For Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia, coming to the UK was never the plan. Born in Uganda to an Indian family - part of a community that dated back to the British Empire's colonial expansion at the end of the nineteenth century - he found himself caught up in the expulsion of Indians by the dictator Idi Amin in 1971.

"I had a very happy childhood, and was part of a middle-class family," he recalls. "My father was in business, but it all abruptly came to an end when we were expelled from Uganda. I was 13 years old, and everything was taken away from us. We came here as refugees."

It was, to say the least, something of a culture shock. "It was extremely harsh, cold weather, when we arrived in October, going into the winter," he says. "I was thrown into a comprehensive school, in what was at that time an inner-city slum area of Paddington. The students were mostly from the Caribbean islands and they had no intention of studying and came and went as they pleased."

Having come from a private school in Uganda, Ahluwalia found he had little interest in education in the UK, and instead turned his attention to making money, buying and selling vouchers that entitled children to free school meals. "I would buy them at a discount price and then sell them during the day," he says. "I would buy them at a 50% discount, but then sell them at a 25% discount. I realised that I could make good money."

Alongside this, he started taking on jobs that would help the family make ends meet. "I started doing all sorts of work, at the local fruit-and-veg shop, in supermarkets and cleaning toilets," he says. "I then got involved with the markets of Portobello Road and Petticoat Lane and that was really when it struck me that there was a great opportunity in this country, and we could make something of it. It's in tough times that human beings rise to the challenge. Necessity is the mother of all invention."

Taking shelter

Before long, Ahluwalia would stumble upon the venture that would make his fortune, borrowing £5,000 from his father and taking out a bank loan to buy a car parts shop in Willesden in 1978, which he would subsequently rebrand as Euro Car Parts. "I'd always had a great interest in cars and when I was about 17 or 18 my £10 moped broke down, during heavy rain, outside an estate agent in Cricklewood," he recalls. "Taking shelter from the rain, I went in and pretended I wanted to buy a business. And they said this car parts business was going bankrupt and did I want to buy the stock and the assets. That's how I got involved in car accessories."

Initially the company traded in parts for British vehicles, sourcing items from wholesalers, but competition was fierce. With brands such as BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Audi becoming more popular, he identified a need for a cheaper source of parts for these vehicles and started importing these from overseas. "I started going over to Germany every Friday, coming back on a Sunday," he says. "I would go with an empty van and bring a full van back. I quickly developed a name for being able to get the parts substantially cheaper than anywhere else, and they were good quality." In time one shop became two, and the business expanded into warehouses to store parts. 

Alongside this, he developed a system to identify what parts were needed using number plate recognition, and moved from sourcing from wholesalers to direct from manufacturers. The company also started moving into the French and Italian markets, and eventually applied the same model to British parts. "Others were doing it too, but I just took some of the methods and improved them significantly," he says. "In the end, we had about 100 warehouses and 4,500 people. It was turning over nearly £400 million under my 100% ownership without owing anything to the bank."

Company secrets

One of the factors in the success of the company, believes Ahluwalia, was always saying ‘yes' to customers. "If a customer called up to ask if we had a part, we would always say ‘yes', regardless of whether we actually did or not," he recalls. "Then we would start the scramble to find that part, even if it ended up costing us more to buy last-minute than we would be able to sell it for. It was much more important to start a solid relationship with that customer." On occasion, in the early days, this even extended to deliberately giving customers the wrong part, knowing they would be back the next day, by which time the business would have found the correct one.

A proactive push on cross-selling also helped the business stand out. "Back then it was an order-taking industry," he says. "If someone called and said they wanted something, we would ask if they needed all the associated parts that go with that. If we didn't do that, they would just go to the nearest shop or the warehouse and buy them there. That was linked to the incentives for the people who worked there, which was unheard of in the industry. We connected the interest of the business, the employee and the customer all together."

There were mistakes, too, though. Ahluwalia recalls a decision he made in 2008 - just before the financial crisis hit - which almost cost him everything. "By then we were a really successful business with branches all over the country and I was desperate to keep growing at a rapid rate," he says. "I was presented with the opportunity to acquire one of our biggest competitors, and I did it almost without a second thought.

"I took the decision without doing proper due diligence," he admits. "I took them at their word and thought all the lawyers just wanted to charge us big fees and waste our time. Gut feeling is something I really trust, but in this case it took me in totally the wrong direction. Once I got into the business, I realised that we had been sold a dud and it was a black hole. It took a year to get to the point where we were out of the woods, but there were moments when the whole business nearly went under."

In late 2011, Ahluwalia sold the business to US firm LKQ Corporation for £225 million. "I had always a vision to one day realise my hard work," he says. "Everything I had was in the business, so I had no personal funds, and I never borrowed anything. Whatever profit I made, it went into business and just grew. I had had a couple of bumps along the way which were narrow escapes so I thought I had to do this."

Originally the idea was to sell half the company but LKQ wanted the whole business, with Ahluwalia staying on for a couple of years to oversee the transition. "I still grew it by several times and expanded into Europe before I stepped down completely in 2018," he adds.

New horizons

The challenge then was what to do next, and the answer lay partly in setting up the Dominvs Group; a real estate group that invests in regeneration, hotel, residential and retail projects. "Once I realised I had a pile of cash that wasn't doing much in the bank, I started thinking I had to grow it," he says.

"At the same time, my three sons were coming out of university and wanted to create something from the beginning, which they could say was also theirs. I wanted them to feel a sense of ownership and belonging, rather than having something just being gifted to them." Today, the three brothers - Husnell, Preet and Jay - effectively run the business, assisted by a strong non-executive team, and drawing on his own advice when needed.

"Two-thirds of our money is deployed in real estate," he says. "But under that, there are many verticals. Today we've got around 6,000 student bedrooms and six hotels under construction and we've bought the Chelmsford shopping centre, which is a 10-acre site. The plan is to rejuvenate it so that it becomes a destination. We want to put in a mixed-use scheme, with a boutique hotel, other community and social uses, and destination leisure. We also buy a lot of end-of-use buildings, which we then rejuvenate, add additional space and turn into student or other housing."

Other roles include non-executive chairman at the Indian arm of the global branding firm Principle India, non-executive chairman of kitchenware retailer thinKitchen and a board member at engine manufacturer Continental Engines.

Increasingly, though, his focus is now on investing in other businesses. He's a major investor in Concept Ventures, which supports early-stage start-ups, and has also invested directly in UK firms including pizza chain Vapiano UK; the van and commercial car parts business Digraph; United Fitness Brands, which includes KOBOX, Triyoga, Boom Cycle and Barrecore; and VAR Capital.

In future, this is likely to see him investing more in Indian technology firms, which links in with his own plans to return to his roots. "My intention is to go back to India and make that my principal residence," he says. "I've always wanted that since I was a kid. My grandfather retired there and my father was going to go there, but he died prematurely. I have already got two or three properties there, but I'm buying a substantial property there now, which will allow me to spend extended periods of time there."

He's earmarked around £10 million to invest in Indian start-ups over the next two or three years, and has already backed e-waste recycling business EcoCentric and is currently working on an investment into an online automotive parts retailer. He's also planning to get more involved in charity work, with a particular focus on the welfare and education of children, having set up the Ahluwalia Family Foundation in 2019.

Sound advice

Ahluwalia says he looks for two things when he invests in a business. "First and foremost is the idea," he says. "I'm looking for businesses where there is scope for scale and the application is international,

so it's not just made for India. I'm looking for things that get innovated in India but at some stage will get picked up by the international private equity houses, and eventually go on the stock exchange."

The second factor is the person behind it. "Have they got sufficient gain in the business? Do they believe in it? Passion and obsession are very important; competency can come afterwards," he says. "But how much do they believe in it? How much do they need it to succeed? Will they give it all they have? If they hit the bumpy road, will they give up?"

His advice for other entrepreneurs is to make sure any business is scalable. "A lot of people go into businesses where the cost base increases at the same level as the growth," he says. "There are many opportunities today where revenue exponentially grows and outstrips the cost base."

He's also a big believer in the power of advertising; something he believes is vital to growing a business, even in difficult economic times. "The first time we took out an ad in the local newspaper, I was astounded that you could see its impact in the financial results," he recalls. "You would literally see a bump in the number of calls and sales in the branch, and the impact was so much more significant than we could have imagined. From that point on, I diverted half of our revenue into advertising and marketing. For every £2 that landed in the till, about £1 of it would go on that."

Outside of work, Ahluwalia spends much of his time socialising, and split between the UK and India, as well as with his family, including four grandchildren. His main hobby, though, is classic cars, and he's built up a collection of vehicles from the 1950s and 1960s. "They all go on a three to four-year restoration programme and then they come back, with some of the modern mod-cons discretely fitted in there. You can't see them but it makes the whole experience of driving them that much more pleasurable." It's an apt analogy for his own career, taking him from second-hand car parts to the very top of the business world.

He has some final words of advice for those looking at building their own empires. "Today, when I look back, it's not the big financial milestones that I remember but the people I worked with," he says. "For example, at one of our first stores, there was a lady down the road who would come into the store every single weekend complaining that her car wasn't feeling well. We kept going over to take a look, but there never seemed to be anything wrong.

"At a loss, I once said to her, "Maybe the car is actually sick! Put two paracetamols in the tank in the morning and two in the evening" as a joke, not expecting her to take it seriously. She was back the month after to say thank you and that after the paracetamol her car was much better! It can be easy as an entrepreneur to fixate on the next sale and scaling your business and, while that's still important, it's the people and stories that you really remember and cherish."

Timeline

How Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia went from child refugee to international tech investor

1958: Born in Uganda

1971: Arrives in London, after the Indian population was expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin

1978: Took over Highway Autos, run from a shop in Willesden, London

1979: Rebranded the business to Euro Car Parts

2011: Sold Euro Car Parts to the US firm LKQ Corporation for £225 million

Set up real estate firm Dominvs Group

2014: Stepped back from a full-time post at Euro Car Parts

2018: Stepped down entirely from Euro Car Parts

2019: Launched the Ahluwalia Family Foundation to support causes and projects in the UK and India