Enemies in Winter, Allies in Spring: Dinesh Dhamija and Tony Goodwin on Post-Brexit Enterprise

Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers for $471 million. In 2019 he was elected as a Liberal Democrat MEP, promising to oppose Brexit in the European Parliament. He has now returned to entrepreneurship, with a portfolio of businesses in Romania, India and elsewhere. Dhamija plays a leading role in TiE – a network created by Indian diaspora entrepreneurs.

Tony Goodwin founded recruitment business Antal International in 1992, working in newly-liberated Central and Eastern European countries. With over 130 offices in 37 countries, including Russia, India and China, Antal has won multiple entrepreneurship awards. Goodwin was selected as a Brexit Party candidate for the 2019 general election but withdrew after the party reduced the seats it contested.

Two entrepreneurs, both based in London, built global businesses during the 1990s and 2000s, yet came to opposite conclusions on Brexit. Dinesh Dhamija spotted that, by serving 500-plus million consumers in Europe, his online travel agency ebookers would be an attractive target for US competitors. Tony Goodwin at Antal International, by contrast, chaffed under what he judged the excessive bureaucracy of Brussels, hampering innovation and enterprise.

In January 2021, with British companies bemoaning additional red tape and the government boasting of its COVID vaccine agility, how do these former opponents view the future?

Tony Goodwin:

“I think decision-making is going to be much quicker. Innovation was stifled by EU bureaucracy. I think we will have better opportunities of striking trade deals and doing things more entrepreneurially. We’re now in the top three countries globally for trade deals in the last six months.

“My views are based on real life business principles. Steve Jobs would never have been able to turn around Apple if he’d had to agree with 27 heads to launch the iPod. So I think there are great opportunities for us: unshackled from Brussels, we’ll do better.

“I hope we can take advantage of being fleet of foot, as we’re seeing with the AstraZeneca deal, ordering vaccines much more quickly than the EU. For example, our 45 offices in India are taking a great deal of interest. India and the EU have been working on a trade deal for 11 years, but now Prime Minister Modi thinks we could do a UK-only deal within a year.”

Former Head of the EU’s India Desk, Dhamija countered:

“The people who sabotaged the India-EU trade deal were the British, because they wanted to protect whisky and car exporters. Europe was very keen, but there was a UK veto. India was only too happy to get rid of duties and tariffs: one friend with a Mercedes contract in India told me that two-thirds of his business was exporting parts to Europe, so he would have been delighted.

“Modi is right, it should be easy to do a deal, but the bureaucracy we need to look at is in the UK, not in the EU. When Parliament votes in Westminster, it takes 20 minutes for everyone to troop through the lobbies. In the EU, you vote in three seconds and the result appears on a display.

“My view was always that an EU market of 515 million people – including Britain - is far preferable to the UK’s 67 million. Post-Brexit, we’re already seeing small fishing companies going bankrupt because they can’t export their products to Europe. Boris Johnson had to do a deal by the end of 2020. He didn’t care much about fishing, or any other business – 80 per cent of the UK economy is in services and there was nothing about these in the deal.

“The EU, as a $19 trillion economy, can talk tough with the US, which is a $20 trillion economy, or with China - a $15 trillion economy. You can stand up to bullying. But the UK as a $3 trillion economy won’t get anywhere, as we saw with the government’s capitulation to the US on using Huawei technology in the 5G rollout.

“As an entrepreneur, paperwork doesn’t really bother me. You deal with it to get what you want. But why put in these extra layers of bureaucracy? Jobs are now moving to the continent. Many service businesses are setting up EU offices, we’ve seen 350 companies do this recently because they can’t depend on the government to help them.”

Tony Goodwin argued that this will fade with time.

“I’m concerned about jobs but I’m hopeful that employment created by quicker deals and technological innovation, say in London and Cambridge, will mean we benefit in the medium term.

“I don’t think that Frankfurt or Paris will become European financial centres, partly because the Americans don’t speak French or German and because London is a much nicer place to do business. The latest figures show that we’ve only lost 5 per cent of the jobs we anticipated would leave the UK. I think this will be made up by innovative and creative solutions to business problems, such as new electric battery storage.

“As far as opening new offices, that’s something Antal has always done. We’re in 37 countries across five continents and, if anything, they’ve increased our UK business through a referral culture. Recruitment is non-political, non-religious, non-ethnic. I’m a great believer in a shared business model.”

Dinesh Dhamija took issue:

“Figures are figures. We’ll soon be able to tell whether jobs have left the UK for Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Berlin. Every UK institution now has to set up in these cities. If you look at Tesla, they’ve chosen Berlin for their European factory because of course they want access to a market of 450 million people.

“Elon Musk is putting 10,000 satellites in space, so you can get 50 MBs/second on your mobile phone on the top of Everest or the middle of the Sahara. This is thanks to American government support, just as the growth of Amazon, Facebook and Google has been sponsored by the US State Department. Now they’re so big, they can amass information on consumers and keep them under their thumb. Europe should do the same – I proposed that Eriksson and Nokia should merge to compete with Apple and Samsung. I would love to see us create national champions in the way that the Americans do. But Europe is too egalitarian and the UK can’t hope to do it by itself.”

Tony Goodwin has a book recommendation:

“You should read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. It’s fascinating. Dystopian. Shows the profit motives of data collection and advertising, the absolute desire to know about and control our lives. You can see it in the way the Chinese support Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei. What’s going to happen in future is Facebook, Google and Amazon will say to the US government: ‘You can’t break us up, because if you do, the Chinese will beat us’.”

Dinesh Dhamija:

“I agree that China is a bigger threat than the US. Xi Jinping is becoming more dictatorial and grinding China’s competitors into the ground. But technology is certainly the best option for the UK. What we desperately need are software designers: I’d introduce an Australian-style points system for immigration, something that Nigel Farage supports. We should focus on entrepreneurialism and not worry about what the government says, because half the time they don’t know what they’re talking about. You can see that from the response to COVID.”

Tony Goodwin:

“The acute shortage of software developers is good for recruitment companies. It also means we’re switching our efforts to a technology platform, a global website for jobs. We’re building on our heritage in Eastern Europe, starting in Romania and Bulgaria - which is an epicentre for coding – then expanding into Russia and then back to Western Europe.”

Dinesh Dhamija:

“I have quite a few companies in Romania, including a software business in Bucharest. Romanians are unbelievable coders. A third of Microsoft’s coding team in Seattle are Romanian. You have everyone sitting in Romania now, even Indian multinationals like Wipro.”

Tony Goodwin:

“In my experience, younger British kids are very forward-looking, very inventive. I think we’ve done a good thing in fostering entrepreneurship. My Ernst & Young UK Entrepreneur of the Year award was just one of dozens recognising entrepreneurial spirit. I tell my kids: ‘Don’t worry about what your job will be, because what you’ll be doing in five years hasn’t been invented yet.’ As long as people are educated, motivated, alert and want to make money, they’ll become good entrepreneurs, unafraid of embracing new challenges, like the tech plays that are coming through.”

Dinesh Dhamija:

“There are much bigger opportunities now than ever before. You just need to listen out for them. A company worth $1 billion could be worth $100 billion. What companies are doing in food, education, green energy…people like Bill Gross, whose Ideas Lab has sold 45 companies or taken them public. We should get our cues from people like him.

“COVID has created turmoil, which always presents new opportunities. I can do four or five meetings at my desk every day, saving time and money on travel.”

Tony Goodwin:

“It’s funny because the technology has been around for years – Skype launched in 2003. But the current chaos means that there are more ideas and opportunities than ever before. Yesterday I was on a call with Larry Fink, the founder of Blackrock, and the President of the IMF. It was like being in a room with them, seeing the whites of their eyes. It’s really improved the quality of my life and forced entrepreneurs like me to take software plans forward, inspired by people like you, Dinesh.”

Dinesh Dhamija:

“I just sold a house in India over Zoom for $7 million! I’d never have done that before this pandemic. It’s fast-forwarded technology by three to five years.”

And with that, the two entrepreneurs agreed to stay in touch and chase their dreams, with Brexit behind them and a world of opportunity ahead.

 

  

 

Enemies in December, Allies in January.

Dinesh Dhamija and Anthony Goodwin debate Post-Brexit Enterprise

Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers.com for $471 million. In 2019 he was elected as a Liberal Democrat MEP, promising to oppose Brexit in the European Parliament. He has now returned to entrepreneurship, with a portfolio of businesses in Romania, India and elsewhere. Dhamija plays a leading role in TiE.org – an entrepreneurs’ ecosystem, created by Indian software technicians. His autobiography will be published later this year.

Anthony Goodwin founded recruitment business Antal International in 1992, working in newly-liberated Central and Eastern European countries. With over 130 offices in 37 countries, including Russia, India and China, Antal has won multiple entrepreneurship awards. Goodwin was selected as a Brexit Party candidate for the 2019 general election but withdrew after the party reduced the seats it contested. Antal has just launched a global online jobs board – www.antaljobs.com.

Two entrepreneurs, both based in London, built global businesses during the 1990s and 2000s, yet came to opposite conclusions on Brexit. Dinesh Dhamija spotted that, by serving 500-plus million consumers in Europe, his online travel agency ebookers would be an attractive target for US competitors. Anthony Goodwin at Antal International, by contrast, chaffed under what he judged the excessive bureaucracy of Brussels, hampering innovation and enterprise.

In January 2021, with British companies bemoaning additional red tape and the government boasting of its COVID vaccine agility, how do these former opponents view the future?

Anthony Goodwin: “I think decision-making is going to be much quicker. Innovation was stifled by EU bureaucracy. I think we will have better opportunities of striking trade deals and doing things more entrepreneurially. We’re now in the top three countries globally for trade deals in the last six months.

“My views are based on real life business principles. Steve Jobs would never have been able to turn around Apple if he’d had to agree with 27 heads to launch the iPod. So I think there are great opportunities for us: unshackled from Brussels, we’ll do better.

“I hope we can take advantage of being fleet of foot, as we’re seeing with the AstraZeneca deal, ordering vaccines much more quickly than the EU. For example, our 45 offices in India are taking a great deal of interest. India and the EU have been working on a trade deal for 11 years, but now Prime Minister Modi thinks we could do a UK-only deal within a year.”

Former Head of the EU’s India Desk, Dhamija countered:

“The people who sabotaged the India-EU trade deal were the British, because we wanted to protect our whisky and car exporters. Europe was very keen, but there was a UK veto. India was only too happy to get rid of duties and tariffs: one friend with a Mercedes contract in India told me that two-thirds of his business was exporting auto parts back to Mercedes in Europe, so he would have been delighted.

“Modi is right, it should be easy to do a deal, but the bureaucracy we need to look at is in the UK also. When Parliament votes in Westminster, it takes 20 minutes for everyone to troop through the lobbies. In the EU, you vote in three seconds and the result appears on a display. All the votes for the whole week are taken in one hour on Thursdays.

“My view was always that an EU market of 515 million people – including Britain - is far preferable to the UK’s 67 million. Post-Brexit, we’re already seeing small fishing companies going bankrupt because they can’t export their products to Europe. Boris Johnson had to do a deal by the end of 2020. He didn’t care much about fishing, or any other business – 80 per cent of the UK economy is in services and there was nothing about these in the deal.

“The EU, as a $19 trillion economy, can talk tough with the US, which is a $20 trillion economy, or with China - a $15 trillion economy. You can stand up to bullying. But the UK as a $3 trillion economy won’t get anywhere, as we saw with the government’s capitulation to the US on using Huawei technology in the 5G rollout.

“As an entrepreneur, paperwork doesn’t really bother me. You deal with it to get what you want. But why put in these extra layers of bureaucracy? Jobs are now moving to the continent. Many service businesses are setting up EU offices, we’ve seen 350 companies in a queue waiting to be dealt with by the Dutch Development Authority.

Anthony Goodwin argued that this will fade with time.

“I’m concerned about jobs but I’m hopeful that employment created by quicker deals and technological innovation, say in London and Cambridge, will mean we benefit in the medium term.

“I don’t think that Frankfurt or Paris will become European financial centres, partly because the Americans don’t speak French or German and because London is a much nicer place to do business. The latest figures show that we’ve only lost 5 per cent of the jobs we anticipated would leave the UK. I think this will be made up by innovative and creative solutions to business problems, such as new electric battery storage.

“As far as opening new offices, that’s something Antal has always done. We’re in 37 countries across five continents and, if anything, they’ve increased our UK business through a referral culture. Recruitment is non-political, non-religious, non-ethnic. I’m a great believer in a shared business model.”

Dinesh Dhamija took issue:

“Figures are figures. We’ll soon be able to tell whether jobs have left the UK for Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Berlin. Every UK institution now has to set up in these cities. If you look at Tesla, they’ve chosen Berlin for their European factory because of course they want access to a market of 450 million people.

“Elon Musk is putting 10,000 satellites in space, so you can get 50 MBs/second on your mobile phone on the top of Everest or the middle of the Sahara. This is thanks to American government support, just as the growth of Amazon, Facebook and Google has been sponsored by the US State Department. Now they’re so big, they can amass information on consumers and keep their competitors under their thumbs. Europe should do the same – I proposed that Eriksson and Nokia’s 5Gbusinesses should merge as they have 21 per cent of all 5G patents in the world, to compete with Apple, Huawei and Samsung. I would love to see us create national champions in the way that the Americans do. But Europe is too egalitarian and the UK can’t hope to do it by itself.”

Anthony Goodwin has a book recommendation:

“You should read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. It’s fascinating. Dystopian. Shows the profit motives of data collection and advertising, the absolute desire to know about and control our lives. You can see it in the way the Chinese support Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei. What’s going to happen in future is Facebook, Google and Amazon will say to the US government: ‘You can’t break us up, because if you do, the Chinese will beat us’.”

Dinesh Dhamija:

“I agree that China is a bigger threat than the US. Xi Jinping is becoming more dictatorial and grinding China’s competitors into the ground. But technology is certainly the best option for the UK. What we desperately need are software designers: I’d introduce an Australian-style points system for immigration, something that Nigel Farage supports. We should focus on entrepreneurialism and not worry about what the government says, because half the time they don’t know what they’re talking about. You can see that from the response to COVID.”

Anthony Goodwin:

“The acute shortage of software developers is good for recruitment companies. It also means we’re switching our efforts to a technology platform, a global website for jobs. We’re building on our heritage in Eastern Europe, starting in Romania and Bulgaria - which is an epicentre for coding – then expanding into Russia and then back to Western Europe.”

Dinesh Dhamija:

“I have quite a few companies in Romania. Romanians are unbelievable coders. A third of Microsoft’s coding team in Seattle are Romanian. You have all the big tech companies sitting in Romania now, including Indian multinationals like Wipro.”

Anthony Goodwin:

“In my experience, younger British kids are very forward-looking, very inventive. I think we’ve done a good thing in fostering entrepreneurship. My Ernst & Young UK Entrepreneur of the Year award was just one of dozens recognising entrepreneurial spirit. I tell my kids: ‘Don’t worry about what your job will be, because what you’ll be doing in five years hasn’t been invented yet.’ As long as people are educated, motivated, alert and want to make money, they’ll become good entrepreneurs, unafraid of embracing new challenges, like the tech plays that are coming through such as our new jobs board www.antaljobs.com.”

Dinesh Dhamija:

“There are much bigger opportunities now than ever before. You just need to listen out for them. A company worth $1 billion could be worth $100 billion. What companies are doing in food, education, green energy…people like Bill Gross, whose ‘IdeasLab’ has sold 45 companies or taken them public out of 150 he has started. We should get our cues from people like him.

“COVID has created turmoil, which always presents new opportunities. For example I can do four or five meetings from my desk every day, saving time and money on travel.”

Anthony Goodwin:

“It’s funny because the technology has been around for years – Skype launched in 2003. But the current chaos means that there are more ideas and opportunities than ever before. Yesterday I was on a call with Larry Fink, the founder of Blackrock, and the President of the IMF. It was like being in a room with them, seeing the whites of their eyes. It’s really improved the quality of my life and forced entrepreneurs like me to take software plans forward, inspired by people like you, Dinesh.”

Dinesh Dhamija:

“I just sold a house in India over Zoom for £7 million! I’d never have done that before this pandemic. It’s fast-forwarded technology by three to five years.”

And with that, the two entrepreneurs agreed to stay in touch and chase their dreams, with Brexit behind them and a world of opportunity ahead.

 

David Nicholson is a London-based freelance journalist and author. He runs www.freelancejournalist.co.uk - contact dn@freelancejournalist.co.uk tel: 07802 834477.