Episode 142: Amardeep Parmar from The BAE HQ welcomes Dilesh Bhimjiani, Product Director at DB Worldwide
Theis podcast episode features Dilesh Bhimjiani, an executive entrepreneur and product director at DB Worldwide, discussing his journey from university to founding and scaling businesses including LVL.
Show Notes
00:00: Intro
01:36: Dilesh's childhood aspirations and early influences.
02:27: First exposure to the legal profession and realising it wasn’t for him.
03:48: Upbringing in a business-savvy family and interest in business.
04:51: University experience and life skills learned.
06:32: Starting his first company at university.
07:28: Initial challenges and consulting work.
08:22: Accidental opportunities in his early career.
10:21: Challenges and near firing incident.
12:23: Balancing university and business, rapid growth of his firm.
15:01: Highlights from consulting business.
17:06: Work in the Middle East and collaboration with the UAE government.
20:20: Transition to founding LVL, a well-being company.
21:13: Approach to building Level using design thinking.
22:23: Achievements of LVL, global partnerships, and awards.
23:19: Decision to exit LVL and emotional process.
24:26: Post-exit activities, mentoring founders, and education sector work.
26:26: Lessons learned, importance of admitting mistakes, defining success.
28:35: Organisations Dilesh admires and where to find more about him.
30:35: Closing remarks and final words of encouragement.
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Dilesh Bhimjiani: 0:00
When you work on macro projects, you lose the capacity to have a tactile influence on things on the ground. The key for us is that we knew that we weren't in a business where we tried to make everyone 100% fit. That wasn't the objective, why leaders were driving themselves into the ground from a health and well-being perspective, so all we wanted to do was get people to prioritize themselves, which is a much easier move than trying to get them to do all the other things. Level as a platform is designed to improve people's well-being in the most holistic sense.
Amardeep Parmar: 0:36
Today on the podcast, we have Dilesh Bhimjiani, who's an executive entrepreneur and is currently the founder of Project Tom and product director at DB Worldwide. Dilesh has got a really interesting story, having gone to university and started business up on the side that he was running with full time staff while still studying. We learned how to scale this business across the world with many big name clients before he lessened a gap in the healthcare space in the Emirates. We learn about how he scaled this, then exited this, and what he's been doing since then and what his dreams are for the future. I hope you enjoy this episode. I'm Amar from the BAE HQ and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. So, Dilesh, great to have you on today and it's exciting to see the different projects you've done. I'm going to dive into that in a moment. But how did this all start? When you're a kid, what did you want to grow up and be?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 1:36
I think that is the million dollar question. It's a really interesting one because I think it's changed over the years and I think my experience and my environment has shaped how I've kind of transitioned towards the different things and, to be honest, I think what then followed wasn't planned or structured in the way that I thought it would. Um. So as a kid I was quite argumentative, um, and curious, and always asked questions and always asked questions, and I remember there'd be nights where I'd be at home and I think the why, why, why, never stopped. I'm sure my mum and dad hated me for it. When I was a kid, at a really young age, someone said to me it's like oh, you're so good at asking questions, you should be a lawyer. And the only definition of a lawyer that I had in my head was what I'd seen on TV. I was like that looks really cool, I love the idea of doing that. So for quite a few years thought that's the pathway I want to go down. I was really lucky.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 2:27
I went to a government state school and I did what I do well now, which is developed really good relationships with the teaching staff, the leadership, and somehow convinced the school to pay for me to go and do two weeks um at a magic circle law firm and it wasn't really heard of. It was, I think we were, I think, 15, 16, something like that. Um, and somehow one of the teachers who was in um, who was who taught law a level, had a friend who worked at this firm and we managed to organize it. I remember getting there and I was really excited because you know, they paid for me to go and stay in a hotel nearby. I was like, oh, this is an adventure. Got into the office and they gave me a bunch of precedent to read and I sat in the office for the whole day and not one person kind of popped their head up above the cubicle and it was deadly silent. I was like, oh my god, I thought I was going to be like in court and doing all these fun, exciting things. It's like, no, no, this is not what I wanted to do. So I think I quick should quickly um rethought. That is not where I want to go and it's quite nice. I think it was the first time I learned that you don't need to do things to find the right answers. You can do things to find or eliminate things that you don't need to do things to find the right answers. You can do things to find or eliminate things that you don't want to do, and I think it's a good process for elimination.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 3:48
And then, like a lot of other kind of immigrant children or second generation immigrant children, my parents were both business owners and grew up with them, going to the shop with them or doing all the rounds, and you learn all of the bits and pieces that come around being commercially savvy.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 4:05
How do you structure things, how do you hire people, how do you manage supply and demand, how do you position yourself? All those kind of bits and pieces probably not in those terms, but in the way that you learn about them. And I really fell well into business economics at school and I was really lucky that the teacher that I had at school was genuinely inspirational. I think everyone has that one teacher this was it for me and he kind of said well, maybe you should pursue this as a path. So I did. I went on to go to Aston and pursue business, which was really interesting, but I think along the way you have all sorts of things. You know I definitely wanted to be a footballer at one point discovered that that was never going to happen. And then you go through the stages and I think that was it still could become a footballer, you never think well it's fascinating.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 4:51
I think, the work I've done over the last two years and I've been lucky to be able to work with some of the football clubs on it that actually this idea of having a career in football doesn't mean that you've got to be on the pitch. There's actually so many careers in football that are fascinating and, yes, absolutely that could be one of the things I could do. Um, but yeah, I think being on the pitch definitely not my thing. Um, I think I'm more likely to get into a boxing ring than I am on a football pitch, but we'll see you're interested in university?
Amardeep Parmar: 5:15
yes and studying business or economic related degree. Was it what you hoped it would be? Studying that degree, because I studied as myself. Yeah, wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 5:25
Yeah, no, I I think I'm still gonna hate me for saying this. Um, it's not and I think it's not, and I think university is a really interesting experience and there's still a lot of work to be done as to whether it's the right pathway for everyone. Um, I definitely enjoyed my experience and I learned a lot about myself as a person and my skills as being part of a community. Academically, I don't think I walked away with as much as I wanted to, and I think that may be the case for quite a lot of people.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 5:56
I was really fortunate that I think a lot of the stuff I had either been taught at A-level or things I had absorbed naturally were things that then came across in a structured manner at university. So it wasn't that much of a tough challenge. But I think there was a lot of stuff that I did experience university that was fascinating and I think those were great experiences as part of that. But yeah, I think economics is a discipline. I think structurally it gives you a way of thinking, which is really important, but I think the detail within that perhaps I haven't used as much yeah, I think the modeling side of economics right, and how.
Amardeep Parmar: 6:32
What assumptions are behind this decision? I think is really important, where a lot of time you don't think about it. Okay, this is true if these assumptions are true, and then you can pick up those assumptions to work out why things don't go the way you planned. Yeah, but while you're at university you said you did other things on the side that were really useful. What kind of things were they?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 6:51
I actually set up my first company whilst I was at university. And again, there's no grand plan. This wasn't a masterminded move, it was absolutely accidental, um, and it was a really surreal way that things happen. So I met my co-founder at university and it happened to be the very first day of university and we connected on morals. I think that that was the key thing that kind of drove us. We also support the same football club, which is really important, so all the kind of critical things. But it wasn't that we were both eager to go and set up a business. Actually, we both thought in the same way.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 7:28
And it so happened that, before university, gary had taken a gap year and I was doing a summer in Qatar, because my cousin who worked there had also set up a company. It's like, oh, why don't you come over for the summer and earn some money, get some experience? It's like great, this is an adventure, why not? Why don't you come over for the summer and earn some money, get some experience? It's like great, this is an adventure, why not? And gary had done a gap year in the south of spain selling property to brits in the boom that was, you know, at the time where everyone wanted a house in the south of spain. So we kind of connected and initially we thought maybe we should do something in property. Um, because he still had a network of people in the south of spain. I had some people in the east and that was also the time where every asian person had decided that the middle east was their new territory and they wanted to buy some property there. So, um, but two kids at university definitely not the right way to go. So we kind of integrated ourselves within different business opportunities and then both went on placement, um, as you do, and thought, right, we'll just figure it out at some point.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 8:22
It so happened that um gary went to new york and I went to madrid and we both continued to talk about what we should do and simultaneously we both kept being approached in the same way to kind of consult on how you drive innovation and what the future looks like and how technology works. And it was something that came natural to both of us, both like, well, okay, this feels natural. And we were lucky that the people that we were talking to were leaders and ceos of their own right of large organizations, were like right, why don't we try all this? How do those people find you? So they're all kind of accidental introductions and I think that's one of the things that I love, um, about the way that we operated um and do to some extent today, is that we really embrace the value of the network that we build and we invest in it, and I think it's that's the most important part, and a lot of people, a lot of my friends, good friends, um, always say how do you know all these people? Where do you? Why do they trust you? What are the things that you're doing? I'm like well, number one, you listen with intent, um, and number two, you actually give them the time they deserve for the right reasons. And it was surreal. So the the first ever client that we got, um, the guy who owns it's actually a really good friend. Um now happened to be friends with my co-founder's flatmate, um, and gary was in new york at the time, where when you're on placement, you're not earning anything. So he he had a room that had no windows and an apartment where you shared with five other people, um, but his flatmate at the time, um, happened to work for apple, one of those things, and his friend that he went to university with um was founding a business that was really really interesting in the film and production industry and it was like, well, um, I'm thinking about um taking our business to the next level. Love to have a chat. Got talking to Gary, he was like, right, let's get um to Lesha on a call. So we all did, and then that was our first client and it was really, really simple. Um.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 10:21
And then the same happened at the company that I was working for in Madrid. So I worked for one of the largest travel tech players and their Global HQ was in Madrid. There were some really funny stories. I remember I went into work with a shirt, tie and a suit every day and this was before. Wearing trainers was cool and all those kind of things. But Madrid really laid back. Even in a global headquarters for an IT company, even though we had the global CEO there, no one necessarily power dressed or dressed in that way.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 10:52
So and I was only one floor away from the global CEO and it didn't take long for people to kind of go who's that kid over there and why does he think he's important? What's he doing? What's he trying to prove? But I was really lucky and I think my very first lesson of being in the office was when I walked in. My boss's boss said right, I'm going to take the time and spend 20 minutes that day walking me around and introducing me to all the global VPs and their PAs and going right, this kid works for me. If he needs anything, you know, make sure you make it it happen. And you never understand the value of that, and that's what taught me. I was like right, okay, hold on, there's value here.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 11:29
Anyway, as we go through placement, a lot of the leadership kind of would come to me for advice or or how to structure things or how to present things. I don't know why they did it, but they felt like I could do it well. Um, and before we knew, I had a conversation with one of the VPs who was like I don't know what you're doing after this, but if you want, we'd love to hire you as a consultant. We'd love to see if this is something that we can do. Long story short, they couldn't wait until I finished and one of the other teams was like actually, would you mind doing this? On the side, I'm like okay, let's see, see. So it did, and simultaneously I was consulting and working for the company at the same time, which is really really bad and you should never do it. Um, and I nearly got fired for it. Um, but I remember we would do. I would do some consulting work at night with gary, who was in new york many hours difference, um, and then come into work.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 12:23
And I remember coming home to london once, uh, for a weekend, and waking up on monday morning my boss was calling me and she was like hr's found out that you're doing this and they want to fire you. I was like crap, I've got to be the only like 20 year old who gets fired on placement. Like how does this happen? Like this is just not normal. I think the whole flight there. I like I don't know how to get out of this. This is really bad. What do I do?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 12:52
I remember going and sitting with the global head of purchasing, this Scottish guy, and he was like listen, it's not a good situation, but I want to position it from your perspective. He was like you're going to earn 10 times more money by consulting for us than doing what you're doing as placement. Why don't you just let us fire you? I'm like this is not what I wanted to do. This is really surreal. What are my mom and dad going to say? What are we going to do? Just quit, yeah, yeah. And he was like no, no, you should get fired. I'm like that's not, that's not the.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 13:27
The story that I wanted to hear is like no, just think about it. Practically, okay, fine. So then we go into a meeting with a global director of hr who was really scary, um, and my boss is sat there and my boss is like you can't fire him. I was like, okay, this is weird. I'm sure she can. And she said, um, no, if you want to fire him, you've got to fire me first. And she'd been there for 20 years. I just thought, no, this is just really surreal. Why would she put her neck on the line for me? She was like no, no, no, like, I back him and he's done a lot for this company, so if you want to fire him, you'll find me. And she knew well that they weren't going to fire her. So eventually, hr agreed to it and said right, we won't fire you, but you've got to agree that you won't do any consulting work whilst you finish your year with us and then you can do whatever you want afterwards.
Amardeep Parmar: 14:01
Anyway, they ended up being one of our biggest clients afterwards, so I guess after you finish university there was no real question of you're going to continue the consulting business or was there a moment of should I get a job?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 14:11
I didn't get a chance to think about it. So the we came back from placement and we had a year to finish um, and in that year we had I think it was a team of 15 by the time the year finished and it was the most surreal experience. So we had an office that was a 10, 15 minute walk away from the campus. No one in the office knew that we went to university and no one at university knew we had an office and we would go to the office during the times where we didn't have to get lectures and then we'll come back and do things and then go back.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 14:39
And it was just this really really surreal year where you're like living two lives. You're like, okay, what's going on here? This is really really strange. But there was never an opportunity to even think back and go right, hold on, what are we doing here? Is this what we want to do? And before you know it, you're kind of three, four years down the line. You're like, hold on, I didn't necessarily want this is really interesting, but you're kind of going along the right for it.
Amardeep Parmar: 15:01
We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, HSBC Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what it is you've been trying to do. HSBC have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hsbcinnovationbanking. com. And obviously, you then went on to find another company. Could you give us some of the highlights of the consulting business and what you got to before you decided to pivot away from it?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 15:48
I think there were some really interesting highlights, and I will still say this to everyone we were kids, we were really really young, and we found ourselves in some of the biggest boardrooms you can ever think of. And I remember, um, I remember being sat at barclays's headquarters in canary wharf and we had a long discussion about um the structure of whether um the online bank and the retail bank and how they operate and why they don't work together well, and there was a moment where we sat with Turkish Airlines, had the same conversation and you just kind of you look at yourself in third person and go why am I sat here and why are they listening to me? What am I asking? That's really interesting, um, but I think there were two or three projects that we worked on that were genuinely game changing and they really pushed us. So one of those was that in the latter part of the company's life the last three years, I think it was we grew massively in the Middle East and it was it wasn't intentional least um, and it was, it wasn't intentional.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 17:06
We actually were approached by a family office who happened to own three of our clients which we didn't know about. We we kind of accidentally, came aware that this was the case and they facilitated a partnership with a management consulting firm in the UAE who were winning lots and lots of work in kind of transformation and business model change. But they didn't think in the same way that we did. They had a lot of traditional management consulting practices in kind of designing operating models, but I think our design thinking approach was really different, especially for the UAE and the Middle East at the time. That was a real point of difference. So we kind of started collaborating on a lot of projects and we grew our teams and then established a new team in the Middle East and, again accidentally, we got introduced to the Prime Minister's office. And this happened because we had a friend who went to university with um, who worked for the royal family in saudi, and she had a friend who worked in the prime minister's office in the ue and said listen, you know, one of my friends is struggling with a program, um, maybe you guys can't have a coffee, um. And 10 minutes later you they're like you guys are something interesting, we should keep you around.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 18:23
After a few months we started working with a department called the executive office, and the executive office is the ruler and the crown prince's private office that looks at the legacy of the country and their reign, and this was at a time where the discussion was being had around the transition of leadership. So at some point the crown prince will take over um. What does the um legacy look like? And also we're approaching our 50 year anniversary of the country. We've got to define our 100 year anniversary. What does the next 50 years of the economy look like? And I think those questions are so big they are almost numbing in the fact that you've got to be able to be comfortable with so much unknown but also start putting stakes in the sand and go right. These are the things we want to back.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 19:16
So we end up working on a number of projects that helped define the 50-year economic plan for the country, but also start to think about how you foster a culture that supports innovation. How do you facilitate the key drivers and the mechanics of what you need to do to pivot an economy? And I think, if most people know about the UAE, they've got kind of a past in hydrocarbons which has supported them really well. They've diversified themselves into becoming a logistical hub, both from a cargo and shipment perspective, from an airline and passenger perspective, from money and finance. So as a hub they've really cemented themselves. But that serves them well now and it won't necessarily serve them well in the same way in the future. So we define this vision around the uae becoming the hub for future-based thinking, which I think is a huge leap forward and as a testament to the government and the leadership, they're actually doing a great job of it so, after like highlights like that, what then made you decide to start another company?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 20:20
when you work on macro projects, you lose the capacity to have a tactile influence on things on the ground and I think, especially as a technical person, you want to learn from implementation. I think that's the real hard part, and on one side, I wanted to be able to continuously improve and iterate and learn from data, but on the other side, I had this huge level of curiosity around why leaders were driving themselves into the ground from a health and wellbeing perspective, why they weren't being able to perform, and I think that was at the time where this concept of how there is a strong alignment between how well you are and how well you can perform was starting to surface, and I think that drove me to go right. I want to build something where we have total control over being able to define the output, and that's why we founded Level so tell us a bit more about Level then.
Amardeep Parmar: 21:13
So you founded the company. Did you try and do it at the same time as consulting, or had a transition. There was a slight overlap yeah, so you started this new company and it's very different to what you're doing before. Yeah, how do you go about making that a success and growing it as you did?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 21:27
so there's a lot of skills that I'd learned from the previous company that then were put into practice in the new company, and I think, if you look at it as what we would have done for a client, we kind of did for ourselves to some extent. Um, and I think we already had a very good grip on design thinking and all the behavioral science behind how you influence people to some extent, and it was also a point where we had had sufficient experience in understanding the power of content as a platform to enable change. So all of those things combined were critical to making level what it became, what it is today. But I think our approach of getting down to the questions that matter was really fundamental. I think when I look at industries and how you look at changing them, I generally see that there is a consistency between 99 of people that are attacking the same problem and someone who's chosen to look at it from a different perspective and gone.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 22:23
This really simple thing here is what we probably should look at, and level as a platform is designed to improve people's well-being in the most holistic sense, and I think the key for us is that we knew that we weren't in a business where we tried to make everyone a hundred percent fit. That wasn't the objective, whereas I feel like a lot of the wellness industry is geared towards that and idolizing the idea of having a six-pack or, you know, having this perfect lifestyle where you wake up at five in the morning and do a ice bath and meditate and all the kind of wonderful things. Um, so all we wanted to do was get people to prioritize themselves, which is a much easier move than trying to get them to to do was get people to prioritize themselves, which is a much easier move than trying to get them to to do all the other things and obviously I grew quite significantly, yeah, and you're able to say some of the quick highlights from that as well.
Amardeep Parmar: 23:09
So before, before we go to talk about the exit because that's a big topic of discussion too yeah, but before you were ready to exit, what were some of the highlights along that journey?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 23:19
so I I think biggest wins for us were being able to establish these global channel partnerships with Cigna, CBRE and Aon. That was incredible because they trusted us to build with them. We opened some physical well-being spaces with CBRE, which was brilliant, and we won some awards, which was fantastic. So all of those were a testament. And then just going across borders, being able to enter into markets africa that we had never thought we'd be able to open into all were really good so you then exit that business, right?
Amardeep Parmar: 23:48
yep, can you tell us about that, like what made you decide to exit at the time you did?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 23:52
I think a lot of it came at the same time and some of it was to do with the fact that there was a pivot in the business and there was. We had a change in the composition of the board and, as that happened, there was a decision around where the future of the business should go, and I think that was different from where I thought we should go. And for me, there was a decision around whether we should continue to push or divide the board or step aside and move forward, and I think that was the decision. For me was to step aside.
Amardeep Parmar: 24:26
And then, obviously, not many people have been through exits. Yep, how was that experience for you? Like emotionally were you? Was it hard to let go, or was it? Do you feel quite euphoric afterwards that you were able to do that?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 24:37
I think both. It's. It's a really really difficult process. Um, I feel like most of it we handled really well. It's also very difficult because I stepped away it wasn't the entire team exiting at the same time so you're also stepping away from two people that you set up a business with that you have been on a journey with for a long time, so it's a huge decision to do that. There's also a lot of thinking around. What does this mean for me going forward? How does this impact us? Also, the entire organization that you've built and people that have come along the journey with you, and now you're kind of saying I'm stepping aside. So lots and lots of emotions in that process. But also I remember the very first day that I had after I'd left and I looked at a blank whiteboard and thought this is incredible. I've never been able to sit and just think about what's important to me.
Amardeep Parmar: 25:31
So some of the discussion we had earlier. I know we kind of go full circle now to what you're doing today and some of your projects you're working on. Just before we get to the quickfire questions, can you just fill us in what you've been up to since you've existed?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 25:42
So I've been doing two things I've been working with a number of founders in different industries that I've never had the opportunity to work in. I've learned fascinating amounts about the dynamics of different industries and the challenges that come with it and the opportunities, and we've seen some brilliant successes. And I've also had the opportunity to explore how I can make a contribution to the education industry. And after about a year and a half of exploring, I came down to wanting to fix the gap between the school system and the world of work. So I set up an initiative called Dream Ships, where we're helping young children from the age of 11 to 18 explore potential career pathways that they might want to pursue in the future.
Amardeep Parmar: 26:26
And obviously that comes back to when you said right at the beginning about your day in the magic circle which made you realize quite quickly you don't want to do that, so you can see how that's kind of worked out over time as well. And one more, just before we go to a five questions as well, is that you've had this quite dramatic rise right from like a project at university, work on the side, consulting, that then grew massively. What have been some of the struggles along that journey? What's been some of the things you've had to overcome that really made you into what you are today and taught you the lessons you need to be even stronger than you were.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 26:59
I think a lot of them are to do with me. So first is and I think you'll hear a lot of founders talk about this, which is imposter syndrome. It always happens. And it talk about this, which is imposter syndrome. It always happens. And it doesn't matter what challenge you face yourself in, you always kind of have that question of am I meant to be here? Is this right? And I think it took a long time for me to get to a stage where that's not the first thing I think about. It's actually no, I'm, I deserve to be here and I have a contribution to make, but, um, there's a lot of other valuable contributions too, so that's a good thing.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 27:35
The second thing is and I feel like we've glamorized the idea of failing fast and making mistakes, and it's almost a badge of honor, but it's a very different story when you have to stomach those mistakes and then have to then reset and build yourself again, and that process is a huge part of, I think, what's driven me to where I am today.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 27:50
Um, and I think it's strange, a lot of people that know me well enough will know that I've always come to the table and said you know, I told you that a year ago. I've since realized that that wasn't the case, and actually we need to rethink this. Um, and I think just that humbleness around that has been a big part of that journey too. Um, and then the third part is is the value of, of defining what success actually looks like, and I feel like, either within the organizations that I've built, or the teams I've consulted with, or the companies we've worked with, when there is a confusion around where everyone is trying to go, nothing ever works, and that's the one question that never seems to have a clear answer. So getting that right is really important.
Amardeep Parmar: 28:35
Yeah, and I think that, being mentioned there about being able to admit you're wrong, I think so many people are still on that path, to being able to get to that stage they can say, yeah, I said this a year ago and it was wrong and I was, I made a mistake and I hold my hands up, and I think people who can do that they're way more likely to learn than people who are whether it's ego, whether it states whatever it is, they can't admit their mistakes. Yep, they're doomed to repeat them. Right, correct. So we have to move on to quick fire questions. First one is who are three British Asians you you think are doing incredible work and you'd love to shout out today?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 29:06
I'm gonna cheat. Two of them come together, so it kind of works.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 29:13
The two um, the two boys that run Simmer um, who are doing a phenomenal job, and I think their story is a testament to their success to some extent. Um, the grit they've shown um in building to where they got to and I think I know a fair bit about the industry to some extent and to get to where they have without having the funding from external sources and learning along the way, is just incredible. Hands down in terms of a business built by their own hands is impressive. And doing it with family famil that's another dynamic, which is never easy. Um.
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 29:52
The second is a lady called Asma Khan um. If you've ever heard of her. She runs a restaurant in kingly court called the Darjeeling cafe um, and I think she rose to fame a few years back when Netflix decided to do a show her, but I think her philosophy around the importance of changing the dynamics and perceptions of the kitchen and food culture is phenomenal. And then Rajeeb, from Learnerbly, I think, is doing a phenomenal job and has done for so many years. So I think three people or three teams that are just making an impression in lots of different ways. That is really admirable.
Amardeep Parmar: 30:31
So the people listening to this who you've made an impression on and they want to find out more about you, where should they go to?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 30:36
LinkedIn, good place, um. I also have a website that I've built about myself, um, which just gives a bit more perspective on some of the ways I've approached problems, uh, which is dilesh. org, um. You can have a look at that too. Amardeep Parmar: And then follow me there and if people listening today might be able to help you.
Amardeep Parmar: 30:53
Do you think you need help right now?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 30:54
Definitely, I think, for the, for the dream ships mission, for sure, I always want to talk to people who are of the same opinion that the education system is broken and there is an opportunity for us to make a difference around how we make it more accessible and equitable for children who want to explore careers of different pathways, um, and I always want to talk to interesting people that are exploring different problems.
Amardeep Parmar: 31:14
Awesome. So thanks so much for sharing your story today. It's quite a different one, very interesting for us. Have you got any final words to the audience?
Dilesh Bhimjiani: 31:21
Incredible to see that we've got so many people within the asian community who are now rising to the heights that they are. Let's keep listening to those stories, because I think that's where we're going to see those role models come through and be able to see how we can change the next generation.
Amardeep Parmar: 31:37
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.