Top 10 Business Achievers

They are men and women from diverse cultures and from different backgrounds, some with impressive academic records, while others barely finished high school; however, the one thing that is common is the great courage and determination of these people to achieve their dreams. Here’s a look at the accomplishments of ten such extraordinary people.

Bill Gates

The co-founder of software giant Microsoft left Harvard to pursue his dream of creating a software program that would be used by nearly every computer owner in the world. Windows is the most popular operating system in the world today along with other applications and tools that are Microsoft products. Gates has held on to the title of the world’s richest man for more than a decade and his net worth has declined from $60 to $50 billion and back again.

Oprah Winfrey

Another story of how determination can take a person to the pinnacle of success, Oprah’s story is a tale of courage in the face of adversity. Her show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, has been the longest running and most successful of her kind. Winfrey, who faced extreme poverty growing up in rural Mississippi, is one of the richest artists in the United States today, worth $2.7 billion.

Warren Buffett

The CEO of Berkshire and Hathaway, known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffet often trades the top spot on the Forbes list with his friend and fellow philanthropist Bill Gates. Although he displayed a marked reluctance to invest in technology companies, which saved him from the dotcom bust, he has had remarkable success with his strategy of owning shares in fundamentally sound companies. His influence on the stock market can be gauged by the fact that the smallest divestment of a company by Warren causes a veritable panic on Wall Street and a selling frenzy.

zhang yin

A true rags-to-riches story, Zhang Yin went from collecting waste paper on the streets of the United States to being the richest woman on the Forbes list. Her empire was based on her system of recycling paper and shipping it from the US to China. Today her company is a producer and exporter of several tons of paper and she is popularly known as the Empress of Paper.

Carlos Slim Helu

The telecommunications magnate from Mexico is currently in the number one position on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world with a fortune of $60 billion. Theirs is a story of profiting from the development of emerging economies. Through his Grupo Carso conglomerate, Slim Helu owns a sizeable number of shares in various Mexican companies in the retail, manufacturing and telecommunications sectors. He controls 90% of the telephone lines in Mexico through his two companies.

Dhirubhai Ambani

Hailed as India’s ‘Prince of Polyester’, Dhirubhai Ambani was the founder of Reliance. During his lifetime, he went from being a blue-collar worker at Shell Corporation to establishing one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies. A man who had barely finished grade 10 shook up the corporate culture in India by climbing to the pinnacle of success with his company that changed the way the average man on the street views corporate actions. If he had been alive today, he would be worth over $50 billion.

Indra Nooyi

A former student of the Indian Institute of Management and Yale, Nooyi took over as CEO of Pepsico in 2006 from Steven Reinemund. She was previously the CFO of the F&B giant. Nooyi has been responsible for the restructuring of the company; her divestment of the ‘Yumfoods’ restaurant brand and the acquisition of Quaker Oats and Tropicana. Since she became Pepsico’s CFO and eventually CEO, the company’s profits have doubled, while annual revenue has increased by 72%. Nooyi is consistently listed on Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful women.

Lakshmi Nivas Mittal (LN Mittal)

The steel magnate attracted global attention with the hostile takeover of Arcelor by Mittal Steel to form a conglomerate, Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steel producer. With his personal wealth valued at $28.7 billion, LN Mittal is no stranger to Forbes’ richest list. Although he started out in the family steelmaking business, he soon opted to establish his own steel company and its international division. Starting with a dilapidated steel plant in Indonesia, Mittal went on to create the world’s largest steelmaking facility.

steve jobs

Apple’s prolific co-founder and CEO Jobs is the man who fueled the personal computer revolution. He was the first to imagine the impact a mouse-based GUI would have on the computer market, and this led to the introduction of the Macintosh. Although he left Apple after a fight with the board of directors and founded the computing platform development company NeXT, he returned to Apple as CEO after Apple’s acquisition of NeXT. After health problems related to pancreatic cancer, Jobs handed over Apple’s day job to interim CEO Tim Cook and is now only involved in strategic decisions.

mark zuckerberg

He is the world’s youngest billionaire who revolutionized the social media scene while in his first year at Harvard. The phenomenon of social networks created by Zuckerberg, "Facebook" he amassed a massive following with a staggering 500 million members. At 26, Zuckerberg is the world’s youngest billionaire with an estimated net worth of more than $5 billion.

The success stories of many of these business tycoons are studied in Ivy League schools; The most remarkable thing that can be learned from his examples is the fact that a person can achieve anything he wants, as long as he has the courage to dream big and the willingness to work hard to achieve the dream.

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