AMIT BHATIA wears several hats of varied hues. His interests span across sectors such as finance, construction, property and sports.
The 41-year-old has made a mark in each of his business forays, including some remarkable successes, well enough to prove to us that family ties need not be that important to define him.
For, family privilege is something that won’t escape any discussion of Bhatia, the scion of a wealthy Delhi real estate clan and son-in-law of billionaire steel tycoon Lakhsmi Mittal.
To Bhatia, however, this personal note is not as important as football and certainly, not as important as the investor that he has become.
Crazy for football, he bought a stake in Queens Park Rangers football club in 2007, and has since served as the club’s vice-chairman except for a brief interlude in 2011. A consistent presence around the club over recent years, he was named chairman in August 2018 when Malaysian businessmen Tony Fernandes and Ruben Gnanalingam decided to step down in favour of a London-based boss.
Since assuming the mantle, Bhatia has been able to solve the vexed issue of a training ground for the club. While they have got the all-clear from the Supreme Court in the longrunning legal battle around the redevelopment of Warren Farm site in Southall, the club dropped the plans for a training ground there in May 2020, and instead, decided to develop the site into a community sports centre.
Two months later, QPR announced the acquisition of the freehold of the Heston site of Imperial College. The site, which is currently used by the club’s academy, will become the future home of the club’s new training ground.
One of Bhatia’s great entrepreneurial successes has been Hope Construction Materials, which was the UK’s largest independent building materials business when it was sold to Breedon plc in 2016. Bhatia joined the board of the newly formed Breedon Group as a director and currently serves the company as non-executive chairman.
A Cornell University graduate, Bhatia began his career at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley in New York and then Credit Suisse First Boston in London.
In 2004, the year he married Vanisha Mittal in a lavish ceremony in Paris, he incubated Swordfish Investments, a private equity/ venture fund, and Swordfish Capital Management, an investment management company. While the latter has now been shuttered, Mayfair-based Swordfish Investments boasts a strong portfolio of investments worldwide in several sectors.
Bhatia’s investment in Finnish start-up Supercell, which developed the epic combat strategy game Clash of Clans, has been another big success. The value of his $500,000 (£369,000) stake has increased manifold when Japanese conglomerate Softbank bought a 50 per cent stake in 2013, valuing the company at $3 billion. He was also an early investor in Dropbox.
Bhatia also serves as an executive director of Summix, a property company specialising in development projects across the UK and Ireland. He oversees global investor relations and public affairs at the London-based developer and has been instrumental in launching in 2017 the Summix Capital fund to further enhance their ability to deliver larger and more complex projects.
