Karan Bilimoria, Baron Bilimoria

Family background

Karan Bilimoria was born in Hyderabad, India into a Zoroastrian Parsi family which hailed from Gujarat. As the surname 'Bilimoria' denotes, the ancestral home of the family is the small town of Bilimora, situated on the banks of the river Ambika, in Gandevi taluka of Navsari district of Gujarat state.

Bilimoria's family had a strong background in trade and commerce, but his father and both his grandfathers served in the Indian armed forces. In 1931, his paternal grandfather, Nasservanji D. Bilimoria, was one of the first Indians to be commissioned as an officer into the Indian Army from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and he retired as a Brigadier.

Bilimoria's father, Faridoon Noshir Bilimoria (1933–2005), popularly known as 'General Billy', had a long and distinguished career in the Indian Army. As a young, newly commissioned officer, he served as ADC to the first President of India, Rajendra Prasad. Many years later, he commanded the 2/5 Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force) during the Bangladesh Liberation War. He later served as General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Indian Army's Central Command. In 1990, while serving at that post, F. N. Bilimoria was deputed by the Government of India to Sri Lanka to review the work of the Indian Peace Keeping Force, which had been deployed in that country during the Sri Lankan Civil War under the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. It was on his recommendation that the force was recalled in 1990, ending India's military engagement with the LTTE.

Karan Bilimoria's mother, Yasmin Bilimoria (née Italia), was the daughter of Jamshed D. Italia, a Squadron Leader in the Royal Indian Air Force. Her mother, Aimai Italia née Bharucha of Hyderabad, was the daughter of D.D. Italia, a Hyderabad-based businessman and politician who served as a member of the Rajya Sabha in the 1950s (this was Karan's maternal great-grandfather). Both his mother and maternal grandfather were educated in Britain at Birmingham University.

In 1993 he married Lynne Heather Walker, a South African national.

Bilimoria's name came up in the Panama Papers leak: he was listed as a shareholder in Mulberry Holdings Asset Limited, a company registered in the Virgin Islands. However, he released a statement claiming that the company was dormant and had been formed for his ex-shareholders in Cobra, who were not residents of the UK; furthermore he stated that he was taxed on all of his global income in the UK and had declared his interests to the authorities. As a result of these allegations the University of Birmingham Branch of the UCU called for an investigation into his finances in 2016; the university had released a statement the day before calling it a personal matter, referencing Bilimoria's previous statement to the media.