Lord Karan Bilimoria founder of Cobra Beer | Extraordinary Life Stories

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0:41Slackbot is different. It doesn't just know the facts. It knows your schedule. It can turn a brainstorm into a brief. And it doesn't need to be taught. Because Slackbot isn't just another AI. It's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com forward slash meet Slackbot to learn more. Lord Karen Billamoria, welcome. Thank you. I've been looking forward to this. Tell me, who is Lord Karen Billamoria? Well, delighted to be here. I am in familiar territory because I used to work just down the road when I was qualifying to be a chartered accountant with what is today EY, with Ernst & Young.

1:20So you knew exactly where you were coming. I know this area very well. Yeah. And I came to this country as a 19-year-old, and my family had been educated in the UK for three generations. on both sides. So I knew from the time I was born I would be educated at some stage in my life in the UK. And I came here to study after having graduated in India. And my father was in the Indian Army, so I come from a military background. And we traveled around a lot. I went to seven different schools, went to boarding school, went to university in India when I was just 16 years old. I was lucky. I skipped a couple of years, graduated 19, came here and I studied here for seven years.

1:57I then came up with the idea for Cobra Beer when I was studying and then decided not to be an investment banker, which would have been the normal course with a commerce degree, a law degree, and a qualified chartered accountant. I decided to do my own thing. And that's my background. And I come from the smallest minority community in the world. I'm a Zoroastrian Parsi. We're first in origin. We left what is today Iran over 1 ,000 years ago as refugees to India and settled there. And we kept our religion. And we are tiny in India, less than 60 ,000 people, less than 100 ,000 in the whole world.

2:36Beautiful introduction. There's a lot that's spinning in my head there. There's a lot of change for you when you're growing up. All those different schools. It's a very quick, if you like, into the education side of things. Do you think that stimulated the entrepreneurial side of things? Because the way you said about not going into investment banking, There might have been an expectancy, maybe from your father, family, but you chose that entrepreneurial route. Do you think that upbringing was a part of that? I think the moving around a lot. You learn to adapt. You learn to make friends. You learn to make the most of any place you go.

3:12I've learned from my parents and from literally being posted in every part of India, which is India is the most diverse country in the world in every way. It's most diverse in language, in race, in religion, in terrain, in every way. And I've lived in every part of India, thanks to my father. It's huge as well, isn't it? I've traveled around it. I remember just going from Udaipur to Agra, and it took like a day to get there. Just massive. And of course, now the largest populous country in the world with 1.4 billion people and the fastest growing major economy in the world. And in fact, the London Business School, which very kindly made me an honorary fellow recently, and which I'm an alumnus through executive education, they asked me for their alumni magazine, when can you remember was the earliest time you thought you had the traits or the makings of being an entrepreneur?

4:08And I thought very hard about it. And actually, it was when I was eight years old, and my father was commanding his battalion of Gurkhas. So I was brought up with Gurkhas. My father's battalion had won three Victoria Crosses in the Second World War. Two of them survived. One was posthumous. And I grew up from my earliest memories with two surviving Victoria Cross winners. I mean, what living legends. I mean, amazing inspiration. And my father's posted right down on the tip of India in a state called Kerala in the south of India. And the capital is Trivandrum. So we went there. And I was seven years old when we went there.

4:44and I went to the local, the best school in Kerala, the local school called Loyola school, Jesuit school. To this day, it's a best school in Kerala. And I remember for my eighth birthday, I was given a kukri, a little kukri, the knife the Gurkhas use as a present to me. And I can still picture in a green felt scabbard was this knife that was presented to me. I learned how to box at the age of eight. So I still box in the gym for fitness. and I learned at a very early age. And this school was very, very strict, and the priests were in their Jesuit robes. Once my teacher reported me to the headmaster because I brought comic books into the school.

5:25And the headmaster said, you brought comic books? I was caned straight away, on the spot, eight-year-old. And one day there was a diktat in the school. We learned everything in English. He said, everyone will have to learn Malialam, which is a local language of Kerala as a second language, Compulsory. I thought to myself, I don't want to do this. I went to the first Malayalam class, and I literally switched off. I said, I'm wasting my time. My father's going to get posted out of here in a couple of years, and this language is going to be of no use to me for the rest of my life. Why am I doing this?

5:58So I went back and complained to my parents, and my father said, look, you've already been caned once. Go and learn Malayalam. So I went back to the class again, and I was even more decided-like. I went back to my parents, and I complained again. They said, now we're going to report you to the headmaster. I said, why can't they teach us Hindi? Hindi is a national language of India, and I'm going to have to learn Hindi as a second language later on in senior school, and that'll be useful to me, and I'm going to have to learn it. Why can't we learn Hindi? Because they don't have a Hindi teacher here.

6:25That's why you can't. And I planted a seed in my father's mind. He went and spoke. I said, why can't they get a Hindi teacher? They don't have one. He went and spoke to the... and I said, there must be other children like me who are expats in the state from companies or armed forces who are going to be moving away who want to learn Hindi. They don't have a Hindi teacher. So then he went and spoke to the headmaster and said, look, my son has made the suggestion, why don't you get a Hindi teacher? Within a month, we had a Hindi teacher. There were 26 of us in that class. And the lesson I learned there was, okay, I was rebellious.

6:59Maybe that's the trait of being an entrepreneur. But more important, it's entrepreneurship is all about problems and solutions. If there's a problem, most people, the attitude is to complain about the from. You can complain forever. What are you going to do about it? What's the solution to it? And you find a solution and then you have to act on the solution. There's a discipline element to that as well. So if you look at what your father instilled in you and the respect you have when you talk about him, and I can relate to that with a grandfather that was a brigadier in the army and a wing commander in the RAF, and that sort of ripples through to your upbringing.

7:32But I've also been someone that's questioned. I've also been someone that kind of calls out, why do I have to do that and you either get punished for it and then you sort of shrink away or you get punished for it and then you try and think of a kind of a solution and come up with the idea to solve it. That early journey then Cobra and so on, you're still at the heart of the entrepreneur community. You're still so relevant and current. How have you managed to do that? It is all about rising to the challenge of the time and I can tell you many, many times in my, from a young age where I've had to get thrown in the deep end.

8:10So I went to my father's post to the UK for a couple of years as a lieutenant colonel, went back to India, and I went back to the only British boarding school in India to this day in South India. And I joined the school in April, and in May they had the exams for the whole academic year. And I joined at the end of the academic year. So I was going to a strange school, coming back to India from England, adapting to all that, adapting to starting at boarding school for the first time. And I had to cover the whole syllabus in all the subjects in four weeks. What do you do? You just have to do it.

8:47And I was, you know, I was very lucky. The deputy headmaster was a former all black rugby player. He said, what's your favorite sport? I said, I love, I mean, I play all sports. tennis is my pick. He said, you know, we haven't had a tennis tournament in a long time. He organized a tennis tournament just for me to make me settle in. What a great guy. And I was studying, studying, studying. And I did really well in those exams. I never looked back. When I skipped two years and went to university at the age of 16 in Hyderabad in India, to one of the famous universities in India, Samadhi University, I went straight in.

9:17I skipped my A-levels and the Indian equivalent. And all my other contemporaries were not only older than me, but they'd already studied. I did a commerce degree. They knew about accounting, they knew about economics, about management. It was all double Dutch to me. So I had to throw in the deep end. What do you do? You've got to get through that first year. You've got to pass. And I did really well. And I got through and I never looked back. So, you know, there are these times when you're just always facing challenges. You get on with it. When I became president of CBI, the Confederation of British Industry, as the first entrepreneur to become president, normally it's a gray-haired, you know, FTSE 100 chair, nothing wrong with them, very respected individuals and very capable, but the first time an entrepreneur, first time an ethnic minority, first time an Indian, first time somebody relatively younger.

10:03I didn't plan it, but I was the president during the pandemic. And there you are having to completely work in the biggest global crisis since the Second World War. And you're not only trying to save the business community, the economy, but also lives. and then you just go beyond what the normal remit. And then in the middle of it all, the Ukraine war started and we ended up doing humanitarian work helping Ukraine. So that's not in your job description, not in your remit, but as an entrepreneur, you just rise to that challenge, you get on with it. Is there one thing that stands out that you're most proud of?

10:38By far, the thing I'm most proud of is my family. I need to. I should have said that, but that is so lovely to hear. People say, and they're not a corny thing, people say, how do you do all the things you do? You know, I have three main parts of my life. One is my entrepreneurial business life. The other is my parliamentary life. I've been in the House of Lords, very lucky to be there for 19 years, and I love that. And the other is my academic life. I've been a university chancellor twice. I hold fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge at the moment. And I also am in the midst of my business doctorate back at Cambridge University.

11:12So I'm actually back as a student. So those are my three buckets of my life. And I have to juggle all three every day, sometimes several times a day, flitting from one to the other. And you've got to have an ability, one, to prioritize, to be able to switch off from one thing to another thing. You can't do any of that without a fantastic team. And I've got a wonderful team supporting me. In spite of all those three buckets, the one that is the most important is my family. And I will always put my family first. The number of entrepreneurs and successful business people that I've met, successful people in any career, who said, you know what I regret?

11:43I missed out on my children growing up. I didn't attend my children's matches. I didn't go to the sports day. However busy I was building a business from scratch with all the challenges, and it was really tough. I mean, I nearly lost my business three times. I never missed a single parents' day. I never missed a single parents' meeting. I never missed any sports matches. I went through every terms report one-to-one with each of my children throughout their school career, every subject by subject with them, and I did that throughout. Ah, glory to that. So that is, in the extreme case, in December 2024, we had a tragic accident.

12:18My older daughter fell from the balcony of her house in Cape Town, which we've had for almost two decades, in her bedroom. And she fell, freak accident, broke her neck, injured her spinal cord, and was paralyzed. And I went in the ambulance with her. Normally, my wife would always look after the children when they hadn't been well over the years. For some reason, I said, I'm going to be by her side. and right through the operation, the ICU, the rehab, residential rehab, outpatient rehab, and now she's back at work full time and it's been a miracle and God is great. But that just put your family first.

12:53Nothing else matters. It's really important in this hustle culture and we're both immersed in that sort of entrepreneurial world. I was given invaluable advice by a number of people older than me when I was starting a business and becoming a dad for the first time and they were all saying, John, doesn't matter how much money I've made, I have one regret. It was literally like a worn record. Spend time with your family. Do not be the guy that goes and makes loads of money or tries to make loads of money and doesn't spend time with the kids. That's your biggest regret. So the accolades, the awards, the things that you've achieved outside of family, what stands out for you as you're most proud of?

13:35Outside my family, I'm by far really, really proud of having created a household brand from scratch. They didn't exist. I started in 1990. I was against all the odds. Every Indian restaurant I went into to try and sell Cobra when I started at Carlsberg. Traditionally, because Viraswami, the oldest Indian restaurant, is about to celebrate its centenary next year. The king of Denmark used to love Viraswami. You send them Carlsberg beer from Denmark. They used to sell Carlsberg. And then, of course, when other Indian restaurants opened up, they wanted to be like Viraswami. So they'd all sell Carlsberg.

14:11So by the time you came to thousands of Indian restaurants, almost 100 % of them all sold Carlsberg. And then they had Kingfisher, which was the biggest beer brand in India. That was eight years before I even started. So it was against all the odds. I mean, they didn't need another beer. And my beer had to provide something that was going to be a benefit to the restaurant and a benefit to the consumers. And it was this less gassy, extra smooth taste where it sat in between a lager and an ale, the refreshment of lager, the smoothness of an ale combined. They made it not only a really drinkable beer, but the best beer to go with any food, and especially spicy food.

14:45And the benefit of that is that, A, as long as people are drinking responsibly, you'll sell more beer because it's smooth. The restaurant will sell more food because people are not bloated drinking gassy lagers. They'll eat more. And you've got happier customers who have a lovely beer that they enjoy. So that's how I managed to get in with the real benefit that was provided, a feature and a benefit in classic marketing terms that genuinely worked. And we built Cobra from scratch, from restaurants door to door. And I went to the top restaurants first. I got them to sell it. I was more expensive than the others.

15:18You've got to have the guts and be bold to be more expensive and say, my product's different. It's better. Big bottles, which is a challenge. That's the way beer sold in India. And then I built it up from there and got into other restaurants and eventually the supermarkets and then beyond restaurants and export to 40 countries. But it is today a household name in any corner of the United Kingdom. And I love that. And most importantly, people love the product. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast.

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16:58Do you back other entrepreneurs? And if you do, have you got a scenario where it's the person or the idea and the marriage of those who, of course, the great idea concept and the entrepreneur you just described is the win-win. But if you've ever had a scenario where there's an opportunity, you think that could be brilliant, But the actual found the entrepreneur is the wrong fit. And how would you get past that? In fact, just the other day, I asked a financier who backed me going back a few years ago. And I said, why did you back us? And he said, one, I genuinely thought you had a good business and a good brand.

17:38But I also believed in you as the entrepreneur. And I knew I could trust you because you have so many experiences where people let down, people who back them or invest in them by being unethical. He said, with you, I knew that you would try your best and it would work out and it worked out very well. So it is a combination of the two. You can have a great idea, but the founder or entrepreneur is not the right person. And the key there is this word integrity. And it's a, you know, I always ask, how do you define integrity? Doing the right thing. And lots of definitions. The best definition of integrity that I've ever heard is when I welcomed Rone Williams, who is now Lord Williams, fellow cross-pencher, who was the Artificial of Canterbury.

18:23He came to the Zoroastrian Center, my community in Harrow, and the patron of the community now welcomed him and made the welcoming speech. And when he then made his speech, he said, Lord Bellamore has used the word integrity three times in his speech, and the Zoroastrian Parisi community have a reputation for having integrity. And he said the word integrity comes from the Latin and Greek words, integra, integrum, that means wholeness. You cannot practice integrity if you're fragmented in front of the light. You can only practice integrity if you're whole and complete as a human being. So integrity is key.

18:55And if you can see integrity in somebody and you can trust them, then it usually works out. I'm so enjoying this conversation. There's a whole conversation to have about kind of failure and success and how entwined they are. just listening to the person that backed you there and the fact that they trusted you and they could see the drive, but also that you come through what you could have perceived as failure, you know, the obstacles. You were going around them. You were smashing them over, looking to get to the next stage. What is your relationship with failure? Do you even see it as a thing?

19:28Of course there's that attitude that failure is not an option. You've got to try and succeed. But there is a flip side to it. So one is, one of my favorite sayings is, good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. So you've got to make the mistakes and learn from the mistakes and move on. So I think failure is a part of success. You've got to fail to succeed in many ways. And I failed many, many times. I've made many mistakes. You've then also got to be able to adapt or die. And I could give you example after example of, if you don't adapt, your business fails, and I wouldn't be here talking to you.

20:06I give lectures to the armed forces, to the services, and their decisions of adapt or die literally, sadly, is die. You make the wrong decision, people will die. If you're a surgeon operating, if you make a mistake, somebody could die. In a business, it could be your business not surviving. And the quickest example I could give you is when Cobra beers were being imported from India, from Bangalore for the first seven years. In the seventh year, our sales took off. They doubled in one year. We were the biggest export beer out of India ever. Hundreds of containers coming across from Bangalore. My problems with importing Cobra quadrupled.

20:43The brewery couldn't cope. They did their best. Restaurants were complaining about quality. Wholesalers were complaining. Consumers were complaining. And I said, look, I'm going to have to brew under license in the UK. That's what everyone else does. Oh, no, no. If you do that, we'll stop buying from you. No one will buy Cobra. It's an authentically imported beer from India. I said, well, what choice do I have? You're complaining. that's your problem. So you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. And I remember the most important person with a consumer brand is the consumer. I said, let me ask the consumer, what's important to the consumer?

21:13And we filled out surveys in those days. There was no survey monkey. You had to go and give forms to people. They had to write out. Is it the extra smooth, less gassy taste? Is it the fact that it's imported from India? Is it the fact that it's an authentic Indian recipe? Is it the fact that it's a premium beer? What's the most important thing to you about Cobras? Rank one, two, three, four. Most important thing to them by far, Extra smooth, less gassy taste. Least important thing to them, by far, imported from India. I'm brewing here. I moved the production here. I paid the brewery in India every penny that I owed them.

21:42I didn't claim any credits for all the problems that we had. And to this day, the owners of that brewery have sold out since then are our closest family friends. All these years later, we've done no business since. And the relationship that we built. And those same wholesalers, after I moved the production to the UK, all my quality was then world class i could do draft beer which i couldn't do from india and the same hostess said we'll never buy from you again we're buying much more from me so that is the adapt or die brilliant story there's a relentlessness with you and the things you've gone through and accomplished and achieved how have you made time for your kind of mental and physical fitness there's a there's a countless success books out there and podcasts about getting up at four in the morning and running a marathon, reading a book, meditating before the day starts to fit in, and you are a successful business entrepreneur.

22:32What works for you? Have you got a morning routine? I belong to an organization called YPO, the Young Presence Organization, one of the best things I've done in my life. I've been a member for 25 years. And there we meet as a forum, a group of us every six weeks usually, and we discuss our personal lives, our family life, and our business life confidentially. And when you're looking at your life from that point of view, and you look at your personal life, it's got to be about mind, body, and spirit. So I try and do a little bit of meditation every morning. Every time I wake up, before I get out of bed, I do a little bit of meditation.

23:14And I'm religious in that I'm a practicing Zoroastrian Parsee. I say my prayers every day. since what happened to my daughter. I thank God every day for saving my daughter. And also, you've got to keep yourself fit. So I play tennis. I'm in the gym. I box with a trainer when I can. I scuba dive. I'm active. And I think you've got to keep active. Which keeps your mental fitness sharp as well by being active, right? And you've got to. You've got to try and stay physically fit and active as well. and in Parliament, because my office is outside the main building, the estate you're dotted around, I could easily do 10 ,000 steps a day just walking to vote and speak and rushing between the two buildings up and down.

24:02I mentioned that word success when we're talking about failure and leading into this part of the conversation. How would you describe your version of success? Success is a very relative term. and there's that sort of corny saying that success is it's not a destination it's a journey and I still feel right now that I yes I've been lucky to have been given lots of opportunities and achieved some things you know all these honorary doctorates I felt like a complete fraud I haven't done the real thing so I'm doing the real thing you know I've always wanted to do it so I'm actually doing that's your integrity so you know but I still feel I've got so much more to achieve and to do that I want to do.