a joke and I’ll give you an order.’”

Chadha obviously has a strong female fan base – of his 1,057 Facebook friends, around 1,000 are female, he says. He puts jokes online every day. “It’s my nature; I make jokes on any subject, but no politics, no religion… and I don’t take any money from anybody, I don’t need to. It’s all for charity – I just like making people happy.”

Before he rings off, what about his real wife? He cheerfully admits she can get tired of his relentless string of funnies. “But I always tell people I am a millionaire because of my wife. Before I met her I was a multi-millionaire.”

Interview: Gaythorne Silvester; photography: © James Pfaff. This article first appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Bespoke magazine. To view the current magazine, download the PDF here. Or to subscribe to receive future editions, either electronically or as a hard copy, please email your name, address and preferred format to bespoke@uk.gt.com

If you are a South Asian company looking to invest or list in the UK, Grant Thornton’s dedicated South Asia Group has the international capability, the cultural understanding and the partner commitment to help you drive your business forward. For further information, visit our South Asia Group page.

You might also find these posts useful:

* Story of the deal: NeutraHealth plc bought by Indian pharma company
* Indian cross border M&A closes the year on a high
* Vince Cable highlights opportunities in UK-India trade