Houman Ashrafzadeh

Ashrafzadeh grew up in Sweden and later left for London to study, going on to live in London for more than two decades. He first moved into finance and brokering and was formerly a banker.⁠[1][2][3][4][2]

In 2013 Ashrafzadeh decided to strike out on his own, setting up the brokerage firm 360.⁠[3]

After leaving the City, Ashrafzadeh turned to restaurant entrepreneurship. In 2019 he and his university friends Rushil Ramjee and Yannis Drivas founded the salad chain Urban Greens near St James’s Park tube station in London, serving salads made to order; it opened a Canary Wharf site in 2021 and a third site at One New Change in the City in 2023, and by 2024 Urban Greens had four locations in London. He believed Britain had been behind with healthy fast food, and the same was true of padel, which became the thinking behind his later founding of Padium.⁠[2][5][5][5][5][3][2]

Ashrafzadeh was introduced to padel by his brother on a trip home to Helsingborg, Sweden, and instantly fell in love with the sport; at the time padel clubs were opening one after another in Sweden, while London had only two outdoor courts. When he shared the idea with friends and contacts in the UK the response was lukewarm, until, back in Sweden, he mentioned it over dinner with Spotify co-founder Martin Lorentzon, who said he wanted to be part of it. Lorentzon had already backed a direct-to-consumer coffee business that Ashrafzadeh established in Sweden, and this time became an equal partner and the main backer of Padium.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][2][2]

In September 2023 the 30,000-square-foot Padium opened in Canary Wharf, London, with eight courts at launch, replicating the premium experience of Swedish padel clubs with 10-meter-high ceilings, changing rooms, a social area, and a shop. The club runs on a pay-as-you-play basis, with membership optional and booking open to all. Ashrafzadeh said he wanted to elevate the experience before, during, and after the game, and deliberately avoided using the word “padel” in the brand name.⁠[4][2][2][2][6][6]

In April 2025 Padium announced that construction had begun on its second club, at Cardiff Bay Retail Park in Wales, the brand’s first expansion outside London. The new 35,000-square-foot venue was to have eight indoor courts, along with a café-bar, pro shop, co-working space, players’ lounge, and a spa with a sauna and plunge pools. Ashrafzadeh called the move into Cardiff a significant milestone, saying demand for high-quality padel facilities in Wales was at an all-time high.⁠[7][8][7][7][7]

The Cardiff venue had been scheduled to open in late summer 2025, but in January 2026 it was still under construction with no opening date set; in 2026 Padium Cardiff Bay opened.⁠[7][8][9]

On September 27, 2026, The Venture RoomThe Venture RoomThe Venture Room is a UK entrepreneurial media brand centered on the YouTube channel @theventureroom. Through long-form interviews with founders and street interviews such as “Asking Millionaires How They Got Rich?”, it presents entrepreneurs’ stories and advice to aspiring business owners, and runs an entrepreneur community and brand partnerships.Open the full entry released an episode visiting three founders, in which Ashrafzadeh showed the hosts around Padium Canary Wharf. In the program he said he first played padel during the COVID-19 pandemic, when his brother invited him for a game on a trip back to Sweden, and that on returning to London he found only one or two outdoor courts; Padium takes a community-first approach, aiming to create “third spaces” for people to meet. He said the club has seven indoor courts and two outdoor courts, is built on 15 meters of scaffold, and had been in the works since five years earlier, and that revenue would reach eight figures by the end of the year.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

On fundraising, he said it was a multi-million-pound investment that he did not have the money for himself; he was rejected many times when he first sought investors in the UK, because no one knew what padel was at the time, and eventually persuaded a Swedish investor who also loves padel by backing up his pitch with market data. He said the hardest moment was when his investor pulled out after his team had worked for nearly eight or nine months without being paid, but he did not give up; he also said he hired a branding agency before the club opened, and that peak hours were fully booked within the first few weeks.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

“If you have an idea that you feel strongly about, get people to comment on it.” He sees this as a way to test whether the idea makes sense and whether people resonate with it; once the idea is validated, you build a business case around it (at 04:37 and 04:45 in the video).⁠[1][1]

“Spend the time polishing that vision and idea and making it as solid as possible.” He believes you do not need to have the idea, the execution, and the money all at once, and that a lack of funds should not be a blocker; what matters is being prepared to stand in front of an investor with a good pitch (at 05:11 in the video).⁠[1][1][1]

“If you build a strong brand, that does the job many times.” He believes a brand is not purely a product or a service but must also carry a message (at 06:28 in the video).⁠[1][1]

“Build up credibility by being someone who knows about the topic or the industry.” He believes the more you know about the industry, the more confident your pitch and the easier it is to convince others to join you on the journey (at 07:04 in the video).⁠[1][1]

“That £5,000 should be invested in making yourself investable.” He advises young people with limited funds to use the money to research an industry they are interested in and to build a compelling investment deck and financial models (at 08:19 in the video).⁠[1][1][1]

Padium: Official website: https://www.padium.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]