With the dream ... of starting a trade, Ahmed Ali Dadabhai set sail for Bahrain in 1935, leaving behind the drudgery of farming in Bombay. The villagers from Rajasthan could barely afford to pay for his journey, but by the time he died in 1996 ... the business he had started by selling snacks at a roadside stall had grown into a multi-million-dollar construction and tourism enterprise.

Run by his three sons and grandson, the Dadabhai Group today boasts of being one of Bahrain's biggest business groups. It does not publish profit or turnover figures, but claims it employees around 900 workers ...

Dadabhai started off by selling samosas from a stall on capital Manama's main Sheikh Abdullah Road. Two of his sons dropped out of school and joined him.

Qutub Dadabhai, Ahmed Ali's grandson and the company's director, studied marketing in the United States before joining his father's business (of) importing toys from China and (retailing) them ..

"In 1978, my father Abbas Dadabhai and his brother Mohammed opened a construction company ... Both were school dropouts as my grandfather could not pay their fees".

"They also opened a travel agency, and in 1990 we built the Baisan International Hotel in Bahrain. Since then, the business has grown", Qutub said. The Dadabhai Group, which owns two hotels, a resort and several other construction and tourism firms, has spent $2.2 million to set up an institute to train Bahrainis in hotel  management and catering. The group ... is ... building a 73-villa resort at a cost of around $10 million jointly with a UK-based businessman. (Source: The Indian Express, 14 September, 2000)