Kewal Singh Dhillon
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From the archives of The Times of India May 23, 2013 Neel Kamal
PUNJAB - Uncorking success, Barnala style
Two-time Congress MLA from Barnala, Kewal Singh Dhillon, was the richest candidate in the 2012 Punjab assembly elections. He and his wife had declared assets worth Rs 79 crore, while son Karan was worth another Rs 57 crore. The family-owned Dhillon group of companies, incidentally, has a turnover of around Rs 1,000 crore. Though Dhillon is into beverages, real estate and hospitality, he’s best known for bringing Pepsi Cola into India in the 1990s when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister. His company bagged the best bottler of the year award in 1997 when Pepsi was celebrating 100 years in 100 countries. Politically, too, Dhillon has been on a winning spree. He started his innings in 2007 when he contested the assembly elections and came out victorious. This was repeated in 2012. His beverages business, however, had begun much before his political career took off. Dhillon also made forays into real estate, entertainment and hospitality. Besides this, the Dhillons have a bottling plant at Phillaur where the group recently executed expansion plans of around Rs 200 crore. Due to his links with big corporate houses, the Punjab government made him a member of the Investment Commission in 2006 and was tasked with the job of attracting FDI. “I am concentrating on this now and my son is looking after the business empire,” he says.
CORE BUSINESSES
BEVERAGES | Pepsi bottling plant near Phillaur
LIQUOR | Tie-ups with Seagrams
REAL ESTATE | Large tracts of land near Dera Bassi, Chandigarh
ENTERTAINMENT | Fun Republic Mall at Chandigarh
HOSPITALITY | McDonald’s outlet on Chandigarh-Ambala highway
