7 INSPIRING RAGS TO RICHES STORIES OF ENTREPRENEURS

BY- KISHAN PANCHAL

ENTREPRENEURS

• Andrew Carnegie• Samuel Walton• Oprah Winfrey• Larry Ellison• Li Ka-shing• Jan Koum• Dhirubhai Ambani

The steel tycoon who grew up in a one-room

weaver’s cottage: Andrew Carnegie

His first job was at age 13 as a bobbin boy, changing spools of thread in a cotton mill 12 hours a day, 6 days a week in a Pittsburgh cotton factory.

• By 1889, Carnegie Steel Corporation was the largest of its kind in the world.

• He donated millions to the New York Public Library, established the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, which is now known as Carnegie-Mellon University, created the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and formed the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The retail giant who had to milk cows, deliver newspapers:

Samuel Walton

• He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus, and drove it to customers. Afterwards, he would deliver Columbia Daily Tribune newspapers on a paper route.

• In addition, he also sold magazine subscriptions.

• Forbes ranked Sam Walton as the richest person in the United States from 1982 to 1988.

• At the time of his death in 1992, he had 1,960 Wal-Mart stores, employed 380,000 people and clocked annual sales of about $50 billion.

The Queen of all media who was raped at age 9: Oprah Winfrey

• Oprah Winfrey is dubbed as the ‘Queen of all media’ and ranked as the richest African-American of the 20th century.

• She has often spoken about the hardships she experienced during childhood, saying she was raped at age 9 and at 13, after suffering years of abuse, she ran away from home.

• While in high school, she landed a job in radio and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19.

• As of 2014, she has a net worth in excess of 2.9 billion dollars and has overtaken former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as the richest self-made woman in America.

The CEO of Oracle who was born to an unwed Jewish mom: Larry Ellison

• According to Wikipedia, Ellison contracted pneumonia when he was  nine months old and his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption.

• He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his second year without taking his final exams because his adoptive mother had just died.

• In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of $2,000.

The richest man in Asia who had to quit school at 15:

Li Ka-shing

• He was born in Guangdong province, China. After his father’s death, he was forced to leave school to support his family before he turned 15.  

• Today, Li’s businesses cover almost every facet of life in Hong Kong, from electricity to telecommunications, from real estate to retail, from shipping to the Internet. The Cheung Kong Group operates in 55 countries and employs over 260,000 staff worldwide.

• In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of $2,000.

• In September 2011, Ellison was listed on the Forbes List of Billionaires as the fifth richest man in the world. Ellison is still the third richest American, with a net worth of about $36.5 billion.

The poor Ukrainian immigrant who became a Silicon Valley

mogul: Jan Koum

• He immigrated to California with his mother when he was 16.

• He used to sweep the floor of a grocery store and stood in line to collect food stamps. By 18, he was an expert computer hacker.

• In January 2009, Koum bought an iPhone and realized that it would spawn a whole new industry of apps.

• On his birthday, February 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California.

The polyester prince who sold bhajia at village

fairs: Dhirubhai Ambani

• An anecdote from his childhood is that he once bought a tin of groundnut oil on credit from a local wholesaler and sold the oil in retail on the roadside.

• He earned a few rupees as profit from this transaction. Apparently, during weekends when his school was closed, he used to set up bhajia stalls at village fairs to make ends meet at home.

• His detractors accused him of illegal or unethical transactions and acts but an investigation by the RBI did not find any evidence of it.

• By 2007, the combined fortune of the Ambani family stood at $60 billion, making Ambani’s the second richest family in the world.

Bibliography

• http://yourstory.com/2014/05/rags-to-riches/• https://

www.google.co.in/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=dhirubhai%20ambani

THANK YOU…!!