Back in 1966-67, Shahid Khan was an avid bike rider and a teenage boy trying to arrange Rs1,200 to reach the US.
He would ask his friend
Khawar Baloch, who was also a motorcycle racer, for the money.
Most of us only know that
the 66th richest man in the United States in 2020 is
Pakistani-American Shahid Khan. Several people also know that Shahid Khan’s net
worth is $7.6 billion. It has also been reported several times that when
immigrated to the US from Lahore at age 16 in 1968, he had only $500. The
Forbes published the list of US richest people in 2020, and of them Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is number one for the
third year in a row, followed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates at number two.
This piece sheds light on
the early life of Shahid Khan in Lahore, who now owns NFL’s Jacksonville
Jaguars, which he bought in 2012, UK’s Fulham football club, which he bought in
2013 and Black News Channel, a 24-hour cable news channel, which he launched in
February 2020.
I wrote a piece in Dawn
newspaper in 2012 titled Lahore-born
entrepreneur among US richest people. Then, Shahid Khan, the owner of auto parts supplier Flex-N-Gate and
the Jacksonville Jaguars, ranked 179th on the Forbes 400 with an estimated net
worth of $2.5 billion. In 2020, he has improved his fortune to $7.6bn and has
gone up the ladder to the 66th.
My interest in Shahid Khan
developed after I read about him in News-Press, a Gannet newspaper being
published in Fort Myers, Florida, where I worked during a US-Pakistan
Journalists Exchange Programme in 2011. The newspaper mentioned his name for he
is a resident of this scenic neighbourhood Naples, Florida. After its
publication, Khawar Baloch, a childhood buddy of Shahid Khan, contacted me and
shared certain details about the billionaire sports buff.
“I met Shahid Khan in 1966
when our family lived in Krishan Nagar, while Shahid Khan’s father house was in
Gulberg’s P block. His father’s name was Rafique Khan, and their old Gulberg
house still holds nameplate of Rafique Khan. Rafique Khan was the veteran of
multiple marriages.
“His mother was a
mathematics teacher in then Government College for Women (now the Government
College for Women’s University), while his father had a shop of survey and
drawing accessories in Anarkali. The shop is still intact and his cousin is
running the shop. Shahid Khan had another brother – Tariq Rafique Khan. He
matriculated from the Aligarh Public School. He died when he was in his early
20s.
“Shahid Khan was four-year
senior to me. He was a student of St. Anthony School on Lawrence Road, while I
studied in Muslim Model High School on Lower Mall. After the school, he would come
to me on his motorbike,” he recalls. Those were the days when a few people had
fuel-powered vehicles in the city.
The 50 CC motorcycle of
Shahid Khan was the German made DKW. It could run on petrol and when fuel dried
up, it could be driven as pedal-driven bicycle.
Mr Khawar had USA-made NSU
motorcycle, 1967-68 model.
Such kind of bikes is now not available.
Shahid Khan and Khawar
Baloch would ride their bikes on Canal Road and other city roads and would chat
for hours.
Khawar remembers several
races which they had those days. One of them was from Jail Road to Jallu on
Canal Road.
“Those days, he used to say
that I want to go to America for studies and for that I need Rs1,200,”
remembers Khawar Baloch.
Considering less inflation
in those times, the sum looked enormous.
“His plans looked odd to me.
America was not a familiar name those days. A foreign journey would be only
undertaken to vilayat, which means England. Pakistan being a former colony of
the British Raj had connections whereas America used to be a foreign name those
days,” Khawar says.
Khawar could not help Shahid
Khan with cash.
One day, Shahid Khan
disappeared. Khawar soon went to college and later on to Canada in 1976. He did
not hear about Shahid Khan until 2010.
In 2012, I wrote in Dawn:
On
the other hand, Shahd Khan moved to the US in 1968 with $500 in his pocket and
a great determination for success in his mind. About
his early days in the US, the magazine quoted Mr khan as saying that he spent
his first night in a $2 per night room at the Champaign YMCA. His first job in
the US was washing dishes for $1.20 an hour. He graduated from the UIUC School
of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering with a BSc in 1971.
He proved to be a successful entrepreneur when after his
university education, Mr Khan invented a new truck bumper design that shaved
weight off for fuel efficiency considerations. He never looked back and soon
built his company with his $16,000 saving and a bank loan. Soon he developed
the company into a $3.4 billion manufacturing juggernaut that supplied the
biggest automakers in the world.
Nine months ago, he bought the Jaguars, fulfilling a longtime
dream to own an NFL franchise.
Now, Mr Khan is focusing on giving back to his adopted country. He
donated $10 million in 2011 to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Back in Lahore, a very few people are aware of Mr Khan’s place on
the Forbes list of the 400 billionaires.
“I only know that he is a Pakistani and he has purchased a
football team in the US,” said Fawad Asghar, a sports journalist.
According to Muhammad Imran, a business graduate, Mr Khan is a
perfect example of brain drain for Pakistanis, and a proof of American dream.
He said Mr Khan was giving back to the Americans since the US gave him a lot.
“Pakistan offers opportunities to a few; scores of intelligent
people with potential entrepreneur skills on Lahore streets can make to the
Forbes list if they are given a chance,” he said.
“Well done, Shahid Khan,” said Shahid Bhatti, also an auto parts
dealer on Guru Mangat Road.
He said though he too wanted to manufacture fuel efficient
bumpers, the big companies and his financial constraints would never let him
fulfill his dream.
“That’s why I am just called Sheeda. I need a chance to be Shahid
Khan,” he said.
In 2010, Khawar Baloch came
to know about the whereabouts of his childhood friend.
He contacted Shahid Khan’s
cousin in Lahore and got his contact number. He has called hundreds of times,
if not thousands of times, to reach him but to no avail. He called Shahid
Khan’s personal secretary multiple times and she promised to convey about
Khawar’s calls to her boss. She did too but Shahid Khan is too busy to talk.
Khawar Baloch has mailed him multiple times which were never returned. He
reaches every person who has information about Shahid Khan. He contacted me
after he read my piece on Shahid Khan in 2012.
He contacted Aziz Memon,
co-founder of the Rotary Club and member of the Lions Club who has met Shahid
Khan a couple of times to get donations. Mr Memon told him that Shahid Khan is
hesitant to caller from Pakistan. According to him, Shahid Khan donates
$100,000 to 200,000 every year for polio control in Pakistan.
In 2019, Shahid Khan met
Prime Minister Imran Khan in the US and expressed his desire to work on the
improvement of sports infrastructure in the country of his birthplace. But for
the dam fund, when the prime minister asked overseas Pakistan for donation,
Shahid Khan donated just $1,000.
No one knows what Shahid
Khan holds for Pakistan but his childhood buddy Khawar Baloch has fond memories
of him and desire to him in person.
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