The Turkish founder of Greek yoghurt business Chobani has been named the world’s best entrepreneur for building a $1bn (£640m) turnover business in less than six years
June 10, 2013 1 Comment
Yoghurt tycoon named world’s best entrepreneur
The Turkish founder of a Greek yoghurt business has been named the world’s best entrepreneur for building a $1bn (£640m) turnover business in less than six years.
Chobani, which launched in the UK last year, has annual sales of almost $1bn and around 3,000 staff.
By James Hurley
3:48PM BST 09 Jun 2013
Hamdi Ulukaya, who launched New York-based Chobani in 2007, won the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year competition in Monte Carlo on Saturday night.
Mr Ulukaya, who was described by judges as the “personification of every immigrant’s American dream”, pipped 48 entrepreneurs to the prize, including Lance Uggla, founder of British financial information firm Markit. Chobani, now America’s biggest yoghurt business, began with just five employees after Mr Ulukaya bought a closed factory from US food giant Kraft using a government loan.Mr Ulukaya was born into a dairy-farming farming family in eastern Turkey and moved to the US in 1994 to learn English. He dropped out of business school and instead started a business making feta cheese. He said “everyone was against” his decision to buy a yoghurt factory Kraft had decommissioned.
“Here was a factory closed by a monster food company; they must know something and they were leaving the [yoghurt] category as well. And I idn’t have a lot of money. All of those things were against this move. But every morning I would wake up and say, I’m going to do this.”
Chobani, which launched in the UK last year, has annual sales of almost $1bn and around 3,000 staff. It has been one of the companies that has benefited from a boom for healthy yoghurt brands in the US.
Mr Ulukaya has said that his biggest fear is that he or his employees could forget what made the company succeed in the first place. He once gathered key staff to tell them that if they detected “unwelcome changes” in his leadership, they had his “serious” permission to punch him in the face.
He added that his award victory shows that “anything is possible”. “A boy can start his journey from a small village in eastern Turkey and come to America and build his dream.”
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For this man to make it in just six years of hard labour and uncompromised indifatigability, I know we can also make it.
Success I have always known is in the heart, ONCE! it is settled in the , it will definitely translate to the hands for all to see.
Well done sir! I must say.
Daniel Aduloju
GM, Tacoms International Ltd.