Maharajh: New venture

London, March 30: The new owner of Asian Babes, Britain’s first and only soft-porn magazine aimed at Indians and Pakistanis, said he had no moral qualms about buying the title and that he has plans on how to make even more money from the business.

In his first interview, Aroon Maharajh, a dynamic 37-year-old businessman whose father is an Indian from South Africa and mother an Austrian, spoke about his purchase of Fantasy Magazines, a collection of 45 “adult” titles, from Richard Desmond, the proprietor of Express Newspapers.

Desmond, who has been taunted by his Fleet Street rivals in national newspapers with the “pornographer” tag, is said to have sold the magazines for a reported £20 million, apparently because he wants to buy the upmarket The Daily Telegraph.

At first, it might seem odd that Maharajh, who has been brought up by a father steeped in orthodox Hindu Brahmin values, should take on Asian Babes and other magazines with such names as Big Ones, Nude Readers’ Wives, Skinny and Wriggly, Big and Black, Horny Housewives and New Talent, as well as Attitude, which offers gay lifestyle.

But for Maharajh, who moves briskly from one money-making idea to the next, morality does not enter the equation. “I am afraid not,” he responds firmly.

Although he is not into soft porn himself, “I don’t have any issues with it. It’s completely legal business, it sits in a lot of stores running right the way through England and in Ireland, it occupies 27-28 per cent of the top shelf. I see great potential for the business.”

He and a long-standing business partner, Simon Robinson, took the 45 titles in Fantasy Publications off Desmond’s hands through Remnant Media, a company set up by the duo last year to make media acquisitions. Maharajh also consulted his wife, Teresa, who voiced no dissent.

“My wife was 100 per cent behind me,” he points out. “I told her it’s all adult contents, we had a little joke about it.”

Although the magazines will remain in their old locations in the offices of Desmond’s Northern & Shell group, he dismisses Fleet Street rumours that the buyout was window dressing to give Desmond greater respectability, in preparation for a possible bid for The Daily Telegraph. Indeed, there seems no reason to doubt Maharajh — he and Robinson do seem to be the new owners.

As CEO of Remnant Media, Maharajh will not get involved in the day-to-day running of the magazines, which girls would be featured and so on, but he does have “four or five ideas” on how to make more money. With his background in dotcom, no one should be surprised if Internet subscribers in India, Pakistan and elsewhere are able to log on to the offerings of Asian Babes and other titles. “It’s technology and if you don’t do it, somebody else is going to do it,” he argues.

Nor does he think sales of Asian Babes will necessarily suffer. “I am still of the theory that whatever people can see on the Net, they would still like to have the hard copy in their hands.”

The problem with Asian Babes was that despite promising its fans a regular diet of British Asian lovelies in various stages of undress, it quickly found that few women of Indian and Pakistani origin were willing to be photographed in raunchy poses for the magazine. Thus, the magazine interpreted “Asian” loosely to mean girls from Thai massage parlours and the Far East generally.

Maharajh consulted his employees and got word back. “That situation has been resolved now,” he says. “All this is pretty new to us but they are getting a lot of content from England.” He is not stuck on soft-porn. Remnant Media will make other acquisitions, which may in time make him one of the first serious British Asian players in the media business.

Maharajh admits he has made up in life despite leaving school “with only one -Level”. His previous background is in the garment trade. He also ran a successful dotcom venture, Music Unsigned, which sought out fresh musical talent and acted as a bridge “between the street and record labels”.

“Aroon is very much an Indian,” emphasises his 63-year-old father, Kithandra Vebeecun Maharajh, whose ancestors emigrated from Rajasthan to South Africa “between 1820 and 1830 as indentured labourers” and who himself set foot on British soil on “May 20, 1960”.

Aroon Maharajh is happily married with three “beautiful” boys, Max Aroon, 13, Louis Kumar, 10, and Oliver Patrick, 7.

“I love the Indian culture and I love the Indian people,” begins Maharajh. “If you come into our house during the week, you would think you had walked into an Indian house because of the smell of curries. My eldest son helped me cook a fish curry the other night. We eat curries two, three times a week and they are always home cooked.”

Father and son are now planning to make their first journey to India. “My father and I were talking about this,” says Maharajh. “I said to him, ‘Now is the time for us to go back’.”