A View from the Top with Tej Lalvani, boss of Vitabiotics and Dragons’ Den star

The entrepreneur tells Andy Martin why he believes his products really work, how Vitabiotics stands out from their rivals and the secret to becoming a Dragon in the famous Den

(Vitabiotics)

Tej Lalvani is late for our meeting. In fact he had to jump out of his taxi and run from Oxford Circus to the Langham Hotel, arriving slightly out of breath.

“It’s lucky I took my vitamins this morning,” he says. He is a walking, talking, fit-looking 44-year-old advertisement for the power of Wellman and its maker Vitabiotics, which is the company he heads up when he’s not being a dragon on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den.

Lalvani may be a shrewd businessman, but he’s also very much a family guy. He pays due respect to his father, Professor Kartar Lalvani, a chemist born in India who got a PhD in micronutrients from Bonn and went on to found the company back in 1971.