Lord Karan Bilimoria

Karan Bilimoria is the Founder of Cobra Beer, Chairman of the Cobra Beer Partnership Ltd, a Joint Venture with Molson Coors & Chairman of Molson Coors Cobra India. In the Monde Selection, one of the most prestigious quality awards in the world for beer, the Cobra range have been awarded 101 Gold medals since 2001; one of the most awarded beers in the world.

Lord Bilimoria is the Founding Chairman of the UK India Business Council, a Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London, a former Chancellor of Thames Valley University (now the University of West London); he was the youngest University Chancellor in the UK when appointed. Karan was a former Senior Non-Executive Director of the Booker Group PLC; one of the first two visiting entrepreneurs at the University of Cambridge; founding member of the Prime Minister of India’s Global Advisory Council. In 2006, Karan was appointed the Lord Bilimoria of Chelsea; the first ever Zoroastrian Parsi to sit in the House of Lords. In 2008 he was awarded the Pravasi Bharti Samman by the President of India. He is an honorary fellow of Sidney Sussex College Cambridge & Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Judge Business School, Cambridge University.

He qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young and graduated in law from the University of Cambridge. He is also an alumnus through executive education of the Cranfield School of Management, the London Business School and the Harvard Business School. In July 2014, he was installed as Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, making him the first Indian-born Chancellor of a Russell Group University in Great Britain, and he is the President of the UK Council for International Students Affairs. Lord Bilimoria was the Bynum Tudor Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, 2017-18.