Azim Hashim Premji

Azim Hashim Premji

He is an Indian business tycoon and philanthropist who is the chairman of Wipro Limited, guiding the company through four decades of diversification and growth to emerge as one of the Indian leaders in the software industry. According to Forbes, he is currently the third wealthiest Indian, and the 41st richest in the world, with a personal wealth of $15.9 billion in 2012.In 2000, he was voted among the 20 most powerful men in the world by Asiaweek. He has twice been listed among the 100 most influential people by TIME Magazine, once in 2004 and more recently in 2011. Premji owns 79 percent of Wipro and also owns a private equity fund, PremjiInvest, which manages his $1 billion personal portfolio.

His Began:

He completed his schooling from St. Mary’s School, Mumbai and at the age of 21, attended Stanford University, California, to complete his studies in electrical engineering. However, he could not further his studies and had to return to take over the family business after the sudden death of his father in 1966.

After his joining in his father’s company, Western India Products ( he later renamed it to Wipro Technologies and Wipro Corporation) and started expanding it to developing light bulbs with general electric, baby care products and shampoos, powders and other consumer products. In 1975, it began manufacturing hydraulic cylinders and truck tippers. In 1980 the company entered into IT sector and under a special license from Sentinel, it started developing computer hardware, software and related items. Wipro’s has won PCMM Level 5 and SEI CMM level 5 certification and has remained among the world’s top 100 IT companies. It is also one of the world’s largest BPO companies and employs over 22,000.

 Awards and Recognition:

Business Week named him as one of the Greatest Entrepreneurs for making Wipro one of the world’s fastest developing companies.

In 2000, he received an honorary doctorate from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

In 2004, Time Magazine kept him among its 100 most influential people in the world.
In 2005, he was honored with Padma Bhushan.

In 2008, on 58th Convocation Ceremony of the University, Aligarh Muslim University honored him with a Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.).

In 2009, Wesleyan University in Middletown awarded him with an honorary doctorate for his philanthropic work.

Philanthropic Work:

Azim Premji has chiefly contributed to establish Azim Premji Foundation and has donated $2 billion worth shares.

According to Azim Premji Foundation, it “Aims at making a tangible impact on identified social issues by working in active partnership with the Government and other related sectors of society” and Programmers offered are mainly for “creating effective and scalable models that significantly improve the quality of learning in the school and ensure satisfactory ownership by the community in the management of the school”. This foundation “dedicates itself to the cause of Universalization of Elementary Education in India”. It has successfully improved the quality of general education, mainly in rural schools.
Forbes magazine named him the Bill Gates of India for his Charity work.

Net Worth:

Head of tech titan Wipro started the Azim Premji Foundation in 2001, with an initial endowment of Wipro shares worth $125 million. Last year(2010), in keeping with his avowed intent of giving away a chunk of his fortune, he donated shares worth $2 billion, to a trust that will go to the foundation to help public schools in India’s heartland by training teachers and improving curriculum.

** The vision he had about the education, shows the opened mind characteristic in his personality, and such a person with a lot of knowledge, knew how to run businesses and came up with different new ideas that made him one of the most famous men in India.

Amanico Ortega

Amanico Ortega

Amancio Ortega Gaona is a Spanish fashion executive and founding chairman of the Spanish clothing merchandiser  Inditex(1985). He is the world's 5th richest man with assets of $37.5 billion, Spain's richest man, and Europe's richest man. He currently lives with his second wife in a discreet apartment building in the centre of Coruna.

His Began:

 His father worked on the railroad while his mother helped support the family by working as a maid. At the age of 13, Ortega began working for a shirt maker as a delivery boy in La Coruna, Galicia, the centre of the Iberian textile industry. 

He worked for a variety of stores and tailors and studied how products and costs changed as they travelled from the manufacturer to the consumer. As a result, he became focused on the importance of getting products directly to the consumer without a middle man.

Ortega never attended higher education and continued to work in the textile field into the early 1960s. After becoming manager of a local clothing shop, he discovered that only wealthy individuals could afford to purchase fine clothing and became even more determined to make quality clothes accessible to everyone. As a result, Ortega started making his own products, purchasing cheaper fabric from Barcelona and selling good quality, cheaper products to local stores.

 

In 1963, at the age of 27, Amancio Ortega founded his own company called Confecciones Goa that made and sold fine bathrobes.

Ortega continued to build his company and in 1975 he opened his first retail store called Zara. It was located across the street from one of La Coruna’s most well known department stores and Zara became famous for selling high quality designer products at reasonable prices. As a result of this success, Ortega continued to open stores and was credited with choosing perfect locations for each one.

By 1989, Amancio Ortega Gaona was successfully operating almost one hundred Zara stores in Spain.

With the Zara’s increasing popularity and overwhelming success, Ortega created Inditex in 1985 as the holding company for the Zara brand as well as other smaller chains. Inditex became one of the largest textile companies in the world.

 FAST FASHION INNOVATOR:

Zara is still principally known for the same thing - expensive-looking, trendy clothes at reasonable prices - but it is the unique way Ortega has found to deliver this in a highly competitive market that best reflects his talent. Aware that costs mounted and time was lost as garments moved from designers to factories to stores, he saw the importance of delivering direct to customers.

"We seek to democratize fashion, in contrast to the idea of fashion as privilege."
- Amancio Ortega Gaona

    The business strategy he has developed involves controlling all aspects of the chain, reducing costs and gaining speed and thereby flexibility. His designers get ideas from fashion shows and respond quickly to trends. Keeping manufacture in Spain, rather than following the trend of outsourcing to countries with lower labour costs, speeds up his operation - the clothes are designed and in-store within weeks. Stores are freshly stocked twice a week, avoiding high inventory cost and clearout sales, and encouraging customers to visit often.

Warren Buffett

 Warren Buffett

 

 successful investor from America and the largest shareholder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He was  born August 30, 1930,he is ranked as the second richest man in the world by Forbes with an estimated net worth of 37 billion dollars.Work began since childhood and had been working and is studying at the same time, he was selling Coca-Cola and some chewing gum, magazines and daily newspapers even finished his studies at the school, and he entered college as a freshman in 1947 at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and studied there for two yearsfrom 1947 to 1949.

In 1956, Buffett established his first investment partnership called Buffett Associates, Ltd. This partnership was financed by $100 from Buffett and $105,000 from seven other partners which comprised Buffett's family and friends. He created many other partnerships which later amalgamated as Buffett Partnership Limited. He ran his partnership in accordance to Graham's investment approach and compensation structure. These investments made in excess of 30% compounded annually, whereas in the market 7% to 11% was the norm. He applied a three-pronged approach:

Generals: depreciated securities which possess margin of safety and meet expected return-to-risk characteristics that concentrate on the ratio of "Return versus Risk" (RTR).

Arbitrages: company events which are not linked to broader market changes, like mergers, acquisitions, liquidation, etc. Controls: build sizable holdings, friendly with other shareholders or employ procurators to affect changes in companies.

In 1962, Buffett became a millionaire because of his partnerships, which in January 1962 had an excess of $7,178,500, of which over $1,025,000 belonged to Buffett. Buffett Partnerships bought shares of Berkshire Hathaway, a large manufacturing company in the declining textile industry, selling its shares below its working capital. Buffett dissolved all his partnerships to concentrate on running the Berkshire Hathaway. During that time, Berkshire's Vice Chairman, Charlie Munger mentioned that buying the company was a big mistake. But Buffett redirected the company's excess cash to gain private businesses and stocks of public companies, thus making Berkshire one of the largest holding companies in the world. At the core of his strategy were the insurance companies to pay future claims as they had large cash reserves. Along with his friend and business partner Charlie Munger, Buffett's investment approach drifted away from the Graham's principles to high-quality businesses with enduring competitive advantages.

In 1988, he started purchasing stocks in the Coca Cola company and eventually bought up to 7% of the company for $1.02 billion. This was considered to be one of Berkshire's most lucrative investments. In 2002, he enrolled in $11 billion worth of forward contracts to deliver US dollars against other currencies. By April 2006, Buffett's total profit on these contracts was over $2 billion.In 2009, after donating billions of dollars to charity, Buffett was ranked as the second richest man in the United States with a net worth of US$37 billion with only Bill Gates ranked higher than Buffett. His net worth is up to $47 billion in the past 12 months.

Warren Buffett has made some $50 billion doing things his own way, so it was completely consistent that at The Forbes 400,and his net worth like what forbes published in last time was around $46 billion .

Buffett is well-known for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and personal frugality, irrespective of his immense wealth. Often known as the 'Oracle of Omaha' or 'Sage of Omaha', Buffett is a renowned philanthropist and has announced to give away 85% of his fortune to the Gates Foundation as charity.

 Warren Buffet, he is creative man in business world with his brave heart and personality.

Ingvar Kamprad

Ingvar Kamprad

Ingvar Feodor Kamprad was born March 30, 1926 on his family’s farm (Elmtaryd) near the village of Agunnaryd in Sweden. His amazement that he could buy a product and resell it for a profit fueled his ambitions as a young boy to become a successful businessman. Although he suffered from Dyslexia, this did not hamper his desires and aspirations to succeed.

His very first venture into the business world started before he was even a teenager, when he found that he could buy matches in bulk from nearby Stockholm and sell them for a profit to his neighbors. He would use his spare time to mount his bicycle and peddle his wares, eventually adding other products to his ‘route’ of customers. These other products included fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ballpoint pens and pencils.

Even as a young boy, he understood the principles of business and reinvesting his profits to buy more bulk merchandise to resell. At age 17, his father bestowed on him a handsome reward for doing well in school. With his newly acquired ‘wealth’, he further invested in his business and took a serious step by naming his new venture IKEA. He came up with the name from his first and last initial (IK) and the family farm and village initials for the EA. It was his hope people would remember he was Ingvar Kamprad of Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd.

Establishing himself as a reliable business, he expanded his line of merchandise to include watches, jewelry, and other various goods. As he outgrew his ability to personally call on customers, he established a ‘mail-order’ business of sorts by hiring the local milk van to make deliveries to his customers.

By the time he was 21, Ingvar decided to add a new line to his already growing and successful business. In 1947, he introduced furniture into the IKEA product line. Since there were plenty of local manufacturers nearby, he was able to keep his costs down by negotiating a deal with these manufacturers. Soon, his furniture idea overwhelmingly took to the forefront of his business, and in 1951, he eliminated all other merchandise in an effort to concentrate on furniture alone.

Of course, this required a showroom, so in 1953, Ingvar opened the first IKEA showroom. Ingvar now had a suitable place to display for his customers, all his furniture. The showroom did well, however competition with other merchants started to make it difficult for Ingvar to work with the manufacturers. Nevertheless, he overcame these problems and continued to build the IKEA brand.

Ingvar has published a few notable works, in 1976 he wrote of his IKEA concept of frugality and enthusiasm entitled, ‘A Testament of a Furniture Dealer’. He also wrote an autobiography with help from Swedish journalist Bertil Torekull. This book, “Leading By Design: The IKEA Story” further describes his philosophies on business, his life and the trials and triumphs of IKEA.

Ingvar’s vision and ambition has been the driving force behind IKEA’s success, IKEA hires its own designers, who over the years, have received many rewards. Since childhood, Ingvar has always been frugal and a self-motivator, his stores reflect this in its ‘self service, assemble it yourself, and save money’ concept.

In 2004, Ingvar had grown to over 200 stores in more than 30 countries with 75,000 employees and sales of more than $12 billion. As of 2008, he is the wealthiest European-born person and the 7th wealthiest person in the world according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated net worth of around US$31 billion.