The Apprentice winner Harpreet Kaur has insisted she has ‘no regrets’ from walking away from her business (Picture: PA)
One of Lord Alan Sugar’s most successful business partners has revealed she has no regrets over parting ways with the mogul and walking away from her business.
Harpreet Kaur won The Apprentice in 2022, securing a £250,000 investment for her dessert company Oh So Yum.
Just a year later, she split from Lord Sugar before then parting ways with her £300,000 company the following year.
But despite the major career change, Harpreet insists she has no regrets.
In an interview with Metro, the 32-year-old said: ‘I wouldn’t say I have any regrets. I’m a no regrets person from a personal and professional front.
‘I honestly think that everything that you encounter, achieve or don’t achieve in life, it’s just a life lesson.
‘So I have no regrets, but a hell of a lot of lessons that will only guide me, shape me in my future and actually I really hope to be able to share some of those in the future in different formats that can help me inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs, or even as a South Asian woman, to help others feel confident that you’ve just got to give it your best.
‘We’re all human, we’re all going to make mistakes and if we approach everything with, “I don’t want to regret this one day,” we’re never going to get anywhere. So no regrets, but lots and lots of lessons.’
Harpreet took part in the BBC One competition in 2022 (Picture: PA)
Speaking of parting ways with her former mentor, she went on: ‘Yeah, we parted ways, but it was all on amicable terms and actually who wouldn’t want to gain control of their business again?’
Harpreet walked away from Oh So Yum in October, one year after shareholders funds were valued at £300,000 on Companies House, leaving the business in her sister’s hands.
At the time, she said she had made the ‘difficult but exciting decision’ to ‘try something new,’ and that the dessert venture would continue to operate without her input.
She added that she’d be working on new projects, her radio show, and as an ambassador for small businesses, concluding: ‘As much as I have loved and will miss this business, here’s to new beginnings, bold challenges, and endless possibilities. I’ll be sharing more with you all soon. The next chapter is going to be the best one yet! Watch this space.’
Not all winners of the show achieve the success she has, but there was no moment where Harpreet wasn’t backing herself and faced doubt.
‘I base my success and my performance on my history,’ she explained. ‘Obviously the show has its own history, but I’ve been in business for nearly ten years, so I’m backing myself, I always have done and I always will, and I actually think that’s what Lord Sugar saw in me and the main reason he invested was because of my confidence.
‘If one door closes for me, I will just knock down another.
‘The thing is, you could say it’s the history of the show, but actually that’s the real world of business – there’s a very small percentage of businesses that make it past the first year.
‘But I was also presenting an opportunity to Lord Sugar to invest in something that I had solid experience and the history in.’
Harpreet parted ways with Oh So Yum last year (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)
Harpreet refrained from teasing the next projects she’s stepping into, saying: ‘To be honest with you, I feel like in business, especially today’s generation of entrepreneurs, we always have our fingers in lots of different pies and as a public figure from the show, people only see one portion of my business success or what I’m achieving, it’s been amazing to have everyone involved as part of that journey for Oh So Yum, but I have been involved with a few of the things for a while now.
‘I’m really eager to reveal a little bit more, but actually I’m going to keep it a little bit more close to the belt for now because I am the type of person that likes to personally challenge myself and I want to make a raging success and then say to everyone, look what I’ve been working on. I don’t want to rely on like my profile to promote it just yet.’
There is one string she’d consider adding to her bow though, if the opportunity came along.
After appearing as a contestant on The Apprentice, Harpreet admitted she could see herself in a different role on the BBC competition.
And amid the annual rumours over when Lord Sugar may step down, we simply had to ask whether she’d see herself stepping into his shoes.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web
browser that
supports HTML5
video
‘There will only ever be one Lord Sugar,’ she replied. ‘I would love to be more involved with the show, it’s done so much for me. I’ve been a fan, literally growing up as a little girl watching the show, and I’ve been a fan-girl over previous winners, and now I get the opportunity to meet these people and be inspired by them.
‘So if there was an opportunity where the show felt that I would have value to being part of it in the future, then I absolutely love that.’
With its 20-year success, The Apprentice continues to be a staple of the BBC, and though she expects it to continue, Harpreet did suggest changes that need to be made.
She said: ‘I think the show has been extremely successful and had that longevity for a reason – it’s entertaining, it’s got real people on there, and yet a very avid following from the business community and in the UK.’
‘I actually think that the show will continue to be successful,’ she went on. ‘Lord Sugar is a very entertaining individual to watch, and the show is structured in a way that keeps people hooked.
Harpreet revealed she would ‘love’ to be more involved in the show (Picture: BBC)
‘I do think that as with anything, sometimes you need to evolve over time and there may be certain things that the show could include or integrate to make it a little bit more up to date because the world has changed over 20 years.
‘I’d be excited to see if they could maybe allow candidates to use some of the real life tools available to them in the real world. For example, with the advancements in AI recently we can achieve things that we never thought we were capable of before, so it could be even more inspiring for young entrepreneurs to watch the show if they could see how people actually perform with tools and resources and under high pressure, we might be able to get even better outcomes from the show.
‘So I do think it will continue to be successful. I just think maybe we can make a few tweaks.’
Harpreet has now joined forces with Microsoft to promote their new Copilot+ PCs, which are helping her on a day to day basis with AI.
‘From a professional perspective, obviously as an entrepreneur I’m buzzing with ideas all the time and sometimes I need to be able to bounce it off something or someone (so that I’m not chewing my husband’s ear off constantly from morning to night, and he’s not doing the same to me) and it’s actually really helpful to have AI because it’s almost like an assistant that can do research for you and with you.
Harpreet suggested changes that need to be made on The Apprentice (Picture: John Phillips/Getty Images for BBC Earth Launch)
‘I’ve been using it to bounce back ideas, it saves me time when I’m looking to research into specific industries or customer information, it helps within my businesses where it can save time, dealing with customer queries, it can help you make responses, and it’s even been helping me from a social media front coming up with strategies.’
With the rise in AI over recent years especially, she’s now ‘excited’ to see businesses include it on the likes of The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den, saying: ‘We’ve known for a while now that the whole world is going digital, and this game-changing era means that we can use AI for so many different uses, and we should be embracing it and using it to accelerate our own human capabilities.
‘So I’ll be really looking forward to seeing if anyone has got a business idea based on AI, because I just think it will really push the limits that we’ve never been able to achieve before. And even if not that, it just speeds everything up, you can save time and again, and what we found is that if people save time, it gives them more space to be creative themselves.‘
Reflecting on the last two years, from tasks under the ever-watching Baroness Karren Brady and Tim Campbell to meeting her husband Akshay Thakrar on the show, and the career changes she’s making today, Harpreet added: ‘It’s been an absolute whirlwind. I have encountered so many opportunities and experiences that I would never have been exposed to before.
Harpreet met her husband Akshay on The Apprentice (Picture: Instagram / Akshay Thakrar)
‘And the biggest lesson has been if you actually jump into the deep end and get uncomfortable, outside of your comfort zone, then you’re going to really open up a whole new world for yourself.
‘I’m from up north and I has my lovely little dessert company, and I really threw myself into a situation where I had zero TV or media experience, I literally had a few hundred followers on social media.
‘And by doing this I’ve been able to rub shoulders with like-minded people, get investment from billionaires, I found my husband. From pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, you can benefit in so many other ways and it’s been amazing.
‘So I get really excited when it’s on every year because I know that it’s an opportunity for someone to really change their life.’
Visit Microsoft UK Stories to explore Harpreet’s AI-powered festive tips, and head to Microsoft.com to learn more about Copilot+ PCs.
The Apprentice returns to BBC One and iPlayer tonight at 9pm.
Got a story?
If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.