Ram Gidoomal is an entrepreneur, and former UK Group Chief Executive of the Inlaks Group, a multinational business with 7,000 employees. He and his family were forced to leave wealth and prosperous business interests behind them when they came to Britain from East Africa as refugees and began his business career in the family corner shop in Shepherds Bush.
Made a CBE in 1998 for services to the Asian Business Community and Race Relations, he is Chairman of Employability Forum, helping refugees and asylum seekers into jobs and a council member of the Institute for Employment Studies. He was a founder trustee and chairman of the Christmas Cracker charity, which has given thousands of young people direct entrepreneurial experience and which has raised over £5 million for projects in developing countries.
Ram Gidoomal is Chairman of Winning Communications, South Asian Development Partnership, London Sustainability Exchange, and the BOOST City and East London Employment Bond, Initiating the launch of a Zero Coupon Bond of £50 million to help with regeneration in East London through creating jobs and low cost managed workspace. He is President of the National Information Forum and on the Advisory Board of Postmaster.net.
He is a Board Member of the Covent Garden Market Authority and London First Centre and the Companions of the Chartered Management Institute and on the Advisory Board for Ethics in the Workplace of the Institute of Business Ethics and Friends of the Elderly and a Court Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.
A Trustee of the Institute of Citizenship, and Forum for the Future, he is the author of several books including The UK Maharajahs and The British and how to deal with them: Doing business with Britain’s Ethnic Communities. He is a governor of Kings College School, Wimbledon, a Crown Appointee of Court & Council, Imperial College, a visiting professor of Entrepreneurship & Inner City Regeneration at Middlesex University and on the Court of Luton University. He is a member of the Royal Mail Stamp Advisory Committee. A frequent media commentator, he is included in Debrett’s People of Today and Who’s Who.
