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Ram Lakhina is the Founder and Chairman of The Netherlands India Chamber of Commerce (NICCT). He also serves as the Chairman of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Foundation, and is one of the founders of The World Forum for Ethics and Business. He is an entrepreneur with business interests in India and The Netherlands. He holds Masters in Economics degree from University of Minnesota, USA and Bachelors (Honours) degree from University of Delhi in India.
Ram Lakhina has been espousing the interests of the Non-resident Indians (NRIs) and People of Indian Origin (PIOs) for more than thirty years. He was the first Chairman of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) from 1994 until 2002. The GOPIO is committed to the promotion of interests of nearly 25 million PIOs living outside India.
In 1980, he cofounded the Foundation for Critical Choices for India to mobilize the intellectual and material resources of non-resident Indians and people of Indian origin to identify critical problems facing India and to suggest policy options for the solution of those problems. He was the President of the Foundation from 1983 to 1991 and then again from 1994 to 2003. He is the President Emeritus of the Foundation at present.
In 2009 he became the recipient of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman award conferred on him by the President of India, Her Excellency Pratibha Patil, in acknowledgement of his exceptional and meritorious contribution in the field of Community Service. In that same year he was bestowed upon the Royal honorary title Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau, by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, for his special merits to society in the field of cultural andeconomic relations between India and The Netherlands.
The publishers of “The Indian”, based in Hong Kong, have named Ram Lakhina as one of the “100 Global Indians – luminaries, achievers and entrepreneurs”.
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