Lalvani has gone from driving forklift trucks to the C-suite over the past three decades, climbing the ranks at the global vitamins company set up in London by his father.

Vitabiotics, the closely held company behind Wellman, Pregnacare and Wellwoman, was sold to US investment firm Bain Capital in a deal announced in July. The transaction cements Lalvani and his family as one of the UK’s richest business dynasties, with Vitabiotics valued at about £900 million ($1.2 billion), according to Bloomberg reporting.

The 52 year-old sees his family’s path to success as more challenging for the younger generation of UK founders today, though, as they absorb recent tax hikes and brace for more at this week’s budget under Andy Burnham’s Labour government.

“It’s not the best place to start a business,” Lalvani said in an interview. “People recognize that there’s a lot of headwinds, but businesses still feel they’re not getting the support they need.”Lalvani took on his current role as chief executive officer in 2015 after serving as chief operating officer at Vitabiotics, which counted Nestle SA and Unilever Plc among its other potential suitors. He declined to comment on his share of the eventual sale to Bain, which is due to complete in 2027.

The British national, who now lives in the United Arab Emirates, is also known for appearing between 2017 and 2021 on the BBC show , where hopeful entrepreneurs pitch to a panel of investors.

Bloomberg spoke with Lalvani about the Bain buyout, his experience as a Dragon and how he would boost the UK economy. Comments have been edited and condensed.

If people get bad customer service from one company, they will go to another business, and the same principles apply to the UK now. The country needs to make a strong effort to fundamentally change its approach to attract people with the capital to build a business and then provide the right environment for them. We’ve had so many prime ministers in a short span of time that no one’s been able to make that change.

There’s a lot that we can do in the short term to be able to have a long-term gain. For example, cutting stamp duty on property transactions would help to kick-start the real estate market and boost employment by getting construction companies going. We want founders to build big companies here in the UK. It’s a great country that needs to get back to where it was.

My investments are managed through my family office, which has been run for a number of years by London-based Saphira Group, founded by former Credit Suisse banker Katie Partridge. We take a diversified approach across different asset classes, so the sale hasn’t really changed the principles, but it will give us more to work with.

I’m most excited about continuing to back good founders and businesses I believe in. I’d probably see how I can add value from my experience for the businesses I’m investing in – not on an operating level, but more on a strategic level, like on a bigger scale where I help turbocharge the company.

It allowed me to get involved in sectors where I wasn’t comfortable. One of my best investments on the show was into Look After My Bills, an energy switching company that puts you onto the cheapest provider. Within 12 months of investing, they had saved about £30 million of people’s money and got acquired by Go. Compare’s owner shortly after.

One of the craziest pitches – I didn’t invest in this one – came from the inventor of an alarm clock you attached to your wrist that woke you with an electric shock. The idea was to not wake your spouse in the morning, but you literally jumped from the shock.

You learn a lot about people on the show as you meet 120 different founders in one season, and you have to decide about whether to invest in them very quickly. The filming does take up a lot of time, though, and five years of doing that alongside running my business was a good enough stint. I still catch up with the Dragons every now and then – in fact, I just saw Touker Suleyman. What’s fun about is it allows people to think about how they make a business out of an idea.

I’ve visited the UAE several times a year for more than two decades, but it now makes sense to be there opportunity-wise. We have a 30% market share there, and it also allows me to deal easily with China and India, two of our fastest growing areas. The UK market, meantime, is still expanding but it’s more mature. I’m still in the UK every three weeks too, so it’s not that much of a transition.

the 2013 version directed by Baz Luhrmann featuring Leonardo DiCaprio. Half-way through, my wife and I realized we might meet Leonardo at an event the following day for a charity where he’s a benefactor, and we did. I told him that he looked almost the same as when he filmed the movie. I remember during my younger years watching one of his earliest films, , and thinking as the credits rolled: ‘If only you could invest in shares in an actor.’A lot of people try and be everything to everyone, but being niche is a lot better. Be a big fish in a small pond – and you can always make the pond bigger. That’s what we did with our business.