Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs
Personal career:Childhood:Wegapitiya, the chairman of billions of rupees wroth company, was a child in a poor village family in Balangoda. His father was a poor farmer who had to care of nine childrens. According to Mr Wegapitiya, there were many days which they spend with hunger. He experienced the difficulties that poor large families faced on 1970's. Mr Wegapitiya says those experiences have kept him where he is now. The difficulties that he faced, converted him to a person who can bear anything and live with many troubles and shortages. Education:Even though the father of Mr wegapitiya was a poor farmer, he had understood the value of education. He always tried his best to give education to his child. According to Wegapitiya, education was the path which he used to come to his present state. Mr Wegapitiya studied from the village school up-to O/L. Later Pinnawala central collage in Kegalle supported him to complete A/L's and enter to the university of Sri Jayawardenapura, for his first degree in Business administration. As to Mr Wegapitiya, university life was the capital that he invested for his entrepreneur activities. It was the place that he was given the strength to go ahead on his career path. Actually his university life was a rural one. He suffered from lack of money. There were many days which he only drank a cup of water and went to sleep due to lack of money to buy foods. But the experiences and knowledge that he collected from university life, converted him to billionaire. Many years after achievement of his special degree in business administration, he completed MBA at post graduate institute of management in year 2007. Life style:As a person who came out from a village and from a farming family, he always love farming. He has a dream to grow fruits and vegetables and live in a farm as a farmer. His favorite meal is rice and curry. Mr Wegapitiya gets at 5.00 a.m in every morning, goes to gym for one hour and drive to the office. Another interesting item of his life is traveling. He likes to travel to many countries and get experiences and acquire knowledge.
Business career:After university life of Mr Wegapitiya, he entered to the ceylon shipping corporation as a trainee shipping agent for Rs. 20/= per day. It was his first step in his career life. After some period of working in Ceylon shipping company, he moved to start his own freight forwarding company by end of 1987. In that time period, there was a good demand for that field. This step opened door for him to enter to world of entrepreneurs. After collecting the experiences from freight forwarding field, Mr wegapitiya moved to a higher step which was not ever touch by a Sri Lankan entrepreneur. He entered to the LPG sector. In that time LPG sector was wholly monopolized by the giant multinational companies. How ever because of the entrepreneur skills, Wegapitiya entered to the market as Gas Auto Lanka. He got the chance to be the first person who owned petrol-to-auto-LPG conversion plant in Sri lanka in 1994. He came more quickly on the way of success. Still he never looked behind. Today he is the chairman of laugfs holdings Ltd. Present laugfs Holdings Ltd commands a turnover of over 7 billion rupees. Laugfs today is a house hold name with a portfolio of 19 companies. They have been engaging with marketing activities in local and overseas markets. Laugfs gas (Pvt) Ltd is the flagship of laugfs group which is the second large LPG provider in Sri Lanka. Additional to LPG providing, laugfs has entered to area such as petroleum, retailing, property development, leisure, restaurants, tires and in near future super markets etc. Mr Wegapitiya has already entered to Australian market. He is the Asian pioneer in Australia who converts petroleum driven vehicles to LPG. In the near future he is seeking to expand his business through countries like New Zealand, US, Maldives, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
Laugfs Holdings
Major achievements: Special degree in Business administration. Laugfs Holdings Ltd. Procurement of LPG tanker- Laugfs wega (Youngest Sri Lankan to own a ship) Gold award- Entrepreneur of the year (Extra large category)-2005 Platinum award for national entrepreneur of the year 2006 MBA- 2007
Advice:- How ever if you want to be successful you need to always have an unending determination to keep going despite the tough challenges that the environment throws at you.
Sri Lanka leaders (2011) Mr. W.K.H. WEGAPITIYA [Online]. Available from: http://www.srilankaleaders.com [Accessed: 26 July 2011]
Personal Career:Bill Gates the most richest man on earth and the chairman of the Microsoft corporation, was born on Oct. 28,1955. He was born to a entrepreneurship and high-spirited liveliness family. His father was William H. Gates 11 and he was the Seattle attorney. Bill Gates' mother was a school teacher in university of Washington regent and her name was Mairy Gates. Bill is the third child of Gates family.
Education:For the primary education. Bill Gates entered to the public elementary school and then attended to the private lakeside school. While he was studying there, he understood his interest and high ability in software. So he started to programming when he was in year 13. In 1973 Bill entered to the Harvard university for his higher education. While he was at Harvard, developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer- the MITS Altair.
Interests:Though Bill Gates is a very busy professional character, he interests to spent more time with his family. He was married on Jan. 1,1994, to Melinda Gates and now they have three children. Gates not only a computer programmer but also an avid reader. He enjoys by playing golf, tennis and guitar.
Business career:In 1975 Bill Gates started his company Microsoft with one of his childhood friend, Paul Allen , who is the present chief executive officer in Microsoft. At the beginning they used to create softwares for the personal computer market. Even in the teenage period, Bill and Allen ran a small company called Trat-O-Data and sold a computer to the city of Seattle which can count the city traffic. Microsoft became famous for their DOS operating systems and business solutions even before their greatest inversion Microsoft windows. Bill Gates got the opportunity to provide their MS-DOS operating systems for IBM computers and get the licensing rights. On November. 10, 1983 at the plazza hotel in New York city, Microsoft corporation formally introduced their new generation operating system called Microsoft windows to the computer users in the world. That was a mile stone of Microsoft corporation, because computer users were attracted to it due to its user friendliness and high technology. After the first announcement of Microsoft windows, Bill Gates' corporation was able to produce number of versions in windows and many useful packaged softwares which are highly used in home and office IT environment. Microsoft is earning billions of dollars as its profits per day. In couple of years Bill Gates ranked as the richest person in the world.
Some of popular Microsoft product categories:Entertainment DirectX Microsoft Mediaroom MSN MSN Games MSNBC PC gaming Windows Media Center Xbox home Xbox LIVE Zune Home and software educational Developer tools .NET Framework ASP.NET MSDN Subscriptions RoboticsDeveloper Studio Visual Basic Visual C Visual C# Visual Studio XNA Developer Centers
AutoCollage HealthVault Money MSN Direct MSN Internet access Office Home & Student Songsmith Streets & Trips Windows Home Server Works WorldWide Telescope
Office All Office products Home & Student Office for Business Office Servers Office Trials Office Web Apps Product Information
Windows All Windows products Windows 7 WindowsInternet Explorer Windows Phone Windows Compatibility Center Windows Help & Howto Windows Service Packs Windows Vista Windows XP
Windows Live Windows Live Home Windows Live Essentials Windows Live Hotmail Windows Live Mail Windows Live Messenger Windows Live Mobile Windows Live Movie Maker
Microsoft (2011) Site map [Online]. Available from: http://"http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/sitemap.aspx#Products" [Accessed: 26 July 2011]
Ability to predict the future:Bill Gates strongly trusted that computer will be a main equipment in every home and office activity in the future world, even before start the Microsoft corporation. All the efforts that he got to develop Microsoft was based on his that prediction. In the present, we know he is completely correct. Bill Gates predicted that situation from what he saw in his early life time. Since 1968 to 1973, he saw a quick increase in the computer software industry and the development in personal computer field. Due to that experience, Bill Gates understood that there will be a huge trend for softwares in near future. Above qualities of Bill Gates' life, show him as a successful entrepreneur who lived in present business world. Honors and awards 2-03-2005 Bill Gates knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his contribution to the British economy. His titel will be 'Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire'. Thoug he is not allowed to call himself 'Sir' because of his USA citizenship but may suffix his name with KBE.
Personal career:Childhood:Dame Anita Roddick the founder of the Body Shop corporation was born on 23 rd October 1942 at Littlehampton, England. Her father was Henry and mother was Glida. They were in an Italian immigrant community. Anita was the second child among four children in his family. Her family had a cafe and Anita had to work hard for it. As to her past memories she even hadn't any leisure time in her childhood. She also stated that they had not known what is leisure even when she was a small girl. She used couple of word child labor to describe the state that she was in her child hood. Education:For her primary education she attended to the school at St Amy's convent. Then she entered to the Maude Allen secondary collage to get secondary modern education. After leaving her secondary school, she trained as a teacher at bath college of higher education. In 1962 Roddick had given a scholarship to study in kibbutz in Israel. Life style:Anita Roddick was very interested for charity works. She was a well known women business character who worked to save the natural environment. She was a member of Demos and she donated millions of dollars for campaigning work on environmental issues. She also worked for poor and orphan children whole around the world. The organization of Children On The Edge (COTE) founded by Anitta in 1990. According to Anitta Roddick political leaders like Castro and Che Guvera were her vision.
10
Business career:In 1970 Anitta was married to Gordon Roddick. The new couple opened a restaurant, followed by a hotel. There were eight rooms in their restaurant. Anitta and her husband overworked to develop their family business and take it to a profitable stage. In this period the Gordon needed a change for his life. So he decided to went off to ride a horse from Buenos Aires to New York City with Anitta's approval. Anita was left to support herself and her two children. How ever Anitta thought to start a new business to earn money for herself and for the two children that she had. That was the beginning of the Body Shop Corporation. She founded her first shop in Brighton in 1976. She produced quality skin care products in refillable containers. In the beginning they had only 15 products. After 6 months from the established day of the first branch she established the second branch. Her husband also returned and joined to the business. By the year 1991 there were 700 branches around the world and number of products were increased up to over 300. Most of times Anitta's corporation used to use recycled things for their productions. That was not only because they were environment friendly but also in previous times they didn't have enough resources for the production. By 2004 there were 1980 stores and serving over 77 million customers throughout the world. .It was voted the second most trusted brand in the United Kingdom, and 28th top brand in the world. How ever she sold her Body Shop Corporation to L'Oreal on 17 March 2006.
11
12
Selected awards
1993 - Mexican Environmental Achiever Award 1993 - National Audubon Society Medal, USA 1994 - Botwinick Prize in Business Ethics, USA 1994 - University of Michigan's Annual Business Leadership Award, USA 1995 - Women's Business Development Center's First Annual Woman Power Award, USA 1996 - Women's Center's Leadership Award, USA 1996 - The Gleitsman Foundation's Award of Achievement, USA 1997 - United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Honouree, Eyes on the Environment 1999 - British Environment & Media Award 1999 - Chief Wiper-Away of Ogoni Tears, Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Nigeria 2001 - International Peace Prayer Day Organisation's Woman of Peace 2003 - Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) 2004 - Honorary Doctorate of Public Service, The Sage Colleges 2005 - Shell liveWIRE survey of inspirational role models, third place after 1) Richard Branson 2) Friends/family 3) Anita Roddick 4) James Dyson 2006 - Spirit of the Rainforest Award, Rainforest Action
Wiki. (2011). Anita Roddick. [Online]. Available from - "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Roddick" [Accessed: 18 July 2011]
13
Personal career:Early life:Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson who is the chairman of the Virgin group is known as a successful entrepreneurial businessman in England. He was the 5th richest person in UK and 254th richest one from the whole world according to Forbes magazine. He was born on 18th July in 1950 in London to a honorable family. His father was Edward James Branson and his mother was Eve Branson. His grand father was a judge of the High Court of Justice and a privy councillor. He has two sisters and one brother. He is the eldest one in his family. Education:Branson showed poor academic performance as a student. That may due to dyslexia that he has. He was educated at Scaitcliffe School up to year 13 and then attended to the Stowe School until the age of sixteen. Even though he is poor in education, he was a good sportsman. Especially he was a good swimmer. Interests:Richard Branson has some what different interests in his life. Those interests may effect to his entrepreneurial behavior that uses to make his business success. Branson love to make world records. He attempted to make many world records and some of them were successful and some of them were unsuccessful. In January 1991 he crossed the pacific from Japan to Arctic Canada in a balloon. He was successful in making that world record. But he failed his first attempt in crossing Atlantic ocean by a boat. He also like to engage with television shows, films and prints. He usually playing himself on several television shows like Friends, Baywatch, Birds of a Feather. He also participate with BBC, CNN programs and reality shows. He showed him in the film Around the World in 80 Days (2004).
14
Business career:Richard Bransons business career is a some what long. He engaged with various fields and started businesses. Most of his businesses are completely different from each other. Branson started his business career in 1970 when he was in age 16 by creating a magazine called Student at age 16. It was his first successful business career. Again in 1972 he invested on a audio record mail-order business and it became a chain of record stores under the name of Virgin Megastores. As a result of rapid growing of the Virgin brand he was able to set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label in year 1980. He sold virgin record label to another company to maintain his airline company in 1992. Later he formed V2 Records to reenter to the music businesses. He started Virgin Mobile in 1999. He passed to acquire many airline companies in world like Euro Belgian Airlines, under to his Virgin trade name. He started a national airline based in Nigeria, called Virgin Nigeria. Another airline as Virgin America. Virgin also connected with SN Brussels Airline and established Brussels Airline. Branson also entered to the refreshment industry, under Virgin cola brand and also Virgin Vodka. But that has not been a very successful enterprise under virgin trademark. Virgin also has been getting an attempt to enter to the space tourism as Virgin Galactic with the partnership of Microsoft company. He has started this deal since 25 th of September 2004 with the expectation of higher profit rates in the near future. Virgin fuels also his new venture which produce cheaper and more environmental friendly fuel for automobiles and in the near future for aircraft. As to the Branson, this decision was a result of a breakfast discussion which happened with Al Gore. Branson see Virgin fuel as a effective response to the global warming. In 2007 Virgin Media Company has been started by Virgin with a huge publicity. Branson also created Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation as entrainment companies which focused on introducing new characters and stories to the global audience. Branson also launched the Virgin Health Bank on 1 February 2007, offering parents-to-be the opportunity to store their baby's umbilical cord blood stem cells in private and public stem cell banks.
15
16
Wiki. (2011). Richard branson. [Online]. Available from - "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson" [Accessed: 26 July 2011]
17
Personal career:Childhood:Otara Del Gunawardena the founder of the brand ODEL is a very popular woman entrepreneur in Sri Lankan business. She was born on August 3,1964 at Colombo. Her parents are Norman Gunewardene who is a well known corporate leader in Sri Lanka and Delysia Gunewardene. She has two brothers and they also renowned professionals in country's corporate sector. Education:Otara attended to CMS ladies collage, Colombo 7 for her primary and secondary studies. At the school time she understood that she is really skillful in sports. She showed her skills in athletics and swimming, and high jump and hurdles on an international scale. She entered to the university of Bowling Green to read her degree in Biological science. Interests:She was highly interested in modeling. She is always aware of new fashions that is being created in the world. New fashioned cloths, jeweleries, woman bags and lots of other lady wares are very interested things in her life. She also interested to keep her body shape as well as possible. She is doing particular exercises to keep her body shape beautifully. And also she is seeking for a free time to spend time with her lovely two children Kiran and Rakhil.
18
Business career:After the higher education, Otara came to the career life as a professional modeler. Her tall body shape and her charming cat-walking style made her a popular modeler among the high profile brands. But around the year 1989, she started to sell garment products by using boot of her car. Most of times she sold them to her close friends and relations. The business showed marks which say it is going to successful. So she rented a small place in Lester James Peries Mawatha, Colombo 4. It was the first branch of the ODEL showroom. Then within few years ODEL rapidly grew and many ODEL branches have been established. Today ODEL is Sri Lanka's premier fashion and lifestyle store. Today it offers high street cloth fashion to men, women and children. Addition to that homeware, jewellery and accessories, luggage, perfumes and cosmetics, book and music, confectionery and food are available for customers. Otara has started another entrepreneurial ventures under different brands to fulfill the customers' need of the new fashions that are parallel to the global international state. One of them is Otone, which is created to provide luxurious facilities to the Sri Lankan people for the development of their fitness. Backstage is a jewellery center which is created according to a special idea of the Otara. Studio Otara is a company that consult on the design of luxurious houses locally and globally. Otara the exclusive jewellery to be launched in the near future will reflect the magical touch of the Otara.
19
20
Awards
2000 - Jaycees Most Outstanding Young Person in Sri Lanka 2001 - Federation of Chambers and Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka (FCCISL) Entrepreneur of the Year 2001 Award 2002 - Zonta Woman of Achievement Award 2008 - South Asian Association for Regional Corporations (SAARC) Woman of Achievement 2008 - Retail Leadership Award, Asia Retail Congress, India 2009 - Habitat for Humanity, Goodwill Ambassador
2009 - Colombo Jewelry Stores, Dior Brand Ambassador 2010 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, Best Entrepreneur of the Year in the NonServices Businesses up to 2, 500 Employees 2010 The SIAS Partnership Summits Achievers and Leaders Award for Excellence in Brand Building.
Wiki. (2011). Otara Gunawardene [Online]. Available from -"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otara_Gunewardene" [Accessed: 26 July 2011]
21
Reference
Sri Lanka leaders (2011) Mr. W.K.H. WEGAPITIYA [Online]. Available from: http://www.srilankaleaders.com [Accessed: 26 July 2011] Wiki. (2011). Anita Roddick. [Online]. Available from - "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Roddick" [Accessed: 18 July 2011] Wiki. (2011). Richard branson. [Online]. Available from - "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson" [Accessed: 26 July 2011] Wiki. (2011). Otara Gunawardene [Online]. Available from -"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otara_Gunewardene" [Accessed: 26 July 2011] Bing (2011) Bill Gates:Chairman of Microsoft [Online]. Available from:"http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/sitemap.mspx" [Accessed: 26 July 2011] Otara. (2011). Otara Gunawardene [Online]. Available from -"http://otara.lk" [Accessed: 26 July 2011]
22
23