Bassam Gilini is a prolific entrepreneur with a track record of success in London’s property market stretching back over two decades. Today, as Founder of the Gilini Group, his focus spans property and real estate, technology, wellness, infrastructure and a growing range of private market opportunities. Beyond the investment Group, he established the Gilini Foundation to open doors for aspiring entrepreneurs from overlooked communities.
From East London property to a broader vision
Bassam’s affinity for London property started early, in his first years working as an estate agent in East London. Those formative years shaped the approach that continues to define his work today, an instinct for identifying untapped opportunities that others miss.
He founded the eponymous Gilini Group to manage a portfolio of property assets across the capital. By focusing on diverse investments, Bassam leverages his understanding of the changing face of London’s high street and his commitment to quality, which shapes how the company serves its tenants and partners.
As the business matured, the question driving it evolved. Having achieved his own success, Bassam became increasingly focused on giving back to his community and to wider society through sustained philanthropy and mentorship. This culminated in setting up the Gilini Foundation, which awarded its first major grant to skincare brand Yendy Skin in 2025. The focus shifted from creating opportunities for himself to creating them for others, a philosophy that continues to shape the Gilini Group today.
The Gilini approach
Bassam Gilini favours investments where closer involvement with a business or asset is available. When looking for high-value opportunities, each one is judged on the strength of the proposition and the credibility of the market, but most importantly, the capacity to demonstrate its leadership for durable growth.
As the Gilini Group’s portfolio has developed, Bassam Gilini has, in turn, honed a specialism in businesses shaped by how people live, work, exercise, socialise and spend their time, from technology and wellness ventures to property with lasting character. The Group always invests for the long term, staying close to the people behind the businesses it backs.
Bassam has built a reputation for bringing together people and organisations with complementary expertise – a network of strategic and commercial partners in the UK and internationally that strengthens every investment decision the Group makes. He has sharpened his business instincts and judgement in private markets through trusted relationships and access to people who understand the nuances of their sector.
The portfolio in practice
Bassam Gilini’s approach is best understood through the Group’s holdings. Take the recently opened Rulo, the Chilterns’ first dedicated padel and wellness club, built to answer a real gap given padel’s surging demand and the shortage of courts outside the big cities. Gilini’s investment in Skarper, meanwhile, takes the Group into engineering: the start-up’s patented click-on drive turns any standard bike into a high-performance e-bike, a design good enough to win an iF Gold Award alongside the likes of Apple and Ferrari, and backed by founding shareholders including Sir Chris Hoy.
Different as they are, both reflect the same instinct: back something with genuine substance early, then help it scale. Nowhere is that clearer than at the Clapton Tram Depot. Built in the 1870s as one of the last surviving Victorian horse-drawn tram hubs in London, the site has been reinvented many times over – a bus station, a base for carpenters and mechanics, and by the 1980s a home for artists working in its studios, before falling vacant and facing two demolition attempts since 2008. Gilini acquired it in 2024 with a different idea: not to replace the depot, but to restore it.
The scheme, designed by Yellow Cloud Studio, preserves the original shed structures, the double-height industrial spaces and the tram-track detailing that made the depot a local landmark, while opening the site up to 34 creative business units for furniture makers, photographers, manufacturers and artists. It adds a public courtyard, an upper terrace and five family homes, and retains the existing BLOK gym and café-deli that already give the depot life. Designed around a startup culture, it offers early-stage founders space of a quality they would struggle to find in London and within it, CTRL Studios, a new podcast and content studio, gives those businesses production facilities that normally sit far beyond a startup’s reach.
Backing people and partnerships
For all the emphasis on sectors, the approach comes back to people. Bassam is collaborative by instinct: if anyone has a good idea, he takes it seriously, whether it comes from his most trusted confidant or the newest person in the room. He takes pride in his ability to spot and nurture talent, and mentorship sits at the heart of how he operates. Bassam Gilini practices what he preaches – young people work with him directly and progress through the company.
That belief in close, trusted relationships extends to family. Bassam works alongside his brother Basil Gilini, who serves as Chief Operating Officer, bringing a deliberate family office approach to the business, one built on trust and on relationships expected to last. One of Basil’s key roles is to work Gilini’s long-term business objectives into day-to-day execution. As a founding trustee of the Gilini Foundation, he applies the same thinking to its philanthropic work.
The people who work most closely with Bassam point to something harder to define. Sajjad Sabur, the Group’s Chief Investment Officer, describes an instinct for a deal that others simply don’t have – an ability to see and sense things that comes naturally rather than from a playbook, and the kind of judgement that can’t really be taught. It is that feel for people and opportunity alike that shapes how Bassam builds his team.
Sim Batth, Gilini’s Head of Property, is perhaps the clearest example of how Bassam backs people. The two first met when Sim was Bassam’s personal trainer, and it was his energy and drive that made the impression – enough that Bassam brought him into the business. Sim joined in 2023 and has risen through the company to lead across both the residential and commercial portfolios. Sim continues to work closely with Bassam, who values character and hunger and has the patience to let his people find their feet and grow.
The Gilini Foundation: The vision at its fullest
If the portfolio shows how Bassam Gilini invests, the Gilini Foundation shows why. Established in 2025, it supports the next generation of entrepreneurs from underserved communities with the funding, mentorship and networks they need to turn ambitious ideas into successful businesses. Yendy Skin, the ethical skincare brand that won the Foundation’s first major grant, is exactly the kind of founder-led business it exists to find – young, ambitious, and building something with genuine purpose.
The Foundation’s ethos is deeply personal. As a practising Christian, Bassam’s values are rooted in his faith, which inspires the Foundation’s focus on identifying talented individuals who lack the resources to achieve their potential. And while the Foundation is only getting started, in many ways it is the culmination of everything that came before: an entrepreneur who built his own way in, now building ladders for the next generation.
What comes next
The platform will keep evolving, with new sectors, new partnerships, and a Foundation with ambitions to widen its reach year on year. For Bassam Gilini, the philosophy is settled – back credible opportunities, work with capable people, think in years rather than months, and make sure success creates room for others to follow.
About Bassam Gilini
Bassam Gilini is an entrepreneur and investor whose career began in East London’s property market and now spans a diversified portfolio. He is the founder of the Gilini Group, which operates across property, technology, wellness and infrastructure. Drawing on decades of experience and a network of UK and international partners, he focuses on sustainable, long-term growth. In 2025, he established the Gilini Foundation to help aspiring entrepreneurs from underserved communities gain practical business skills, mentorship and access to early-stage funding.
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