Indian-origin teenager Akshay Ruparelia becomes UK's youngest millionaire
His business has been valued at 12 million pounds, in just over a year.
BT Online New Delhi , 2017
When most of us are knee-deep into assignments and playing beer-pong during our free-time in college, there are a few extraordinary people who are busy making headlines and rewriting history at that age. One such extraordinary individual is 19-year-old Indian-origin student, Akshay Ruparelia, who has become the youngest millionaire in the UK. Akshay Ruparelia is the founder of doorstep.uk, an online estate agency business that has recently been valued at 12 million pounds, in just over a year.
Ruparelia had to balance school work and his business that sells properties for a fraction of the cost that other bigger firms charge. He had to hire a call centre to take calls from clients during school hours, which he would return once classes were over. The teenager also had to borrow money from his relatives to start the website. Ruparelia eventually started the site with 7,000 pounds.
Within just 16 months of first going live, doorsteps.uk became the 18th biggest estate agency in the UK. In these months Ruparelia claims to have sold properties worth 100 million pounds.
The teenager mentions that when his first client, a man from Sussex, asked Ruparelia to sell his house and another piece of land, he had to enlist the help of his sister's boyfriend to drive him up there as he did not even have a driving licence. He sold those properties within three weeks.
Akshay Ruparelia now employs 12 people to run the business.
Ruparelia's model is surprisingly simplistic; it banks on an ever-expanding network of mothers, who show clients the houses that are up for sale. He also believes that mothers are going to be honest and tell the truth, which is important for the real estate business.
The company charges a meagre sum of 99 pounds, as opposed to 800 pounds to 1,000 pounds that other firms charge. Needless to say, this simplistic model is paying off as now he has around 1,050 homes to sell on his website, while selling 30 houses on an average every week.
According to Daily Mirror, the most expensive house he has sold till now is for 1.4 million pounds at Notting Hill.
With the business doing so well, Akshay Ruparelia has increased his own allowance and even bought a car for his parents, Kaushik, 57, and Renuka, 51, who are both deaf.
Oxford University has offered him a seat to study economics and mathematics, but Akshay Ruparelia has put that on hold for his business and he wishes to take it forward.
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