Conferred with a Padma award this Jaipur-born tycoon christened Kamlesh Punjabi had a yen for business that led him to Japan to find his empire as Ryuko Hira. As the owner of HMI Hotel Group, which runs a chain of hotels and resorts in Japan Hira's roots in Japan are over a century old.
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Hira himself moved to te land of the rising sun in 1966 but his family had started a business in Yokohama back in 1921, exporting Japanese silk to India. Hira, known as Kamlesh Punjabi married a Japanese woman and became a naturalised Japanese and adopted the name Ryuko Hira.
He established the HMI Hotel group in 1991 which manages about 60 resort and business hotels in Japan.