Prakash Tandon was the son of a civil engineer and born in a canal colony in the Punjab. His autobiographical writings, published in the second half of the twentieth century, give vivid accounts of life in Punjab from the late nineteenth century. Following schooling in Gujarat and Lahore Government College, Tandon sailed for Britain in 1929, aged eighteen years old. His elder brother, Manohar, was already in London. Tandon enrolled at Manchester University with the view to become a Chartered Accountant, of which there were very few qualified Indians at the time.

Tandon spent eight years in Britain. He got involved in the University debating team, and following his degree at Manchester stayed in London to pursue some economics research and his accountancy qualifications. At a students' congress in Oxford, he met his future wife, a Swedish woman, Gärd.

In 1937, Tandon returned to India. He settled in Bombay and he eventually got a job at Unilever. Despite his accountancy qualification, Tandon was employed in the advertising department and earnt less than his British colleagues. He eventually became director of Unilever in 1951. He was a member of the first board of Hindustan Lever in 1956 and then the first Indian Chairman in 1961. Tandon was an extremely influential business leader in independent India, and one of the pioneers of professional management in India.

The nephew of J. N. Tata, Shapurji Saklatvala travelled to England in 1905 to recuperate from malaria and to manage the Tata company office in Manchester. He married Sarah Marsh in 1907 (a waitress he had met at the hydro in Matlock where he had been treated). They moved to London in 1907 and Saklatvala joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1909. In 1921, Saklatvala was adopted as the Labour candidate for Battersea North, despite joining the Communist Party in the same year. In November 1922, he won the seat for Labour and was defeated in December 1923. He regained the seat in October 1924, when he stood as a Communist representative and held the seat until 1929. Saklatvala was the 3rd Asian to become an MP in Britain (all incidentally of Parsee background).

Saklatvala raised Indian issues in Parliament. He was a member of the Indian Home Rule League (founded in 1916). He was also a founder member of the Workers' Welfare League in 1917. This League was initially concerned with the working conditions of Indian seamen in London, but soon widened its objectives to improve the position of all types of Indian workers. He was an influential figure to Indian students in London in the 1920s and 1930s, but was banned from returning to India because of his Communist affiliations. He died in his home in London in January 1936 and was buried in the Parsee burial ground in Brockwood, Surrey.