WE meet at Lord Bilimoria’s local - what could be more appropriate? And today
the pub, in west London’s smart Parsons Green, has opened especially early
to accommodate its favourite neighbourhood peer.
“I love real ale,” says Bilimoria. Sadly we are drinking coffee – 10.30am is
too early for pint-drinking, even for a journalist and a lord.
In fact, Bilimoria, 46, loves all beer but has made his fortune with just one
– Cobra, the lager company he founded, based on a hunch that Britain
deserved a less gassy beer to drink with Indian food.
That was 18 years ago, since when Cobra – British-based, Indian-styled – has
matured into this country’s fastest-growing “world beer”, and Bilimoria, a
vibrant, articulate speaker, has become one of its most prominent Asian
entrepreneurs.
Brought up in India, but based here since the age of 19, he entered the House
of Lords last year as a cross-bencher. This year, with a new chief executive
and new marketing director at Cobra, he wants to push his beer – already a
staple in supermarkets and Indian restaurants – into 20,000 mainstream pubs
and clubs.
“This is our biggest challenge so far,” he says. “We are in the top 15 premium
lagers in Britain, and we need to get to the level of Becks and Grolsch, and
be in the top 10. If we get the distribution, we will be there.”
But Cobra, with revenues of £43m (£126m by retail value), is still a tiddler
by global beer standards. Competitors like Inbev (Becks, Stella Artois) and
SAB Miller (Grolsch, Perroni) have sales of closer to £10 billion.
Cobra has even run at a loss recently, because it is investing to expand, here
and in India, where it is growing even faster. Small brands get swallowed
all the time as the beer market consolidates. For how long can Bilimoria
keep ploughing his lonely furrow?
For as long as is necessary, he says with a smile.
Thickset and suavely charming, he speaks posh Anglo-Indian, more rooted in
Cambridge – where he studied – than Hyderabad, where he was born. He oozes
executive confidence.
But behind the exuberance, his face looks pouchy with tiredness. He has a
reputation for packing his diary, dashing between breakfasts at The
Wolseley, sittings of the House of Lords, and engagements at a long list of
charitable and Anglo-Indian causes.
Then there’s the business to run. Is the appointment of a new chief executive
at Cobra – Adrian McKeon, formerly with Beam Global Spirits – an
acknowledgment that, in the past, Bilimoria took on too much?
He nods. Yet still he oversees everything as executive chairman?
Bilimoria laughs. “When I complain about having too much to do, my wife always
says ‘it’s your choice’.”
So he lectures, he tours, and he has produced a book, Bottled For Business, on
how he made Cobra a success. He has chaired the trade body Indo-British
Partnership for the past five years, and been made Representative Deputy
Lieutenant for Hounslow. He has even been on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs
(his favourite tune: Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World).
It has brought him, and Cobra, a profile beyond the size of the business. Is
he taking a leaf from Sir Richard Branson’s book?
He shrugs. Broader interests make him a better businessman, he says.
And it’s part of his Parsi faith to give something back – the religion spawns
many dedicated Indian business leaders, including Ratan Tata, whose Tata
group bought the steelmaker Corus in 2006.
Bilimoria also just enjoys being busy, like his father, who rose to be a
lieutenant-general in the Indian army. “Dad would never stand still, he was
always busy. You never saw more than one file on his desk, even when he was
commanding 350,000 men. I learnt everything about people from him.”
It led Bilimoria to create a clever business, still based round the corner
from his home in Chelsea. Originally aimed just at Indian restaurants, Cobra
now produces a range of lagers, from super-strong to low calorie and
alcohol-free, bottled and draught, but commissions others to make the
product: Wells & Young’s in Britain, and Browar Belgia in Poland.
It bought its first brewery, in India, only last year. Till then, it was a
virtual beer company, with a product developed in India but produced here –
even though drinkers thought he shipped it in.
Just as significant is how Bilimoria has kept control. Trained as an
accountant before he went to Cambridge, he has used a variety of debt and
financial instruments to avoid selling big stakes in Cobra to others, while
pulling in investment.
So he still retains 67% of Cobra, a figure that will drop to 51% eventually,
when executive share options are vested. “Yes, my financial training
helped,” he nods, “but I am always thinking ahead.”
The company, however, could have grown faster if backed by a bigger parent,
and has had rocky patches. It pulled out of America recently and has just
outsourced marketing of its General Bilimoria wines – named after
Bilimoria’s father – to one of its distributors here.
Rivals at the big beer companies, who have run the rule over Cobra, say it is
a good beer, a great niche, and a company with terrific PR, but not without
its problems. The Cobra founder believes his business is worth £150m; they
don’t.
Nor do they believe Cobra will sweep the floor with others in India where the
competitors include Vijay Mallya, billionaire owner of Kingfisher, and SAB
Miller. There is huge growth potential there, says one rival executive, but
it’s “as likely to go to the big boys as to Cobra”.
That won’t put off Bilimoria, for whom every glass is half-full, not
half-empty. “In volume terms, we could be bigger in India than the UK within
three years,” he claims.
And don’t discount Bilimoria’s own celebrity in India, say colleagues. Dynshaw
Italia, Cobra’s chief operating officer, says his boss has a growing profile
as the local boy who made it big in Blighty. “He’s the only person I have
ever seen being asked for autographs after making a speech.”
Bilimoria says his peripatetic childhood – the family followed his father to a
new posting every two years – made him adaptable. He also had business in
the blood: his maternal great grandfather ran a liquor company. And he has
always loved beer, from his earliest days drinking with his father’s
officers in the mess.
Others point to his passion, his temper and an ability to think “outside the
box”. While still at the accountancy firm Arthur Young, his first employer,
he talked his way into Cambridge at the age of 24. He credits his attempts
to become president of the debating union there – he failed – with teaching
him how to sell. “You go door to door, you keep trying, you persevere.”
He applied the same principles to building his beer business, first through
Indian restaurants, then the on-trade, after forays into importing fell
through. He quotes his horrified father: “You’ve got no money, £20,000 of
student debt and you want to be an import-export wallah? Get a proper job.”
Yet somehow, Bilimoria got it right. Cobra wasn’t the first Indian-style beer
brand – Kingfisher was here eight years earlier – nor the first brand to
target Indian restaurants. Carlsberg, served at the iconic Veeraswamy, said
to be London’s oldest Indian restaurant, had a virtual monopoly.
But he was young and charismatic, and prepared to drive his samples round
Britain’s burgeoning Asian restaurant community – Indians, Pakistanis and
Bangladeshis. Many didn’t even drink alcohol but were happy to back a fellow
entrepreneur.
And throughout his firm’s development, he rarely faltered, even when cash-flow
crises loomed. Anuj Chande, a partner at the accountants Grant Thornton and
a long-term adviser, says Bilimoria walked away from many investors when he
didn’t like the demands they made. “I think he has grown the business as
fast as he could, but you have to have the systems in place.”
In the past, Bilimoria has run it tightly – Cobra paid no dividends in 2006 –
always pushing the firm to the limit. With its new executive team and bigger
ambitions in India, he is pushing it further still.
Jim Robertson, production and distribution director at Wells & Young’s,
warns that Bilimoria needs to stay visible here, not least because of his
links to the Asian restaurant sector (still nearly half of Cobra’s UK sales).
“To think of Cobra without his personality behind it is hard to believe,” says
Robertson. “He is so important to it.”
Could the credit crunch trip up Cobra? No, says Bilimoria, though if the
company can’t borrow enough to expand, it will have to seek alternatives. A
float of the company in India, where the economy is still growing fast, is
now more likely than in Britain.
Will he move the firm’s base there? “No, this is HQ,” he smiles. He is married
to a South African, but his four children are at school here, so moving back
is not an option.
He also advises the chancellor and has been critical of the government’s
recent attacks on nondoms. Is he one?
“No, I could be, but I have chosen not to be,” he says. “The strength of the
British economy is that it is the most open, and we must not jeopardise
that.”
Then he talks about plans to get Cobra back into America – by persuading
Anheuser-Busch, which produces a King Cobra malt liquor, to distribute the
lager. “It’s only a matter of time,” he says confidently, twice.
That determination, which can carry all before it, can’t be learnt. One day,
says Bilimoria, what he would really like to buy is a traditional, real-ale
brewery.
Do his friends at the recently merged Wells & Young’s know?
They do now. Before then, he has a flight to India to catch and a few more
ambitions to pursue. Cheers.
LORD BILIMORIA’S WORKING DAY
THE Cobra boss wakes at 6.30am and is driven to a breakfast meeting at The
Wolseley in Piccadilly. “Then I come back to the Cobra offices in Parsons
Green [west London],” says Lord Bilimoria.
He takes a 90-minute report from the chief executive every week, and will
oversee other issues. Bilimoria usually has a lunch meeting in the House of
Lords. “I try to be in the house for Question Time, then follow that with a
meeting in the City or back in the office.”
Most nights he has a work-related dinner or speaking event to attend. “I
rarely go to sleep before 1am. I normally need five to six hours’ sleep.”
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: November 26, 1961
Marital status: married, with four children
School: Hebron School, Ooty, southern India
University: Cambridge
First job: trainee accountant at Arthur Young
Salary: undisclosed, but estimated to be more than £250,000. He also
owns 67% of Cobra
Homes: Chelsea, Cape Town, Hyderabad
Car: blue Mercedes Coupé
Favourite book: The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
Favourite music: Louis Armstrong, Ravi Shankar, Rolling Stones,
Santana
Favourite film: Gandhi
Gadget: Blackberry Pearl
Last holiday: skiing in Chamonix
DOWNTIME
LORD BILIMORIA relaxes by travelling with his family. “We have property in
Cape Town, one of my favourite cities, and go to South Africa every
Christmas. We go to India every Easter.”
He also enjoys scuba diving, dinghy sailing and tennis. “I play once a week at
7am with the coach at the Harbour Club. It prevents me being completely
unfit.” Bilimoria spends his money on Indian art and property, but not cars.
“I still drive an 11-year-old Mercedes coupé. I bought it just before my
eldest son was born. I have driven every one of my children home from the
hospital in that car.”
