Entrepreneur, pioneer, philanthropist, political campaigner and now a member of European Parliament, Dinesh Dhamija is a man of many parts.
In the early 1980s, he gave up his job at IBM to start a travel agency from a kiosk in Earl’s Court tube station in London. By 1996, the company employed over 235 people and had become the 10th largest leisure business. Soon after, Dhamija became an early dot-com pioneers as he took the business online with the launch of ebookers in 1999, UK’s first online travel agency.
He led the company for the next six years, surviving not only the
dot-com bust but other challenges including the 9/11 attacks and the consequent global war on terror and natural disasters. The company sold in 2005 for £247 million, making Dhamija one of the richest Asians in Britain.
Perhaps his own trajectory makes immigration issues, especially of the South Asian diaspora, close to Dhamija’s heart, “We don’t hear about what Asian immigrants contribution, that we are law-abiding, we bring so much to this country. These stories need to be told.”
Following the sale of ebookers, Dhamija founded the Copper Beech group, a property investment firm with interests in Romania and India. He also joined the charity sector, serving on boards of UK and international charities including LEPRA, dedicated to beating leprosy. In India, he has set up Shiksha, a charity that provides free education to 1,100 students and Chikitsa, a charity that gives free medicine to 1,20,000 people a year.
Dhamija is a big backer of the Liberal Democrats, the party he now represents in the European Parliament. He says, “I went into back office politics in November 2014 and worked my way up with various positions for the party.” His words belie the range and impact of his activities. He was appointed as a business adviser to the party leader in 2016, became the Deputy Treasurer in 2017 and was elected the Vice Chairman of the Federal Board, the governing body of the party in 2018.
He has emerged as a passionate voice for Remain and served as the spokesman and advisor for Open Britain. His electoral campaign also made his views amply clear, “I am a Remainer and in these elections, we were fighting the Brexit party. We wanted to give the other side of the story.”
He is clear why Britain must remain in the EU noting that “we cannot fight climate change as Britain alone but we have a chance as part of the EU. And we have a higher chance of better trade deals as part of the largest single market than as a smaller economy.”
But Dhamija’s interests in Britain’s ties with the Europe do not stop with Remaining. He reels off a dizzying list of issues including European arrest warrants, money laundering laws and more. In light of Dhamija’s achievements so far, perhaps these are achievable goals rather than a mere wishlist.