Karan Bilimoria was born in Hyderabad, India into a Zoroastrian Parsi family which hailed from Gujarat.

As the surname 'Bilimoria' denotes, the ancestral home of the family is the small town of Bilimora, situated on the banks of the river Ambika, in Gandevi taluka of Navsari district of Gujarat state.

Bilimoria's family had a strong background in trade and commerce, but his father and both his grandfathers served in the Indian armed forces.

Italia, a Hyderabad-based businessman and politician who served as a member of the Rajya Sabha in the 1950s (this was Karan's maternal great-grandfather).

At the time, polo sticks made in Argentina were very popular but following the Falklands War, imports of Argentinian products into Britain had been banned and there was little competition to British manufacturers.

Bilimoria began to import polo sticks from India to fill in the gap, selling these successfully and profitably to Harrods and Lillywhites.

[12] He also experimented with importing fashion goods, fabrics, and other products from India, but unlike the polo sticks these were not very successful ventures.

He noticed that regular lager was too gassy and bloating to be enjoyed with food, while ale was too bitter to accompany a meal.

In a battered old Citroen 2CV, Bilimoria himself began distributing 15 cases of beer at a time across London and, slowly, outside it.

Indian curry was becoming increasingly popular in the country at the time and so Cobra Beer was marketed and sold as the perfect drink to go with it.

[20] In October 2009 Bilimoria stated that the creditors of Cobra Beer would be settled out of future profits of the joint venture.

[19] Bilimoria's name came up in the Panama Papers leak: he was listed as a shareholder in Mulberry Holdings Asset Limited, a company registered in the Virgin Islands.

[29] In 2016, Bilimoria was appointed as chairman on the advisory board of the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.

In September 2020, Bilimoria was appointed as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford based at the Centre for Corporate Reputation.