Gulam Noon, Lord Noon, who has died aged 79, was the archetype of the successful immigrant businessman. He arrived in Britain with comparatively little, developed a highly successful business, unashamedly enjoyed the social, political and particularly royal contacts that his success brought, and ended up, finally, in the House of Lords.

Along the way he helped to change Britain’s eating habits. Known as the “curry king”, he popularised Bombay mix and commercialised chicken tikka masala, helping it to supersede fish and chips as the nation’s favourite dish. He gave away millions to charity in the UK and in his native India, where he financed schools and hospitals. He also donated hundreds of thousands to the Labour party, an act of generosity that led to embarrassment when he was unwittingly dragged into the cash-for-honours scandal that tarnished Tony Blair’s government.

Noon’s commitment to the British way of life and his readiness to speak out against extremism made him a popular figure with politicians. He was an early voice warning against the influence of radical imams, and was one of the 25 Muslim leaders invited to Downing Street after 7/7. He sat on the committee that devised new procedures for becoming a British citizen.

He was born Gulam Kaderbhoy in Bombay (now Mumbai), the third child of Kaderbhoy Ebrahimjee and Safiabai (nee Shirazi), but adopted as his surname the nickname, Noon, that his mother gave him. His grandfather’s sweet-making business had two shops. But his indebted father died when Noon was seven and the family struggled, living in a single room while his determined mother and uncle rescued the business. Noon worked in the shops but, pretending that school started earlier than it did, regularly fitted in two hours of cricket, a lifelong passion, before lessons. At 17 he took over the shops and changed their name to Royal Sweets, which helped increase takings. Business expanded and Noon branched out, even buying an office block without his family’s knowledge.

In 1964 he made his first visit to Britain as a tourist, liked what he saw – “a soft country” he called it – and resolved to return. In the early 1970s he came back with £50 (all the Indian exchange regulations permitted) and set up the Bombay Halwa sweetshop in Southall, west London. Initially he struggled, but would jokingly credit Idi Amin for his success when his wares proved popular with many of the Ugandan Asians expelled by Amin in 1972. He opened a branch in Leicester, a major centre for East African Asian settlement.

Noon also became involved in aviation catering before, in partnership with an Indian hotel chain, he moved to the US to set up a factory supplying nine restaurants in New York. He described that venture as a “disaster”, claiming that the US was not ready for Indian food. He sold his share in the business and returned to Britain in 1984, $1m poorer.

However, his experience of food processing in the US and his rebranding of chicken tikka makhanwala as the simpler chicken tikka masala led him to establish Noon Products in 1988 to provide chilled and frozen meals for supermarkets. By 2006 the factory was employing 800 people and processing 80 tonnes of chicken a week.

Noon’s first order was for £2.7m from Birds Eye, followed by Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. He stayed loyal, not marketing his own brand for years, and they supported him when his factory burned down in 1994, after which Noon chose to pay his 250 workers while it was being rebuilt. In 2000 he sold out to WT Foods for £50m and then bought the business back with the help of private equity before selling again to the Irish food group Kerry in 2005. By 2006 his personal fortune was estimated to be £65m.

Noon’s blunt speaking was legendary. In 2008 he survived the terrorist siege of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, barricading his room against gunmen in the corridor. When India refused to bury the terrorists, he described it “as a good symbolic message for the rest of secular India,” adding: “Now Britain needs to get tough with the radical imams.” In his book, Noon, With a View: Courage and Integrity (2008), he suggested a halt to immigration “for five or 10 years until all the newcomers have been properly integrated”. He also defended his remark that “there is no substitute for money” and enjoyed what it brought him.

His London office in Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster, displayed autographed cricket bats and photographs of him with royalty and politicians. He was on the advisory council of the Prince’s Trust and helped the University of East London to establish a centre for diversity in business, becoming the university’s chancellor in 2013. He founded the Asian Business Association in 1995, and was president of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. His Gulam Noon charitable foundation was set up in 1995 with an initial £4m in its coffers.

However, it was his association with politicians that brought him into the headlines. He often sat with John Major supporting Surrey county cricket club at the Oval in London, but he was a Labour supporter and major donor who was on personal terms with Blair and Gordon Brown. When he was knighted in 2002, Jeremy Corbyn said he was “very disturbed” about the way honours were given to donors. But the real row erupted in 2006 when Noon, who had lent the party £250,000, was proposed for a peerage. His nomination (along with others) was refused amid a storm of accusations that Labour party donors were being promised peerages.

Noon was deeply hurt and withdrew his application, complaining that he had been let down by the party. He later claimed that he had declared his loan on his original form but had been persuaded to remove the wording. He also said he had been offered a Labour safe seat in recompense. Noon was generally regarded as not to blame, and there were no objections when he was proposed by Ed Miliband for the Lords in 2011.

Noon’s first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, Mohini Kent, whom he married in 1998, and by two daughters, Zeenat and Zarmin, from his first marriage, to Raeka Abdulali.

• Gulam Kaderbhoy Noon, businessman, born 24 January 1936; died 27 October 2015