The Great Room at Grosvenor House Hotel on Friday night looked straight out of a classic film set, decorated in vintage ivory and golden. Glittering celebrities and high profile dignitaries attending the glamorous 17th annual Asian Achievers Awards in Park Lane queued up on the red carpet, as they posed for the paparazzi. This included Bollywood superstar Farhan Akhtar, who won the International Personality of the Year Award on the historic night.
Hosted by Bollywood singer, actress and model, Raageshwari and former Eastenders star actor Nitin Ganatra, the awards saw over £155,000 raised for charity partner, Akshaya Patra, which works to eradicate classroom hunger and facilitate childhood education by serving freshly cooked, nourishing lunches to 1.6 million school children across India every day. The event also highlighted the great strides made in the fields of Media, Art and Culture.
Winners included Playwright Tanika Gupta MBE for Achievement in Media; Surinder Arora for Business Person of the Year; with the Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Lord Indarjit Singh CBE, for his immense achievements and contribution to harmonising race relations in Britain.
CB Patel, Publisher/Editor, ABPL Group, addressing the audience said, "It brings me great pleasure to congratulate all the winners, and of course the nominees, of the Asian Achievers Awards, in another outstanding year of celebrating excellence in our community. In the past 17 years that we have been holding our awards, South Asian achievement in Britain has evolved tremendously and we now have role models in every arena, who are inspirations for the generations who are to follow.”
Bhawani Singh, CEO Akshaya Patra said:“‘Akshaya’ is unlimited and ‘Patra’ is path, the path that never runs out and that’s what we intend to do every day as we serve millions of meals a day”
Farhan Akhtar, winner of the International Personality of the Year Award, said: “Thank you very, very much for this award, it’s very kind.”
Tanika Gupta MBE, winner of the Achievement in Media Award said: “I just want to say thank you very much. What’s really important about this award and this evening, is that within the mainstream, people like myself – writers - don’t usually get recognized. So it’s fantastic to get this recognition from my community – finally.”
Zishan Nurmohamed, from EY- the headline sponsor for the Asian Achievers Awards said, “When you are in a gathering like this and are surrounded by so many wonderful characters it is easy to take for granted just how successful a community we are in an entrepreneurial sense. In case anyone needed a reminder: Indian businesses in the UK are turning over more than £40bn, an Indian tops the Sunday Times Rich list, with two Indians in the top 10 having a combined wealth of nearly £30bn, no surprises here to see the Hinduja’s and the Mittals at the helm and over one-third of UK SME’s are now Muslim run businesses, makes you think how much the full BME sector contributes
“The statistics continue to tell a story and are a clear testament to the rapid growth of Asian business in the UK and their mantra of grabbing an opportunity when they see it.”
Other sponsors included Shanti Hospitality and Edwardian Hotels, and Colors TV as the Media Partner.
Since launching, The Asian Achievers Awards has helped to raise millions of pounds for various charities and this year, the chosen charity partner is the Akshaya Patra Foundation, which works to eradicate classroom hunger and facilitate childhood education by serving freshly cooked, nourishing lunches to 1.6 million school children across India every day.
ASIAN ACHIEVERS AWARDS 2017 WINNERS
Professional of the Year
Fayyaz Afzal OBE
Sports Personality of the Year
Sivakumar Ramasamy
Achievement in Arts & Culture
Amrit Kaur Lohia
Achievement in Community Service
Saba Nasim BEM
Uniformed & Civil services
Kulbir Pasricha
Entrepreneur of the Year
Gi Fernando MBE
Woman of the Year
Jagdeep Rai
Achievement in Media
Tanika Gupta MBE
Business Person of the Year
Surinder Arora
Lifetime Achievement Award
Lord Indarjit Singh CBE
International Businessperson of the Year
Biren Sasmal
International Personality of the Year
Farhan Akhtar
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