Picture this: a young couple, a £15,000 bank loan, a stack of maxed-out credit cards, and a leased petrol station in Hertfordshire. Not exactly the stuff of business legend — or so you’d think.
Yet that’s precisely where Sanjeev Soosaipillai and Arani Soosaipillai began what would grow into Prax Group, one of Britain’s most impressive independent energy companies. No inherited wealth. No powerful connections. No safety net. Just two people willing to bet absolutely everything on a dream they believed in.
Escaping War, Chasing Opportunity
Before there was a business, there were two kids who’d each fled Sri Lanka’s devastating civil war.
Sanjeev arrived in Britain at 17 with little more than determination. Within a single day of landing, he was behind the counter of his uncle’s corner shop. (See his profile: https://www.f6s.com/member/sanjeevkumarsoosaipillai.) Arani had left Sri Lanka with her family when she was just 12, also escaping the conflict that had torn the country apart. You can also find more on Arani’s background here: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/arani-kumar-soosaipillai.
The two eventually crossed paths at the University of Kent, where both studied Accounting and Finance. Even as a student, Sanjeev was clearly wired differently from his classmates. Rather than taking on typical part-time work, he was importing shirts from Sri Lanka and sourcing cars from Japan to fund his education. At one point, he even borrowed money from Arani herself to cover the risk on one of those car deals — which, in hindsight, makes their eventual business partnership feel almost inevitable.
The Petrol Station Nobody Else Wanted
Their path into the fuel industry was shaped by a combination of experience and perfect timing.
Sanjeev had worked weekend shifts as a petrol station cashier during his school years, so he already understood how the industry ticked. Meanwhile, Arani had grown up watching her father run his own filling stations, giving her a ground-level perspective on the business that most people simply don’t have.
When a retiring station owner in St Albans offered to lease — rather than sell — his site, the Classic Petrol Station, the couple saw their opening and moved fast. The deal was unusually accessible: no upfront premium required, just inventory costs and an advance on quarterly rent. For two people without deep pockets, it was the kind of entry point that rarely comes along.
“We Went to Kingdom Come to Make It Work”
Here’s where the story gets really interesting — and genuinely nerve-wracking.
Even with a manageable entry deal, finding working capital was a serious challenge. Sanjeev sat down with a branch manager at HSBC and made his case. The manager agreed to lend them £15,000 — the absolute maximum he could approve without escalating to someone above him. The loan was based on financial projections that, by Sanjeev’s own candid admission, were largely improvised on the spot.
Even that wasn’t enough.
The couple turned to credit cards. They remortgaged their flat. As Sanjeev has described it, they put everything they had into the business and went “to Kingdom Come” to make it work. These weren’t calculated, comfortable risks — these were the kind of decisions that keep you awake at 3am.
The Clever Structure That Gave Them a Fighting Chance
What kept the whole thing from collapsing early on was a surprisingly smart operational structure.
Arani continued working full-time elsewhere during those early months, coming home each evening to handle the accounts. Their fuel supplier, Elf Oil UK, extended 10-day credit terms, but because most of their revenue came through immediate cash and card sales, the business was actually generating positive cash flow almost from day one. That gap between when money came in and when bills were due gave them just enough breathing room to survive and start building momentum.
It’s a small detail, but it made all the difference.
Building an Empire, One Risk at a Time
State Oil Limited was officially incorporated in 2000 — with a share capital of just £2. Let that sink in for a moment.
By 2001, they’d already added multiple new sites, funding each acquisition through retained earnings, bank mortgages, and personal loans. In 2003, a charge was placed over Arani’s parents’ house. By 2007, the home of Sanjeev’s relatives in the UK had been remortgaged to raise further capital.
These weren’t abstract corporate risks sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere. Real family homes belonging to people they loved were on the line. The pressure must have been immense.
Their first headquarters in Weybridge was chosen for a wonderfully practical reason — it sat roughly halfway between where each of them happened to be working at the time. A former managing director has described their first office as “the broom cupboard,” with four desks crammed inside. Humble beginnings doesn’t quite cover it.
The Pivot That Changed Everything
In 2002, everything shifted when the business moved from retail into wholesale fuel distribution through a new subsidiary, Prax Petroleum Limited.
Partnerships with marine fuel specialists opened doors to international contracts and the credit structures needed to pursue them. The numbers that followed tell their own story:
– £75.8 million in revenues by 2007
– £420 million by 2011
– £541 million by 2012, the same year bilateral credit lines from major institutions including Société Générale, Natixis, and BCGE allowed them to purchase oil cargoes directly — finally ending their dependence on supplier financing
From a broom cupboard to billion-dollar credit lines. Not bad.
The Partnership Behind the Partnership
It would be a mistake to frame this as Sanjeev’s story alone.
Arani wasn’t just doing the books in the evenings — she was a co-architect of everything the business became. As Prax Group matured, she served as Chief Human Resources and Corporate Officer, shaping the organisation’s culture and people strategy during a period of rapid, complex growth.
Sanjeev has been refreshingly open about how much her support meant during the business’s most precarious phases. “She provided the support and strength which has enabled me to be so dedicated to the business,” he’s said. “If you imagine some of the huge risks we took, she was always 100% behind me.”
That kind of unwavering belief from a partner — especially when family homes and life savings are at stake — isn’t something that appears on any balance sheet. But anyone who’s tried to build something from nothing will tell you it might be the most important asset of all.
Where They Stand Today
When Prax Group celebrated its 25th anniversary in September 2024, the numbers were staggering:
– 1,450 employees
– $2.3 billion in gross assets
– $604 million in net assets
– Operations spanning crude oil supply, petroleum product storage, refining, and distribution
– Peak revenues of $10 billion
All of it traced back to a single leased petrol station, a loan secured on numbers that were essentially made up on the spot, and two people who refused to quit.
What Anyone Can Learn From This
The Soosaipillais’ journey isn’t just an inspiring story — it’s a practical masterclass in building something substantial without institutional backing or inherited advantages. For further reading on lessons entrepreneurs can draw from their story, see this overview: https://london-post.co.uk/how-to-start-a-business-in-the-uk-what-any-entrepreneur-can-learn-from-sanjeev-and-arani-kumar-soosaipillais-story/.
A few things stand out clearly:
– Cash flow discipline beats everything else. The early decision to structure the business around immediate revenue collection while negotiating supplier credit wasn’t glamorous, but it was the foundation everything else was built on.
– Personal risk, taken seriously, creates real accountability. When your parents’ house is on the line, you don’t cut corners. That level of commitment tends to produce better decisions.
– Strategic partnerships fill the gaps capital can’t. At every stage of growth — from marine fuel partners to international banking relationships — Prax used alliances to access resources that would otherwise have been out of reach.
– The right co-founder changes everything. Whether it’s a business partner or a life partner, having someone genuinely in your corner during the hard moments isn’t a soft advantage. It’s often what determines whether you make it through at all.
If you want a deeper look at Sanjeev’s views on operational priorities like workplace safety and leadership as the company scaled, this profile is a useful read: https://thebossmagazine.com/post/sanjeev-kumar-soosaipillai-workplace-safety/.
From a leased petrol station in Hertfordshire to a $10 billion energy group in 25 years. If that doesn’t prove that extraordinary outcomes can come from the most ordinary starting points, it’s hard to know what would be.