Gopichand Hinduja and his family topped the Sunday Times Rich List 2025 with a net worth of Rs 33,67,948 crore, beating the second holder, David and Simon Reuben and family, with a margin of Rs 8,042 crore. The billionaire retained his title of being the wealthiest in the UK despite a significant drop in net worth.
Gopichand Hinduja is a key figure in the influential Hinduja family, which manages the multinational conglomerate, the Hinduja Group. This diverse enterprise spans industries such as trucks, lubricants, banking, and cable television.
Here are 5 points to know about him and his family:
1.) Gopichand ascended to the role of chairman in May 2023 following the death of his older brother, Srichand Hinduja.
2.) The family has significant real estate holdings in London, including the Raffles London hotel, situated in the historic Old War Office building in Whitehall.
3.) A 1959 graduate of Jai Hind College, Mumbai, he received an honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Westminster and an Honorary Doctorate of Economics from Richmond College, London, according to the group’s website.
4.) Gopichand lives in London, while his younger brother Prakash lives in Monaco, and their youngest sibling, Ashok, manages their interests in India from Mumbai.
5.) Under his leadership, the Group acquired Gulf Oil in 1984 and three years later took over Ashok Leyland, marking the first significant NRI-led investment in India.
Bitter family feud
In November 2022, the billionaire Hinduja brothers called a truce on a bitter power struggle that threatened the future of their business empire.
The brothers agreed to halt reams of litigation across Europe, ending, for now, a feud that was tearing the once tightly knit British-Indian group apart.
With accusations of everything from a funding squeeze to misappropriated cash, the fight had drawn excoriating criticism from a London judge, especially over the care of the family patriarch, Srichand Hinduja — throwing open the possibility of a breakup of the ownership structures behind the century-old conglomerate.
SP, as the 86-year-old is known, suffers from dementia, and the court was told that the family’s dispute went so deep that he was days away from being transferred to a government-run NHS hospital.
At the heart of the battle was a pact signed by the four brothers in 2014 that “everything belongs to everyone and nothing belongs to anyone.” The three other brothers had claimed that the letter governed the succession planning for the century-old conglomerate, a declaration that was challenged by Srichand’s descendants, who claimed that his branch of the family was being sidelined in the group.
That battle ended after lawyers for Gopichand Hinduja said in June that the family had agreed to effectively tear up the arrangement.
(With inputs from PTI)
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