Indian family builds top business group in Bahrain

Isa Mubarak in Manama

Ahmed Ali Dadabhai sailed from Bombay for Bahrain in 1935, leaving behind the drudgery of farming in India and dreaming of starting a trade to feed his family in the Gulf island.

The villager from Rajasthan state could barely afford to pay for his journey, but by the time he died in 1996 the business he had started by selling snacks from a roadside stall had grown into a multimillion-dollar construction and tourism enterprise. Dadabhai Group, run by Dadabhai's three sons and a grandson, is one of Bahrain's biggest business groups. It does not publish profit or turnover figures, but says it employs about 900 workers.

The Indian embassy says there are around 130,000 Indians living in Bahrain, the biggest foreign community in the country.

Foreigners, mostly unskilled and low-paid workers from the Indian subcontinent and the Philippines, make up about a third of Bahrain's population of 660,000.

The Dadabhais are one of the few Indian success stories in Bahrain, where the expansion of the oil-dependent economy after the 1970s oil boom opened up opportunities for foreign workers and professionals.

Dadabhai started off in Bahrain by selling samosas, a savoury-filled pastry snack, from a stall on the capital Manama's main Sheikh Abdullah road. Two of his sons dropped out of school to help him.

Into construction business in boom time

Dadabhai Group director Qutub Dadabhai, Ahmed Ali's grandson who has studied marketing in the United States, said his father and two uncles began importing toys from China and sold them in a small shop.

"In 1978, my father Abbas Dadabhai and his brother Mohammed opened a construction company at the boom time in Bahrain.

"Both of them had no background. They were actually school dropouts, because my grandfather could not afford to pay for their tuition," Dadabhai said.

"They opened a travel agency and in 1990 we built the Baisan International Hotel in Bahrain and since that, thank God, the business has grown," he said.

Dadabhai Group, which owns two hotels, a resort and several construction and tourism firms, has spent $2.2 million to set up an institute to train Bahrainis for hotel and catering jobs.

The group sees Bahrain as its major market and is in the process of building a 73-villa resort at a cost of around $10 million jointly with a British-based businessman, Dadabhai said. Construction is due to start by the end of the year and the villas are expected to be ready for sale or rent by 2002. The group also plans to build a new apartment complex in Bahrain.

Dadabhai said the group had no plans to go public for at least the next two years: "We want first to establish a very good business before offering the company to the public."

Economists say the Bahraini government supports the activities of Dadabhais and other enterprising foreign families because of their impact on diversifying the island's economy.

"We have grown in this country and at least we have to give back the country something," Dadabhai said, referring to the training institute. The Dadabhais now hold Bahraini passports.

He said the rifts that sometimes plague successful business families were non-existent among the descendants of Ahmed Ali Dadabhai.

"There are no disputes among the family members simply because everyone has his own cake to eat," he added.

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