We meet in London Bridge and I am adamant that I want to take Aman Chandhok to the Moroccan café on the high road. I’m a big fan of Moroccan cuisine and I wanted to show off what fine taste buds I had acquired. Chandhok very charmingly offered to buy me lunch, though I had said I wanted to get him something. I ordered chicken and pitta bread, Chandhok ordered a chicken salad and we started tucking in straightaway. I don’t do shy when it comes to food, so I was going in ham,ducking the pitta bread in chilli sauce and nodding approvingly to Chandhok's eloquent words.
Aman Chandhok : Proof That Hard Work Is Worth It
The son of Afghan Hindu refugee parents, Chandhok is now a strategic consultant, a motivational speaker and gymaholic who breathes success against the odds. Speaking with a mouthful of chicken and stylistically taking a few sips of Diet Coke, Chandhok started telling me about his family background. His father had come from a very well-educated background, with a number of doctors in the family. Chandhok grandad was a doctor, his Grandad’s brother was a doctor and his Grandma was an English teacher. Despite this, Chandhok’s father was part of the army and did not get an education and got married at 21. “My parents are sort of related, they’re not first cousins, but my dad’s mum is my mum’s first cousin but they’re still the same age” he told me.
Fleeing the Soviet-Afghan war, Chandhok’s father had borrowed money of his brother and the couple made their first stop in India, where they lived for a couple of months.
Chandhok’s family were situated in Berlin for a specific time period, as such was the case for refugees that they were not allowed to travel outside the city. “So this is my parents, straight out of Afghanistan, uneducated, didn’t know German, had no family around,” Chandhok explained. A year and half later of staying in Germany, Chandhok was born and faced the brunt of financial difficulty. His parents were struggling to make ends meet, but did the best they could. Chandhok’s father got a job as a taxi driver and his mother became a waitress in an Indian restaurant.
Chandhok explained to me how his mother had to leave him and his little sister at home most nights just so that she could afford to bring food to the table. It was seeing his parents having to sacrifice so much and work so hard which in turn inspired him to strive to excel in life. In 2005, Chandhok and his family moved to the UK, where his father had bought a house.
‘Chubby’ and ‘stinky’ are two words Chandhok uses to describe what he used to be like in his former years. “I didn’t shower most days,” he said earnestly with no sense of shame or guilt. He had been labelled a ‘Nazi’ and a ‘terrorist’ by the young students at his new primary school, which had an impact on his wellbeing. His plan from early was to get rich, not entirely sure what career to pursue but motivated by the concept of experiencing financial freedom. With little skill in the English language, Chandhok took it upon himself to study up to 16 hours a day to put him ahead of his peers. How many of us can we see we have the same drive? You got to want success as much as you want to breathe! Though his teachers had predicted him Cs and Ds, he had told his teachers that he would get an A*, in spite of the lack of support and self-belief his teachers had shown him. “Monday to Thursday, I’d get home at 3pm and study till 6pm or 10pm, every weekday, four hours minimum every day, that’s 20 hours a week. On a Friday evening, a lot of the kids would go out and chill and go to the city centre. I’d be home sitting on the computer, I would study. On Sunday I’d study from 12pm-8pm every single weekend. In my head I was like this is happening and I did my exams and I got 8 A* and two A’s and two B’s,” he said cheerfully.
“I got higher results than those on higher tiers”, he boasted proudly. It just goes to show that despite people’s lack of belief in you, if you believe in yourself and work hard, you can go really far. Chandhok went on to do A-Levels in Maths,Further Maths,Chemistry, German and an extended project qualification. He was apparently the only one that done further Maths that year from his year group, so every lesson, it would just be him and his teacher in the classroom. Things really took a turning and Chandhok’s furture seemed bright and promising, as he progressed in the academic field. He achieved an A* in further Maths, an A* in Chemistry, an A* in Physics for his A-Levels. Chandhok went on to read Maths and Economics at University College London (UCL). “Everyone there wanted to be bankers, trading and they all wanted to be rich,” he said of the students on his degree course.
Despite excelling academically, compared to his peers at uni, Chandhok struggled finding an internship although he had applied for loads. This led to him starting his own company in his second year of uni - he started manufacturing and selling jewellery. Chandhok utilised his entrepreneurial spirit and began selling jewellery on ebay. In the first six months, he made a whooping £20,000 and didn’t work more than 15 hours a week. With a good stream of money coming in, Chandhok enjoyed the high life for a bit, going to fancy restaurants and clubs. “I used to be like let me buy you food, let me buy him food, we’d go to the club and buy a bottle of Grey Goose, I was just spending money like crazy,” he described to me vividly.
Money became a problem rather than a blessing for Chandhok, when he started gambling. “I started going to the casino and playing poker, £5 here and £5 there,” he said. Things had got so bad, that Chandhok had to ban himself from gambling. So, he banned himself from casinos for six months. But Chandhok started gambling online and going into his local Ladbrokes and Betfred. In one way, he was closing the door, and in another way he was opening another,Chandhok was stuck in a vicious cycle of gambling. “I lost about £20,000 gambling, I was a little bit upset. But I saw it as making money and enjoying myself,” he said.
Chandhok started getting sidetrack and his uni assignments was being affected. He was feeling really depressed and suicidal. One morning, Chandhok broke down in front of his parents crying, which made his family members cry too. They took him to hospital, when the medical professional asked him what was wrong, Chandhok replied “I’m not doing my exam, I’m not going to get a 1st, I’m not gonna get a good job, I’m not gonna earn money, I’m gonna let my parents down.” The medical professional told him not to worry and calm down. Chandhok went back to uni and completed his exams, but was still not finding joy in looking for a job. He took it upon himself to get on LinkedIn and hire as many consultancy firms as possible offering his services, till someone offered him an internship. Chandhok aced the interview and got the internship. He graduated first and then started working full time at the consultancy firm and then eventually going back to his educational establishments as a motivational speaker. He wanted to share his experiences and be able to inspire people to strive for better always, no matter what happens. “I don’t see the point in anyone doing anything half-hearted, what is the point of wasting your time? Maybe you’re not born to be academic, but you are born to do something and you need to find out what that something is,” he said with excitement.
Chandhok told me how he had read 64 books in 52 weeks in the year 2016.For those of you who don’t read so often, challenge yourself and give it a go. The most wise people read a lot. Fact.
With dreams of being front cover for GQ magazine, Chandhok is in line to achieve more greater things. Right now, he’s focused on maintaining his gym and training and continuing to inspire the masses with his motivational and inspirational story of working hard in life.