The Lakhani Family
The patriarch of Lakhani Family, Hassanali Karabhai, migrated to Karachi from Gondia, a town in what is now India’s Maharashtra state, in the wake of the Indian subcontinent’s partition in 1947. He set up a business in his adopted city in 1954 and developed a diverse portfolio – including both manufacturing and trade – over the next two decades. By the 1980s, his Lakson Group had become one of the largest business houses in Pakistan.
Today, Lakson Group is owned and run by Hassanali Karabhai’s four sons – Sultan Ali Lakhani, Amin Muhammad Lakhani, Zulfiqar Ali Lakhani and Iqbal Lakhani – and his many grandchildren. It consists of a highly diverse group of companies. Its businesses include agriculture-based industry, call centers, non-durables consumer goods, fast food, financial services, media, paper and board, printing and packaging, information technology, power generation, drug manufacturing and travel. The group also wholly owns Express Media Group that, in turn, owns and runs Express News television, Urdu language daily Express, English language daily Express Tribune and three major news websites – www.express.com.pk, www.express.pk and www.tribune.com.pk – beside some other media outlets.
Lakson Group’s assets exceed one billion US dollars and, according to its own website, it has international presence in the United Arab Emirates and the United States via its subsidiaries. It also once owned a major tobacco and cigarette manufacturing business that it solad to Philip Morris International in 2007 for 340 million US dollars.
The members of Lakhani Family have overlapping ownerships in various businesses of Lakson Group but have divided their management rather neatly. So, while Sultan Ali Lakhani and his son Bilal Ali Lakhani run Express Media Group almost exclusively, other parts of the group are run by other members of their family.
Lakhani Family is also closely linked to other parts of Pakistan’s business elite. For instances, Danish Ali Lakhani, who is a nephew of Sultan Ali Lakhani, is married to Nazafreen Saigol who is the deputy chief executive of Dawn Media Group and whose father Azam Saigol was a part of Saigol Group, an old and large business house which has its headquarters in Lahore and has a highly diverse and successful business portfolio.
Business
Investment management
Siza Private Limited
Construction
Siza Services Private Limited
Paper and Packaging
Century Paper and Board Mills
Merit Packaging Limited
Fast moving consumer goods
Colgate-Palmolive Company Pakistan
Food and agriculture
Ajinomoto Lakson Pakistan Private Limited
Siza Commodities Private Limited
Siza Foods Private Limited
Healthcare
Siza International Private Limited
Travel
Princeton Travels Private Limited
Power Generation
Lakson Wind Power Generation Private Limited
Lakson Power Limited
Publishing
Century Publications Private Limited
Express Digital Private Limited
Publishing and printing
Matrix Press Private Limited
Publishing and broadcasting
Express publications Private Limited
Television broadcasting
Television Media Network Private Limited
Information technology and communication
Cybernet
StormFiber
Rapid Compute
Sybrid (Private) Limited
Lakson Business Solutions Limited
Ice Animations
Financial services
Century Insurance Company Limited
Lakson Investments Limited
Family & Friends
Affiliated Interests Family Members Friends
a nephew of Sultan Ali Lakhani and runs Cybernet, a part of Lakson Group of Companies, that provides Internet, cable television and phone services under the brand name Stormfiber.
the wife of Danish Ali Lakhani, who is deputy chief executive at Dawn Media Group that owns daily Dawn and its website dawn.com as well as some other publications. She is also the Chief Operating Officer of Dawn News television and City FM 89 radio station.
graduated from Punjab University’s mass communication department in 1988 and started his journalism career in 1989 as a trainee sub-editor at Urdu language daily Nawa-i-Waqt in Lahore. Over the next decade, he became its news editor.
In 2002, he quit Nawa-i-Waqt and joined daily Express, also as news editor. Only a year later, he became the editor of the newspaper and was elevated to the post of group editor after Express Media Group launched other news platforms.
the chief operating officer of www.express.com.pk and the managing editor of daily Express. Apart from that, he is also serving as a director in several companies associated with Express Media Group.
Further Information
Headlines
Meta Data
The group was sent information request, via the media outlets it owns, on 15 January 2019 through a courier company as well as by email. It did not respond even after a reminder was couriered on 1st February 2019 and emailed on 4 February 2019. No verifiable information is available online about the family’s financial status and the ownership structure of its companies.
