Speaker Mohammed Aslam Managing Director of the Aagrah Group

When the chairman's (Mohammed Sabir) disabled son was at school he used to invite his friends to the restaurant. When his son died in 1983 he decided to continue this as a charity dinner. That year it raised £700. In 1996 he moved the event out to a hotel (Cedar Court). Last year the event was at Magna in Sheffield and raised £145,000. This year it will be at Leeds Arena.In the early years the money went to Pakistan and India but now 90% of the money goes to British Charities.

When Sabir and Aslam decided to start the restaurant they translated the name of the ancient city Agra but got it wrong - hence the name Aagrah.

Aslam told how he arrived in the UK at the age of 14 where he went to Barkerend School for a year and then became a textile worker for 2 years. Then at 18 he became a bus conductor. About the same time his older brother Sabir started a mobile food van. From the money he made at this he was able to start a restaurant in an old plumbers shop at Westgate Shipley and Aslam became a waiter. After a while Sabir decided he wanted to go back to Pakistan and gave the restaurant to Aslam to run. At that time the turnover was £1,200 per week. But Aslam had no experience of running a business and turnover slumped. Sabir returned and Aslam went to London to be a bus driver.

Sabir had a handicapped son and he felt that running the business was too much strain on his family so he sold his share of the business to his partner. This upset his son and so Sabir asked Aslam to come back and they bought the business back. Then Sabir's son died and he wanted to take the body back to Pakistan so Aslam had to take over the running again. He was desperate to make it work this time so he watched the chef carefully but the chef gave him a hard time. So Aslam went in at 9:00am and pre-prepared everything and he managed to get the turnover up from £200 per week to £3,700.

These days the brothers try to feed the general public the same food that they would eat at home but it is never possible to get there 100%. From those small beginnings the restaurant has grown into a large group of restaurants which is run by the second generation. But the food for all the restaurants is all prepared in one central facility in Shipley in order to ensure consistency throughout the chain.