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NR
NRIs return
to Punjab to set up shop-and create wealth for the state
Sons Of Fortune
India Today
By Ramesh Vinayak, MAY 05, 2003
When London-based hotelier Jagpal Singh Khangura returned to his
home state Punjab in 1990 to build a hotel, the state government
was incredulous, even discouraging. Punjab was wracked by terrorism
and real-estate prices were rock bottom. The then governor S.S.
Ray even advised him to invest the money in a hospital instead.
But Khangura was unyielding and bought a prime piece of land in
Ludhiana, the state's industrial capital. A Rs 110-crore investment
and over a decade later, Punjab's first five-star hotel, the Park
Plaza, was commissioned in January last year.
"It's an investment guided by instinct to keep in touch with
my roots," says 65-year-old Khangura, who left a low-paid teaching
job to emigrate to a recession-hit Britain in the early 1960s. Beginning
with odd jobs-driver, tea blender, postman-he finally bought a street
cafe in Southall in 1966 and turned it into a £100 million
hospitality business. Today, he has named the Rs 12,000-a-night
presidential suite in his 150-room hotel "Latala suite"
after his ancestral village. He may be a British citizen, but Ludhiana
is the first home for him and his wife Gurdial Kaur. "Doing
business here is more gratifying. It allows me to do something for
the people of India," says Khangura who also plans to set up
a Rs 40-crore dairy unit in his village.
Khangura represents the new crop of NRI wealthmakers in Punjab
who are driven not so much by nostalgia as the passion to replicate
their success stories back home. They are the forerunners of a trend
that augurs well for a state with meagre NRI investments. In the
past decade, the NRI investment in the industrial sector was less
than Rs 200 crore against proposals of Rs 700 crore, even though
there are roughly two million expatriates of Punjabi origin abroad.
These are the first-generation emigrants who ventured abroad seeking
better opportunities and ended up creating incredible rags-to-riches
stories. Their keen business sense is now pulling them back home.
Drawn by the advantages of doing business in post-liberalisation
India, they are extending their core strengths to Punjab.
Khangura's son, Jasbir Singh Jassi, agrees. "India allows
you to implement ideas much faster than anywhere else." So,
one of the floors of the family hotel has his Rs 10-crore software
company that designs education content for British schools. And
in order to beat bureaucratic hurdles, NRI magnates are using their
business ventures to cultivate clout. "I did not have to shell
out a single penny as bribe," says Khangura, who doesn't hide
the family's political ambitions as a corollary to its business
success. His wife contested the previous assembly elections as the
Congress nominee and has since been nursing her constituency.
Despite the state Government's attempts to woo entrepreneurs with
off-the-shelf industrial plots and single-window clearances, many
investors still perceive business enterprise as risky and feel more
at ease putting their money in real estate. In the past eight years,
NRI investments in real estate have been pegged at Rs 1,000 crore-a
key factor in the buoyant property prices across the state. "It
is the safest bet," says Major Singh Sahota, who has shifted
from Vancouver to Jalandhar and invested Rs 7 crore in a shopping
plaza. "I am getting a safe return while bringing up my children
in the culture that we were missing abroad," he says.
khangura’s elder son is 38-year-old and married to the grand
daughter of partap singh kairon, ex chief minister of punjab, while
her younger son is also married and settled, which is probably a
many years away from schooling and college.
In 2002, at 64, Gurdial Kaur Khangura is more an adoring grandmother
than a politician. She has left London, where she has spent the
better part of her life, to contest as the Congress candidate from
Kila Raipur, a seat the party has never won. A political novice,
Khangura is counting on the Rs 15 lakh spent on community work in
the area by her husband, who owns a £100-million (Rs 680 crore)
business in England...
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