From the business of making sweets to Parliament: Lovely Professional University chancellor Ashok Mittal’s journey

Along with his two elder brothers—Naresh Mittal and Ramesh Mittal—Ashok Mittal has been expanding the family business his father late Baldev Raj Mittal started with a small shop around three years before he was born in 1964 in Jalandhar Cantonment.

Ashok Mittal was quite keen to diversify their business from making sweets to other fields and so the family set up an automobile dealership, Lovely Autos, in 1991. The family, originally from Rajasthan, then diversified further into the field of education and set up the Lovely Institute of Management on the Jalandhar-Phagwara Highway in 2000.

Ashok Mittal with his brothers at Lovely Sweets (Express photo)

The Mittal family kept expanding into various academic courses and finally set up Lovely Professional University (LPU) in 2005—the first private university in the state—and Ashok Mittal became the chancellor and his wife Rashmi Mittal was appointed the co-chancellor. Now, the entire family, including the children, hold senior posts in the university.

Mittal has said their only aim behind setting up the university was to provide quality education accessible to students across the world. The university established on a few acres of land has now been expanded to 600 acres. Currently, there are more than 30,000 students from India and all over the world and over 3,000 faculty and staff members at the university. It has hostels and accommodations for the staff members and caters to them with its own basic amenities from water to power supply.

Mittal said Monday, “Times Higher Education Young Universities Rankings-2022 (THE YU Rankings-22), a prestigious globally recognised rating system, has also placed LPU in the 351-400 Band on a global scale. Previously, included among the top 36 Indian universities in THE World University Rankings- 2022, this is once again one of the best accolades won by LPU”.