Bob Dhillon

The road to success is rarely straight and never easy. Over his long career, entrepreneur Navjeet (Bob) Dhillon has proven he can overcome any adversity he encounters along that road and he credits the destination as much as the journey for the success he has achieved. Through resilience, adaptability and sheer grit, Bob has become the embodiment of Canada’s entrepreneurial spirit, proof that a young South-Asian immigrant can grow up to build a world-class real estate corporation from nothing.

“I love Canada, it’s home. Canada has given me the opportunity to be a global real estate developer, owning multi-billion dollars’ worth of assets. I’m not sure I’d have achieved that success anywhere else other than Canada,” Bob says.

Bob moved between four continents before he was 12 before finally settling in Canada. Born to Sikh parents in Japan, stayed briefly in India and then raised in Liberia, Bob learned the value of hard work and overcoming challenges from an early age. When civil war erupted in Liberia, the Dhillons fled to Canada as economic refugees and set out to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. After so much upheaval and change, it was a homecoming of sorts for Bob’s gypsy DNA, as his great-grandfather spent time and died in Canada in 1908.

That gypsy life became more settled in Canada, but a Sikh boy in the 1970s and 1980s experienced the pressure to assimilate into a society that didn’t always celebrate racial and cultural differences. When his Canadian peers heard him play guitar, they nicknamed him “Bob Dylan” and Navjeet adopted the anglicized name but traded in his guitar for a business degree.

CAREER

Strategic risk-taking came early for Bob. While in university, he began flipping homes to support himself. After two successful deals, he made $18,000, much of which he reinvested into his real estate enterprise. He then finetuned his business model as part of his Ivey Business School MBA case study in 1998. That theoretical project became the blueprint for Mainstreet Equity Corp. The company went public on the TSX in 2000, attracted his savvy business professors as shareholders, and his case study became required reading at Ivey as an example of how to turn a vision into reality.

At the same time as Bob was battling to claim his company’s place in Canadian real estate, he was also battling cancer. He faced it as he did every other challenge he encountered—with determination, faith and gratitude for the Canadian health care that made him a survivor not a statistic. While his cancer was caught early in the young man and he was cured, this brush with mortality drove him to seize opportunities and disrupt an industry that he knew he could make better.

He did so boldly. Bob refused to follow the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) model of rapid capital-raising and dividend payouts that dominated the real estate market. Instead, he built a corporation focused on mid-market, value-added rental housing in Western Canada. Mainstreet targeted aging apartment buildings that could be purchased well below replacement cost, renovated, and repositioned as affordable housing.

Under Bob’s leadership, Mainstreet has grown into one of the largest landlords in Western Canada, with more than 19,000 rental units and $4 billion in assets. The company’s share price has risen more than 4,000 per cent since going public and today, Mainstreet is the number one growth company in the space, enjoying double-digit non-dilutive growth year-over-year across major key metrics for 14 consecutive quarters.

Canada’s secret weapon is its people and education, and Bob is a passionate advocate for entrepreneurship as the engine that drives Canada’s prosperity. “We have the richest country in the world,” he says. “We’ve got the infrastructure. The greatest people on this planet are Canadian, and they’re educated, hardworking, and skilled. We just need to let them loose.”

To empower this next generation of innovators, Bob bet on education with a gift of $10 million to the University of Lethbridge to establish The Dhillon School of Business in 2018. With campuses in Lethbridge and Calgary, the program offers experiential learning opportunities that connect students directly to industry, technology and entrepreneurship. His namesake program mirrors Bob’s journey, equipping young leaders with the creativity, critical thinking and social intelligence needed to build meaningful careers like his.

Bob’s contributions to the industry have also earned him two honorary degrees: an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Lethbridge and an Honorary Doctor of Commerce from Lakehead University. His achievements have earned him some of Canada’s highest honours: he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada (2021), received the King Charles III Coronation Medal (2025) and was awarded both the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal (2022) and Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012) for his dedication to leadership and philanthropy.

He is a trailblazer in Canada, but Bob’s outlook extends beyond its borders. Since 1999, he has served as Honorary Consul General of Belize for Canada, drawn to the country’s welcoming people and sustainable investment opportunities. He made his first major investment there in the 1990s and continues to develop a private 3,000-acre island into a world-class eco-resort. He recently closed on a 19,000-acre bankrupt development that he’s excited to revive. His connection to the country also inspired him to co-author Business and Retirement Guide to Belize (with Fred Langan, Dundurn Press, 2018, second edition).

WHAT I’VE LEARNED

Now as a Member of the Horatio Alger Association of Canada, Bob’s life has come full circle. The Association’s mission to help young people overcome adversity and build better futures is a reflection of his own experience as a young man who arrived in Canada with little more than ambition. His strong belief that education and entrepreneurship are the engines of national prosperity, along with his commitment to giving back to communities, continues to drive his business and his involvement with the Horatio Alger Association of Canada.

Bob’s journey from refugee to student to cancer survivor to real estate magnate stands as a testament to perseverance, faith, and the belief that every challenge can be overcome when opportunity and hard work meet.