Alan Sugar

He was born as the youngest of four children to Jewish parents Nathan and Fay. His father worked as a tailor, and the family was poor.

He went to Northwood Primary School before enrolling at Brooke House secondary School. His business skills were apparent from a young age—even as a school student he started working for a green grocer to earn some pocket money.

He left school at 16 and started a small business of selling car aerials and electronics. His earnings soon exceeded those of his father’s.

Naturally blessed with an acute sense of business acumen, the young man started his own business, Amstrad, in 1968 when he was just 21 years old. It was originally stared as an export-import and wholesale company with the name AMS Trading (Amstrad) Limited. The company soon branched out into consumer electronics.

By 1970 the company began its manufacturing unit as well. Over the decade it became one of the foremost marketers of low cost and high quality electronics like television and car stereos. He used new and innovative techniques in the production process which helped the company to cut costs considerably.

Amstrad went public on the London Stock Exchange in 1980 and doubled its growth during the early 1980s. The Amstrad PC range was introduced in 1984 in an attempt to capitalize on the surge in demand for personal computers during that time.

The company brought out the PC models PPC512 and 640 in an attempt to bring affordable portable computers to the market in 1988. These computers ran MS-DOS on an 8 MHz processor.

In spite of registering tremendous growth during the 1980s, the company ran into hard times during the 1990s. Amstrad introduced the GX4000 in 1990 in an attempt to enter the video game console market but it was a commercial failure.

He founded Amstrad, the electronics company which ultimately made him the wealthy business magnate that he is today. The company, founded in 1968 registered phenomenal growth during the 1980s. Sugar sold off the company to its biggest client BSkyB in 2007.