They come to your country, build successful multi-million-dollar companies while still in high school*… as I remarked to Mr. Free Market, he’ll probably end up marrying into the Royal Family.
Most teenagers of his age spend their school lunch breaks playing football or chatting to girls.
But Akshay Ruparelia used every spare moment to sell houses.The young entrepreneur – nicknamed Alan Sugar by his friends – set up an online estate agency while still at sixth form.
The teenager started his business after persuading family members to lend him £7,000 and already employs 12 people.
And his clever business model has been such a hit that his company doorsteps.co.uk has been valued at £12 million in just over a year.
Now aged 19, Akshay has had to put plans of studying economics and management at Oxford University on hold because the firm he set up at school is expanding so rapidly.
I’m curious as to why he’d bother with university at all, seeing as he seems to be doing quite well without the academic drag of “theory” (as opposed to actual, you know, stuff that works in the real world).
Good for him.
*For my Murkin Readers: “sixth form” is the equivalent to an extra year of high school — thirteenth grade, as it were — as a preparatory step towards university. It is one of my deepest regrets that I didn’t stay on for the Sixth myself; my life would have been considerably different had I done so.
Some immigrants become model citizens – they embrace the new country, work hard, do great things. Most of us would rather think well of others, and so we focus on these cases.
In the US – the greatest immigrant success story has to be American Jewry. For obvious historical reasons, they had no national loyalty to their European homelands, and were grateful to be accepted as equal citizens. They became patriotic 100% Americans. (E.g. Irving Berlin – you know, “God Bless America”!) They worked hard and skillfully, did great things.
That experience, and the resulting sensibility, is the unspoken dominating paradigm for thinking about immigration in the US and in many other countries. Unfortunately, it tends to blind people to the very real problems with other immigrants.
“*For my Murkin Readers: “sixth form” is the equivalent to an extra year of high school — thirteenth grade, as it were — as a preparatory step towards university. It is one of my deepest regrets that I didn’t stay on for the Sixth myself; my life would have been considerably different had I done so.”
Not quite, 6th form (lower and upper) cover the 16-18 year age group after highschool. Equivalent to 11th and 12th grade. (equiv in age, not actual education…) A well balanced set of A levels from 6th form and you have the equivalent of the gen ed requirements in the US for a baccalaureate degree.
/nitpick. 🙂
*does a little digging*
The article doesn’t state his family’s origin, but my money’s on him being from India; Akshay is a Hindi name.