“It is difficult to express the joy I feel at being awarded,” Balachandran said in his comments to Khaleej Times
A UAE-based entrepreneur and philanthropist, Siddharth Balachandran, is among 27 named for the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBSA). The PBSA is the highest honour for Indians living outside of the country.
“It is difficult to express the joy I feel at being awarded,” Balachandran said in his comments to Khaleej Times.
“My focus is never to build wealth. The focus always is to build an institution that would stand the test of time…When you build up institutions, then sustainability comes in and the team comes in. The team is the most important thing,” KT quoted him as saying.
Balachandran set up Buimerc Corporation in Dubai in 2009. “It was a time when Dubai was embarking on the most significant boom, and I was lucky to get into that curve. What success I could have achieved in 20 years, I was able to achieve in five years thanks to Dubai. That is the kind of influence this city has on people… I was in the right place at the right time,” he said.
Following is the list of people who got the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award for 2023.
- Jagadish Chennupati of Australia: In the field of science and technology and education
- Sanjeev Mehta of Bhutan in education
- Dilip Loundo of Brazil in art and culture and education
- Alexander Maliakel John of Brunei in medicine
- Vaikuntam Iyer Lakshmanan of Canada in community welfare
- Joginder Singh Nijjar of Croatia in art and culture
- Ramjee Prasad of Denmark in IT
- Kannan Ambalam of Ethiopia in community welfare
- Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay of Germany in community welfare
- Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana in politics and community welfare
- Reena Vinod Pushkarna of Israel in business and community welfare
- Maqsooda Sarfi Shiotani of Japan in education
- Rajagopal of Mexico in education
- Amit Kailash Chandra Lath of Poland in business
- Parmanand Sukhumal Daswani of the Republic of Congo in community welfare
- Piyush Gupta of Singapore in business
- Mohanlal Hira, South Sudan
&
- Sanjaykumar Shivabhai Patel of South Sudan in community welfare
- Sivakumar Nadesan of Sri Lanka (community welfare)
- Dewanchandrebhose Sharman of Suriname (community welfare)
- Archana Sharma of Switzerland (science and technology)
- Frank Arthur Seepersad of Trinidad and Tobago (community welfare)
- Siddharth Balachandran of the UAE (business)
- Chandrakant Babubhai Patel of the UK (media)
25 Darshan Singh Dhaliwal of the US (business and community welfare)
- Rajesh Subramaniam of the US (business)
- Ashok Kumar Tiwary of Uzbekistan (business)
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