Richard Branson | Founder of Virgin Group
An entrepreneur who is ready to take the right risk is always rewarded. Giving up due to the fear of failure would have today resulted in the world having not so many famous entrepreneurs. A British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, is a testimonial of a man who just 16 started his entrepreneur journey.
Born on July 18, 1915, to Edward James Branson and Evette Huntley Branson. This man was destined to greatness. With disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD, today Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, is a popular billionaire. He went to prep school in Surrey and then attended a private school in Buckinghamshire because of his poor performance in academics. His teacher informed him that one day either he would be a millionaire or would be in jail.
His first entrepreneurial journey started with a magazine named Student in 1966, which he launched with Nick Powell with the profits from that business. He was eventually able to start a record shop on Oxford Street. He founded his ground-breaking record and label, Virgin Label, with Nik Powell in 1972; he was just 20 at the time. He had purchased an estate in the countryside of Oxford and converted it into a record studio that he would lease to various artists. Virgin Records started signing very popular artists like Paula Abdul, Rolling Stone, Peter Gabriel, Sex Pistols, XTC, Japan, UB40, Steve Winwood, etc. Virgin Label had eventually reached a great height. It was his efforts to grow his baby, the Virgin Label, that earned him a net worth of $5 million just in seven years of its launch.
Virgin was growing fast and moving in various directions. By 1984, Richard had founded Virgin Atlantic Airways and Virgin Cargo in the year 1985. He went on to found the Virgin Atlanta Holidays, a company that operates to provide packages to various countries.
Richard has faced many challenges, some near-death experiences due to the balloon incident, bike crash, and the one where he had to sell his virgin label to EMI for £500 million in 1992; that was one of the hardest times for him. Virgin acquired the Euro Belgian Airlines and named it Virgin Express in 1996. Venturing into new directions, Richard made a critical decision to capitalize on the opportunities in the railway business because of the privatization of British Railway. Virgin Rail Group, which was able to win the bid for the InterCity cross-country and InterCity West Coast franchise, which was scheduled to run for 15 years.
By 1999, Richard had launched the very popular Virgin Mobile and then went on to launch Virgin Blue Airlines of Australia in 2000. Branson, being a person who was deeply connected with the space tourism idea, started his company, Virgin Galactic, and was looking forward to taking paid passengers into suborbital outer space tours.
In 2006, he was added to the list of the Sunday Times, rich list of 2006. This was the list of the wealthy people in the UK. By now, his net worth was about £3 million. He started various other airlines like Virgin Nigeria, Virgin America, etc.
To combat the global warming, he decided to start with the virgin fuel. In 2006, he sold Virgin Mobile for £900 million. He later went on to earn £8.5 million per year for the use of his brand Virgin in the Virgin media. He also started Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation with Deepak Chopra, Shekhar Kapur, Sharad Devarajan, and Gotham Chopra. His business, Virgin Health Bank, offered parents of newborns the opportunity to store the stems in the private stems bank. He had many other start-ups and investments, like Virgin Hotels and Virgin Healthcare, as well as invested in 3-D robotics. He started a competition in 2014 named for entrepreneurs where he would provide mentorship and support to the participants. Virgin Group had faced many difficulties, especially during COVID, where they had to remove almost 3000 employees. This was a painful moment for Richard. He had some major venture failures, such as virgin cars, virgin publishing, virgin clothing, etc. These all-failed ventures never made him lose. His constant urge to keep moving has made him so successful today. His risk-taking zeal makes him a person who holds many world records. He has been a part of popular shows such as Shark Tank, Baywatch, Friends, etc. He had his own reality show, The Rebel Billionaire, where he connected with the founder of Spanx, Sara Blakely.
Branson is a maverick in business because of his constant determination towards success. His push is what has made the Virgin Group a successful business.
