31-year-old Ashish Thakkar is the Founder and Managing Director of the Mara Group of companies. Mara Group is an African multi-sector business conglomerate of information and communication technology, real estate and hospitality, manufacturing and services with 15 years of extensive national and international markets experience. Mara group has operations across 18 African countries.

Ashish was born in the United Kingdom to Indian-origin parents who’d migrated from Uganda. In 1993, the family moved to Rwanada to run a business but they ended up hiding in a hotel due to genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus. They somehow managed to escape from the country and relocate to Uganda. The family had to go through the toughest time as they were left with little money and had to start life from scratch. His father started a business by taking an $11,000 loan. Ashish quit his school at the age of 15 and started his humble journey by venturing on his first business – selling computer hardware brought from Dubai in Uganda. In less than a year, he became a major supplier of computer hardware to the African continent by setting up a shop in Dubai. Over the years, his small hardware supply operation became one of the biggest IT companies in Africa with 7,000 employees across 26 countries and more than $100 million in annual revenue.

Today, the Mara Group has been recognized as one of the dynamic high-growth companies with the bright prospective to become a powerful force for economic as well as social change by the World Economic Forum in 2010. Besides, Ashish J. Thakkar has been honored and appointed as a World Economic Forum Global Young Leader. His personal net worth is around $260 million that makes him a billionaire by South African Rand values.

Info Source: mara-group.com

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www.bubblews.com

Toddlers & Tiaras star Isabella Barret is a beauty queen, a pint-sized millionaire entrepreneur who runs her own company, Glitzy Girl that sells beauty products jewelry, lip gloss and velour hoodies, holds the popular reality show in Germany and owns more than 60 pairs of shoes and a pageant room worth more than $100,000. In an interview with Good Morning America, she proudly proclaimed, “I’m a millionaire!” She also confirms how she is fascinated by the luxurious life of stars, “I’m a superstar, I have my own ­jewellery line and I love being the boss. But what I love more than anything is shoes. I have over 60 pairs,” she expresses it to an interview with The Mirror.

Isabella managed her seven-figure fortune from participating and winning several beauty pageants including Toddlers and Tiaras, which an American reality television series on TLC, continuing since January 27, 2009. The show finally led her to the incredible success.

Her mother, Susanna Barrett is not concerned about her future and she says Isabella was born to be a pageant queen as she would love the glamour, glitz and ornamentation from the very early childhood. Besides all this, Isabella is a full time school student, learns gymnastics, and takes dance and singing classes and studies German, Italian, and French. Her next desire is to be a Disney Star, “I just love being a star” she says.

Info Source: theglitzygirl.com

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nastygal.com

Net worth: $250 million
Position: CEO and Founder of Nasty Gal

The 28-year old American entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso has successfully turned her passion, a sophisticated sense for modern fashion, into a $250 million business. The company name ‘Nasty Gal’, according to Sophia, was taken from the song and album “Nasty Gal.” In 2006, at the age of 22, she started her journey by selling designer vintage pieces on eBay as a store Nasty Gal Vintage from her small apartment in San Francisco. Realizing the power of social media, she preferred to market her brand across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr which successfully worked for her. As of 2012, Nasty Gal has more than 66,000 Twitter followers, over 522,000 Facebook fans, and 405,000 Instagram followers.

Since its inception, Nasty Gal has maintained a consistent positive growth year by year and according to Inc. Magazine, it is the fasted growing retailer in the United States in 2012. It has more than 150,000 customers in over 50 countries across the world.

Early life

Her success didn’t come without struggle. Her family was going through hard time when she was only ten, her parents lost their jobs and she was taken off from the Catholic school to save family expenses. Her father started delivering newspaper early in the morning and she started selling lemonade in Sacramento. From the early childhood, she would love to read about start-ups and dream of starting something on her own and her father’s advice “Show up. Don’t stop moving. Sweep the floor even when they don’t ask you to” taught her to go for a humble beginning which she still maintains. She did several things to help her family but with the growing age she felt restless in deep within to accomplish something solid. By the age of 22, she did ten different retail jobs and continued until she founded vintage-clothing store on eBay. After one and half years on eBay, she was already making $115,000 in sales and had a strong base on MySpace where she had 30,000 friends. She thought of making the business big and moved her business in her step-aunt’s house to a studio in Benicia. Gradually she created a website called Nasty Gal. This is how her success story took off.

Info Source: nastygal.com

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Kathryn Minshew, Melissa McCreery, and Alexandra Cavoulacos

The Daily Muse is an online, women-centric career community and content site, founded by ex-McKinsey analysts Kathryn Minshew, Melissa McCreery, and Alexandra Cavoulacos in 2011. According to co-founders, the community has already assisted over 1,250,000 women in searching suitable career of their choices. Since its inception in 2011, the community has been tremendously growing and has maintained a consistent traffic from all continents. It has successfully attracted a fair number of readerships and has over 140 dedicated writers’ community.

Kathryn Minshew was featured in Forbes list of “30 Under 30″ for her significant role in the development of The Daily Muse. She came up with the idea of establishing online career and lifestyle focused community when she applied for a position at a top management and consulting firm McKinsey, where she found to have a separate information session for women. Moreover, she herself experienced how women had to fight amidst the complicated corporate environment. She discussed the idea with her friends Alex Cavoulacos and Melissa McCreery and they agreed to create their own platform to provide some fruitful guidance to young professionals especially fresh college graduates and those who relocate to a new city looking for jobs.

Apart from career and job search, the Daily Muse features news and updates on technology, travel, health, money, grooming, and entrepreneurship.

Info Source: thedailymuse.com

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Leslie Bradshaw

American entrepreneur Leslie Ann Bradshaw co-founded Los Angeles based creative interactive agency JESS3 in 2007. JESS3 is widely known for specializing in infographics, social media strategy, content creation, animation, digital PR creations and developing large-scale installations, branding and web design. In addition, the company has profound understanding and experience in developing data visualization. The Company’s clients’ list includes Google, Yahoo! Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace, Nike, Intel, NASA, Turner Broadcasting, Samsung and many more. Under Bradshaw’s leadership, the company has experienced a significant growth between the years of 2007 and 2011.

Leslie Ann Bradshaw completed her B.A. as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in 2004 from the University of Chicago, with economics, gender and anthropology as subjects. She started her career in communications and worked at National Journal, The McLaughlin Group and took up a media projects with C-SPAN. Later, while working on social media platforms, she discovered her passion in it; and in 2007, she co-founded JESS3 along with a New Zealand-American graphic designer Jesse Thomas. Currently, she serves the company as chief operations officer and president whereas Jesse Thomas serves as Chief Executive Officer.

Bradshaw has been honored for several times for her contribution to JESS3 and entrepreneurial world. She has been called the “Most Influential Women in Technology 2011″ by Fast Company, “Top Women in Tech Under 30″ by The Wall Street Journal. She, along with Thomas was named “Tech Titan” by The Washingtonian Magazine and ‘The top 30 entrepreneurs under 30’ by Inc. magazine in 2011 and their company JESS3 was awarded a gold medal in 2012. Bradshaw was also featured in the list of 44 “accomplished female founders” of Mashable.

Info Source: jess3.com
wikipedia.org

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Amy Jo Martin

Born: On July 5, 1979 in Green River, WY

Amy Jo Martin is an American microblogger, speaker and one of the most influential social media strategist with approximately 1.25 million twitter followers. She began her career at an advertising firm in account management. In 2006, while working for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns she first initiated on how NBA teams should integrate digital media and organized the NBA Tweetups. In 2008 she successfully developed strategies for better twitter presence for former Suns player Shaquille O’Neal which gave her confidence to start her own company.

Amy founded Digital Royalty in 2009 to develop social media strategies and digital integration for celebrities, companies, sports teams and athletes. Its another division Digital Royalty University provides customized educational programs covering an inclusive curriculum on strategic and tactical social media training. Some of the Digital Royalty’s clients are FOX Sports, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Monte Carlo Resort & Casino, Shaquille O’Neal, Nike, The X-Factor, Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Kings, Jabbawockeeez, Doubletree by Hilton, Tony Hsieh and many more.

In 2009, Amy was entitled Arizona’s “35 Entrepreneurs 35 & Younger” by The Arizona Republic. In the same year, she was profiled in a Vanity Fair article titled “America’s Tweethearts”. In 2010, Forbes called her one of 20 Best-Branded Women on Twitter.

Info Source: thedigitalroyalty.com

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magazine.modaoperandi.com

Aslaug Magnusdottir is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Moda Operandi, a very innovative online fashion and luxury retailer that offers its members to pre-order the unedited collections of some of the world’s top designers. It was a joint venture of Áslaug Magnúsdóttir along with Lauren Santo Domingo launched in February 2011 to empower fashion aficionados across the world, full of stylish appeals from top designers. In 2011, they relaunched it with full of stylish appeals from top designers. She has been titled the “fashion’s fairy godmother” by Vogue for her unique approach in fashion retailing.
According to Aslaug, she came about the idea While working with designers in New York and abroad. Before this venture, she was VP of Premium Products and Services at Gilt Group, the President of House of Waris Fine Jewelry, and in 2006, after moving to New York City, she co-founded TSM Capital, which is a retail investment company that invests in luxury brands. Besides, she has experience of working on the Board of Directors of several fashion and retail companies that include Matthew Williamson and Rachel Roy.

She has completed an undergraduate degree in Law from the University of Iceland, an LLM from Duke University School of Law and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She started Moda Operandi with a strong sense of style, determination to change the way we perceive fashion, and previous business experience with reputed brands.

Info Source: modaoperandi.com

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shoptiques.com

The 27-year-old Russian model Olga Vidisheva, a Harvard Business School alum, founded an e-commerce site Shoptiques that showcases, and sells boutique inventory of local shops. On completion of her Bachelors of Arts in Economics and a minor in Mathematics from Wellesley College in 2007, she worked for Goldman, Sachs & Co., in New York for about two years. Very soon she realized that finance wasn’t her interest and enrolled at Harvard Business School where she was the Co-President of the Retail & Luxury Goods Club. While in HBS, she successfully completed a coveted internship at CHANEL in “Fashion” and “Fragrance and Beaute” marketing divisions.

According to Vidisheva, she stumbled upon the idea of starting something like Shoptiques when she herself experienced that a majority of local boutique shops did not have online presence mostly relied on print advertising for marketing. Soon, she made a presentation at Y Combinator where her idea was praised by the co-founder Paul Graham and many others. She firmly believed her digital platform would assist small scale boutique businesses, giving them a strong platform to show off their high-end clothing.
She launched Shoptiques with 50 stores across the U.S and in less than a year she was mentioned in all major newspapers and T.V. channels. Today, she is successfully helping over a hundred boutiques to connect with their loyal customers from different locations.
On sale, Shoptiques takes a humble and reasonable commission. Vidisheva says,

“We go find the most exclusive, unique boutiques, we put them online, and then consumers … can come on Shoptiques and find their favorite little shops from all over the world.”

To start the business, she raised fund from various venture capital firms including Benchmark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Charles River Ventures, General Catalyst and SV Angel.
Currently, the site is not accessible for international customers; it is only available in United States and a few other countries.

Info Source: shoptiques.com

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Cheryl Yeoh

In 2010, Cheryl Yeoh co-founded and a New York-Based startup CityPockets, a digital holder and secondary marketplace for daily deals, which is similar to Groupon. It was her first venture that would help customers to save money with discounted vouchers. It’s a free service that imports customers’ vouchers from various daily deal sites and then systematizes them. Whenever a coupon comes close to its expiration, it alerts its users. Cheryl raised $750,000 fund for her site from Great Oaks Venture Capital and other angel investors.

Prior to CityPockets, she was a management consultant at Opera Solutions, KPMG, and Carollo Engineers. In 2005, she completed Bachelor of Science in Operations Research & Industrial Engineering and in 2007 Master in Engineering from Cornell University.

Cheryl Yeoh has been featured and interviewed live on different media including GigaOm, Fox News, BNET, Eye,Mind and others.

What is Reclip.It

In March 2012, Cheryl founded her second venture Reclip.It. It is a community or platform for coupon and daily deals lovers. On the basis of customer’s interests, ReclipIt creates a custom virtual folder of coupons and deals from a variety of stores, brands, and sources. Gradually, when customers surf more and claim some more deals, the system simultaneously comes to know about their choices and show relevant deals to them. Thus, it saves customer’s time and creates wonderful shopping experience. Customers can even “Reclip” their favorite deals for later use or share them with friends and followers. According to reports, ReclipIt has been showing fast and steady growth and getting over 6000 visitors every day.

For Cheryl, it’s just the beginning. She says,

“We’re trying to figure out how to build a platform that can transform the traditional couponing space into something fun and visually appealing…we’re trying to make it cool again.”

Info Source: cherylyeoh.com
citypockets.com
reclipit.com

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youngentrepreneur.com

Sarah Prevette is a pioneering web entrepreneur who founded Sprouter in November 2009 as a platform to help young and budding entrepreneurs communicate with investors worldwide. As a young and emerging entrepreneur, she herself had numerous questions for which she could not find any specifically organized website or online community that could help her with the answers. She founded Sprouter as an online community as well as a resource center to help startup founders and investors connect with each other. The rapidly growing environment of Sprouter inspired thousands of entrepreneurs to connect, socialize and share their questions and tips on the platform. In 2011, Sprouter was taken over by Postmedia Network Inc.

Sarah has been named as one of the top entrepreneurs in North America by Inc Magazine. She has also been featured in various reputed publications that include Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneurs, The New York Times, Wired and many more. Besides, she is a familiar face in media for advising business start-ups as well as students; for she regularly appears in the Financial Post as well as BNN’s show “The Pitch.”

Sarah Prevette on Success
Sarah Prevette explains what success means to her (in an interview with youngentrepreneur.com), “I’m not sure there is a definitive end-game success. To me, it’s about little wins every day and ongoing progression. Success is continually elusive – as soon as a milestone is achieved, it’s on to the next one. Personally, I want to feel like I’m contributing, having impact, and pushing boundaries.”

Info Source: sprouter

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