They have a flourishing exports business with a monopoly in what’s typically called a ‘sunrise sector’- an industry that has great future prospects.
But he left it all behind and moved to Dubai in 2015, to look after the company’s overseas expansion.
“I could see it becoming a problem for someone who had businesses spread across the world,” he told the BBC.
When the founder and owner of India’s largest coffee chain, Cafe Coffee Day died in 2019, he accused a former director general of the income tax department of harassing him.
The government has argued this is being done to eradicate “black money – illegal cash, hidden from the tax authorities – and improve tax compliance.
His decision was also prompted by a growing trend of “divide and rule politics” in India, he told us.
More recently, a Global Wealth Migration Review report revealed that nearly 5,000 millionaires, or 2% of the total number of high net-worth individuals in India left the country in 2020 alone.
We refer to this as the insurance policy or Plan B,” Dominic Volek, Group Head of Private at Henley & Partners told the BBC on a video call from Dubai.
According to Mr Volek, the pandemic could be a game changer, because it is making the wealthy think about migration in a more holistic fashion.
This exodus of big money is not necessarily permanent in nature – people merely invest money in another country as a fall-back option rather than take out all their money from their home country and cut business ties.
Their exit sends a poor signal about the ‘doing business climate’ in India,” says Rupa Subramanya, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.