Mayank Patel has been named entrepreneur of
the year in a BT sponsored leadership and
diversity scheme, reported in The Guardian
Finance Supplement , Saturday December 28th
2002.
Mayank studied for his Bachelor of Business
Administration at Schiller International
University, London Campus. He then
continued with a post-graduate business
diploma at Birmingham Business School in 1989.
From there he went directly to work as a
Trainee Broker at David Coakley. In 1996 he
set up Currency Direct, a foreign exchange
firm. In the beginning it consisted of four
people and a turnover of £12 million. It is
now one of the fastest growing companies in
Britain with a staff of around 40 and a
turnover of £ 350 million. It was recently
nominated for inclusion in a Treasury-backed
Inner City 100 index. |
Mayank Patel in 1988/89 Schiller
London Yearbook
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His next step will be to build a Currencies Direct
network of offices outside the UK, with the
eventual aim of providing a truly global product.
Current business administration students looking
to set up their own business might be interested
to know Mayank's key piece of advice:
"The most important thing is to keep things
simple. Business is as complex
or simple as you make it."
Mayank Patel, Managing Director, Currencies
Direct.
He clearly believes that everyone can get
what they want - as long as they want it enough.
The main inspiration for this philosophy was his
father, who sadly died before his son's whirlwind
commercial success was realised. "My dad was an
amazing guy who taught me that nothing in life was
impossible and all that mattered was that whatever
you did you did it very well. The other thing he
taught me was humility. He was a successful
businessman himself but he always stressed you
should never look down on anyone." Another hero
was Dhirubhai Ambani, who passed away a couple of
months ago. He was the founder of Reliance
Industries in India and built up a business empire
despite starting his working life without any
formal education as a petrol pump attendant in the
Yemen.
Mayank is married and has a
two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Rhea.
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