Who Is Mark Zuckerberg?

Born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, Mark Zuckerberg co-founded the social-networking website Facebook out of his college dorm room. He left Harvard after his sophomore year to concentrate on the site, the user base of which has grown to more than 2 billion people, making Zuckerberg a billionaire. The birth of Facebook was portrayed in the 2010 film The Social Network.

Early Life

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, into a comfortable, well-educated family, and raised in the nearby village of Dobbs Ferry. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, ran a dental practice attached to the family's home. His mother, Karen, worked as a psychiatrist before the birth of the couple's four children—Mark, Randi, Donna and Arielle.
Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers at an early age; when he was about 12, he used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program he named "Zucknet." His father used the program in his dental office, so that the receptionist could inform him of a new patient without yelling across the room. The family also used Zucknet to communicate within the house. Together with his friends, he also created computer games just for fun. "I had a bunch of friends who were artists," he said. "They'd come over, draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it."

To keep up with Mark's burgeoning interest in computers, his parents hired private computer tutor David Newman to come to the house once a week and work with Mark. Newman later told reporters that it was hard to stay ahead of the prodigy, who began taking graduate courses at nearby Mercy College around this same time.
Zuckerberg later studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive preparatory school in New Hampshire. There he showed talent in fencing, becoming the captain of the school's team. He also excelled in literature, earning a diploma in classics. Yet Zuckerberg remained fascinated by computers, and continued to work on developing new programs. While still in high school, he created an early version of the music software Pandora, which he called Synapse. Several companies—including AOL and Microsoft—expressed an interest in buying the software, and hiring the teenager before graduation. He declined the offers.

Time at Harvard

After graduating from Exeter in 2002, Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University. By his sophomore year at the ivy league institution, he had developed a reputation as the go-to software developer on campus. It was at that time that he built a program called CourseMatch, which helped students choose their classes based on the course selections of other users. He also invented Facemash, which compared the pictures of two students on campus and allowed users to vote on which one was more attractive. The program became wildly popular, but was later shut down by the school administration after it was deemed inappropriate.
Based on the buzz of his previous projects, three of his fellow students—Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—sought him out to work on an idea for a social networking site they called Harvard Connection. This site was designed to use information from Harvard's student networks in order to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project, but soon dropped out to work on his own social networking site with friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.
Zuckerberg and his friends created a site that allowed users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and communicate with other users. The group ran the site—first called The Facebook—out of a dorm room at Harvard until June 2004. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to devote himself to Facebook full time, moving the company to Palo Alto, California. By the end of 2004, Facebook had 1 million users.

The Rise of Facebook

In 2005, Zuckerberg's enterprise received a huge boost from the venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accel invested $12.7 million into the network, which at the time was open only to ivy league students. Zuckerberg's company then granted access to other colleges, high school and international schools, pushing the site's membership to more than 5.5 million users by December 2005. The site then began attracting the interest of other companies, who wanted to advertize with the popular social hub. Not wanting to sell out, Zuckerberg turned down offers from companies such as Yahoo! and MTV Networks. Instead, he focused on expanding the site, opening up his project to outside developers and adding more features.
Zuckerberg seemed to be going nowhere but up, however in 2006, the business mogul faced his first big hurdle. The creators of Harvard Connection claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea, and insisted the software developer needed to pay for their business losses. Zuckerberg maintained that the ideas were based on two very different types of social networks but, after lawyers searched Zuckerberg's records, incriminating Instant Messages revealed that Zuckerberg may have intentionally stolen the intellectual property of Harvard Connection and offered Facebook users' private information to his friends.
Zuckerberg later apologized for the incriminating messages, saying he regretted them. "If you're going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right?" he said in an interview with The New Yorker. "I think I've grown and learned a lot."
Although an initial settlement of $65 million was reached between the two parties, the legal dispute over the matter continued well into 2011, after Narendra and the Winklevosses claimed they were misled in regards to the value of their stock.
Zuckerberg faced yet another personal challenge when the 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, by writer Ben Mezrich, hit stores. Mezrich was heavily criticized for his re-telling of Zuckerberg's story, which used invented scenes, re-imagined dialogue and fictional characters. Regardless of how true-to-life the story was, Mezrich managed to sell the rights of the tale to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and the critically acclaimed film The Social Network received eight Academy Award nominations.
Zuckerberg objected strongly to the film's narrative, and later told a reporter at The New Yorker that many of the details in the film were inaccurate. For example, Zuckerberg had been dating longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan, a Chinese-American medical student he met at Harvard, since 2003. He also said he never had interest in joining any of the final clubs. "It's interesting what stuff they focused on getting right; like, every single shirt and fleece that I had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own," Zuckerberg told a reporter at a start-up conference in 2010. "So there's all this stuff that they got wrong and a bunch of random details that they got right."
Yet Zuckerberg and Facebook continued to succeed, in spite of the criticism. Time magazine named him Person of the Year in 2010, and Vanity Fair placed him at the top of their New Establishment list. Forbes also ranked Zuckerberg at No. 35—beating out Apple CEO Steve Jobs—on its "400" list, estimating his net worth to be $6.9 billion.

Philanthropic Causes

Since amassing his sizeable fortune, Zuckerberg has used his millions to fund a variety of philanthropic causes. The most notable examples came in 2010. In September of that year, he donated $100 million to save the failing Newark Public Schools system in New Jersey. Then, in December 2010, Zuckerberg signed the "Giving Pledge", promising to donate at least 50 percent of his wealth to charity over the course of his lifetime. Other Giving Pledge members include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Lucas. After his donation, Zuckerberg called on other young, wealthy entrepreneurs to follow suit. "With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts," he said.

Mark Zuckerberg arrives to receive the Axel Springer Award in Berlin on February 25, 2016. (Photo: JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)

Going Public

Zuckerberg made two major life changes in May 2012. Facebook had its initial public offering, which raised $16 billion, making it the biggest internet IPO in history. How Zuckerberg's company will handle this influx of cash remains to be seen. But Zuckerberg may be looking at more acquisitions. He personally negotiated the company deal to buy Instragram the previous month.
After the initial success of the IPO, the Facebook stock price dropped somewhat in the early days of trading, though Zuckerberg is expected to weather any ups and downs in his company's market performance.

Family Life and Personal

On May 19, 2012—a day after the IPO—Zuckerberg wed his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan. About 100 people gathered at the couple's Palo Alto, California home. The guests thought they were there to celebrate Chan's graduation from medical school, but instead they witnessed Zuckerberg and Chan exchange vows. In May 2013, Facebook made the Fortune 500 list for the first time—making Zuckerberg, at the age of 28, the youngest CEO on the list.
In November 2015, Zuckerberg and Chan welcomed a daughter, Max, and Zuckerberg announced he would be taking two months of paternity leave to spend with his family. He and his wife also pledged in an open letter to their daughter that they would give 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charity. "We are committed to doing our small part to help create this world for all children," the couple wrote in the open letter that was posted on Zuckerberg's Facebook page. "We will give 99% of our Facebook shares — currently about $45 billion — during our lives to join many others in improving this world for the next generation."
In September 2016, Zuckerberg and Chan announced that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the company into which they put their Facebook shares, would invest at least $3 billion into scientific research over the next decade to help “cure, prevent and manage all diseases in our children's lifetime." Renowned neuroscientist Cori Bargmann of The Rockefeller University, was named the president of science at CZI.
They also announced the founding of Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a San Francisco-based independent research center that will bring together engineers, computer scientists, biologists, chemists and others in the scientific community. A partnership between Stanford University, University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, Berkeley, Biohub will receive initial funding of $600 million over 10 years.
In March 2017, Zuckerberg and Chan announced on Facebook that they were expecting their second child. Daughter August was born on August 28.
The CEO has undertaken a personal challenge at the start of every year since 2009, with previous efforts including learning to speak Mandarin and only eating meat he had killed himself. 

Fake News and Cambridge Analytica Scandal

After enduring criticism for the proliferation of fake news posts on his site leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Zuckerberg in early 2018 announced his personal challenge to develop improved methods for defending Facebook users from abuse and interference by nation-states.
"We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools," he wrote on his Facebook page. "If we're successful this year then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory."
However, Zuckerberg came under fire again a few months later when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, had used private information from approximately 87 million Facebook profiles without the social network alerting its owners. The resulting outcry seemed to shake investors' confidence in Facebook, its shares dropping by 15 percent after the news became public.
Following a few days' silence, Zuckerberg surfaced on various outlets to explain how the company was taking steps to limit third-party developers' access to user information, and said he would be happy to testify before Congress. On Sunday, March 25, Facebook took out full-page ads in seven British and three American newpapers, penned in the form of a personal apology from Zuckerberg. He promised the company would investigate all of its apps, and remind users which ones they can shut off. "I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time," he wrote. "I promise to do better for you."
Amid increasing calls for his resignation from investor groups, Zuckerberg traveled to Capitol Hill and met with lawmakers ahead of his two-day testimony, scheduled for April 10 and 11. The first day of hearings, with the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees, was considered a tame affair, with some senators seemingly grasping to understand the business model that powered the social media giant.
However, the follow-up hearing before House Energy and Commerce Committee proved far testier, as its members grilled the Facebook CEO over privacy concerns. During the day's testimony, Zuckerberg revealed that his personal information was among the data harvested by Cambridge Analytica, and suggested that legal regulation of Facebook and other social media companies was "inevitable."

Bernard Arnault, (born March 5, 1949, Roubaix, France), French businessman best known as the chairman and CEO of the French conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, the largest luxury-products company in the world.
Arnault graduated from the École Polytechnique in Paris with a degree in engineering. In 1971 he took control of his father’s construction firm Ferret-Savinel. Eight years later he changed the company’s name to Férinel Inc. and shifted its focus to real estate.
With $15 million of his own money, Arnault, together with Antoine Bernheim, a managing partner of the French bank Lazard Frères and Co., raised the $80 million necessary to purchase Boussac Saint-Frères, a bankrupt textile company that owned the fashion house of Christian Dior. Then, in 1987, Arnault was invited to invest in LVMH by the company’s chairman, Henri Racamier. Investing through a joint venture with Guinness PLC, Arnault ousted Racamier in 1990 and started to sweep a slew of fashion companies into the LVMH fold: Christian Lacroix, Givenchy, and Kenzo; the leather goods companies Loewe, Céline, and Berluti; the jeweler Fred Joailler; the DFS group (the world’s biggest duty-free chain); and the beauty retailer Sephora.
Arnault was known in Europe as the man who revitalized French couture in 1995 by appointing British fashion designer John Galliano to replace the venerable Hubert de Givenchy at the latter’s Paris fashion house. The “Pope of Fashion,” as Arnault was dubbed by Women’s Wear Daily, a year later moved Galliano to Christian Dior and appointed the brash British fashion designer Alexander McQueen to replace him. Arnault then hired Marc Jacobs, a young American designer, to the post of creative director at Louis Vuitton, a maker of luxury leather goods. By the early 21st century, Arnault’s fashion foresight had revived interest in these traditional fashion houses.
In 2007 Arnault was named Commander of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest order. The same year, he was featured in Time magazine’s annual Time 100 issue as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

 

Introduction to Jack Ma Biography

Jack Ma quotes  that: “If you never give up means you still have a chance, giving up is the greatest failure”

Early Life of Jack Ma Biography

Jack Ma once quoted that: “If today is hard tomorrow will be worst, but the day after tomorrow there will be sunshine”

Failures of Jack Ma Biography

As he quoted that:“if you never give up, means you still have a chance”

Education in Jack Ma Biography

Professional Career in Jack Ma Biography

Achievements in Jack Ma Alibaba life

1. In the year 2004, he was listed in Top 10 Business leaders of the year announced by China central television.
2. In the year 2014 jack ma Alibaba was included in the world’s powerful personalities, by the globally renowned magazine Forbes.
3. Jack Ma Alibaba also appeared in the time magazine 100 most influential people of the world.
4. He also won the Entrepreneur of the year award at the Asian awards which were held in the year 2015.

“To the winners, who won because they didn't give up.”- Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm.

The man, who always wears a welcoming smile, stands true to every word he wrote during the most difficult times of his life. Vijay Shekhar Sharma owns a company whose current value is a little over $3 billion in the market in 2016, a dream dreamt when he was struggling to make ends meet with Rs 10 in pocket. But he tasted victory the hard way. Nothing came easy for him. The tears he hides behind the chirpy self that he puts up in front of the world could not be hidden for long while recollecting his journey. Interestingly, it was not talking about his failures that brought tears in his eyes; it was his hard earned victory.

Life tested him right from the beginning of his journey to become one of the most influential people in the business world today. Though he passed his higher secondary when he was just 14 years old, a child prodigy of sorts, making it through college was the first tough challenge he faced when he left the cosy comfort of his small hometown outside Aligarh and ventured into the real world.

A topper in his school, he was lost in transition in college-Delhi College of Engineering. Coming from a very humble background (his father was a highly principled, school teacher, who refused to earn the extra buck through tuitions, because he believed in what was the right thing to do), Vijay did not know how to read and write English for he completed his school education completely in Hindi, in his small town. However, he realised soon enough that to make it through college he must start learning the language first and with the help of books, second hand magazines and his friends, he mastered the language in a way which few can. His modus operandi was to read a Hindi version of the book simultaneously with the English-one, a habit that ensured that he soon learnt to read two books at the same time! But it wasn’t easy to say the least. The first-bencher in school slowly started gravitating towards the back benches, and in a short while, was so disheartened and disillusioned with his bad grades, mostly due to language constraints, that he completely stopped attending college.

“When winning is about not giving up.

When doing all that you can, gets a new meaning.”

Struggling to learn English, survive the rigours of engineering college and the big bad city that Delhi was, this normally would be the time when many in his situation would have quit. Vijay, however, was something else. He decided to build, to use the time he had from ‘not attending college’ by turning an entrepreneur. A believer in challenging the unknown, he made the internet his playground and Sabeer Bhatia and Yahoo his inspirations. He aspired to go to Stanford, because that was where Yahoo was built, but realising his lack of financial resources and his challenges with the English language, he decided to emulate some of the genius at Stanford, by learning how to code all by himself. He started building his own content management system with some of his college mates, which went onto being used by some of the biggest news publications including The Indian Express. It was also during this time when he started his first job at an MNC. He quit after six months and built a company of his own with his friends. He finally passed his college examinations too.

This would also become the darkest time in his life, when having his dreams of reaching the Silicon Valley shattered, he was also left bankrupt by his partners, with whom he had just begun a business and raised the first round of funding. In 2005, he had raised a hefty amount of Rs 8 lakhs through his venture of which he was conned off 40%. He was devastated. But Vijay was not a man to give up so easily. He lived at a hostel near Kashmiri Gate in Delhi, skipped meals and walked long distances to attend work or meetings in the southern part of the State.

Infact having been through such tough times, if there is a fear that the ‘Iron Man’ of the startup ecosystem of India still harbours, it is that someday ‘some unknown’ will take away all of his hardwork.

Things took to a better turn when he began One97, the parent company of Paytm. They started experimenting with the three basics of internet- content, advertising and commerce. But the big eureka moment came in 2011 when he first pitched the idea of entering the payment ecosystem in front of his board. The board was not convinced, as he was talking about betting the company’s money on a non-existent market.

“Some other entrepreneur would have sold the equity and started their own company. But I aspire to build a 100 year old company. I think that men and boys are different because the boys flip and sell. Men run and build legacies,” Vijay said.

So he put 1% of his equity, which was about $2 million around 2011, on the table and said, “This is for all of you, if I waste the money that we put on the site.” He adds, “There is no fun in doing what others ask you to do, the real fun is in doing what people say you can’t do.”

And it is with this belief that the first avatar of Paytm, Pay Through Mobile, was born, going rapidly onto becoming the next big thing of the startup ecosystem in India. And, since then it was never looking back.



The secret behind this steep arch is the trust he built with his customers which none other gave as much value to before. Even before Vijay began the roll-out of his internet wallet services, he first built a strong 24x7 customer care service to address the worries of customers to enable them to trust the wallet enough to put their money into the hands of the unknown. “30% of the company’s campaign budget is invested in building trust with the customer. For us it was the single most important factor,” says Vijay, with a deep pride in what he has built so far.

“We propagated through word of mouth once the trust was built. I have a firm belief that the truest relationship test comes when one goes through a stress case. This makes our relationship with our customers special and unique than the rest. We also launched in Twitter and Facebook so that as soon as a customer complained, we got back with an immediate response and help. Trust is the secret formula which worked for us, though there were 30 other licences already available in the market like Mobikwik.”

Backed by consumer trust, Paytm’s stupendous journey to the top of the internet wallet market is now a part of startup folklore, but what is unkown is that Paytm also became one of a handful companies worldwide to secure Series A funding exceeding several $100 mn. They have done only a single round of funding till now with Alibaba, SAIF and Alipay.

“I have always wanted a business partner and not a syndicated investor. Our relationship with “business partner/investor” is of a journey together. There are four people who own this company- me, SAIF, Alibaba, Alipay, says Vijay, in his usual animated way.

After building a billion dollar worth company, maintaining the success is the most difficult part of the journey and it cannot be done without good teamwork, he says. For that, he ensures that the right people are taken onboard who share the same passion to build like his. He has also given 4% of his equity to the team, which in current value terms is about $120 million.

“I have given more to my team than any amount of salary cumulatively taken in so many years, ” Vijay says. And why he chose to do so isn’t hard to understand. Given his personal experiences and the tough fight he put up to achieve where he has reached, he values everyone who contributes to creating his vision. People working in his company are never referred to as ‘Employees’, but as ‘Colleagues’ or ‘Teammates’. A staunch believer of God, he believes that only one amongst every 10 hardworking person succeeds to the levels he today firmly belongs in, and because of that respect he shares for every hardworking person, he doesn’t have the right to call anyone an employee or a worker.

But, it’s just not the fighting spirit that has Vijay in the position that he enjoys today. Despite his engineering background and no formal education in business management, he has the business acumen of a genius.

While the pride he takes in his creation and the people who help him implement his vision is obvious, he brushes this unique quality off by saying, “When something’s not working, I become the customer,” with a smile on his face, that is so true to himself. He attributes his humility to the lessons learned from his father. His father refused to take tuitions even though the extra money would have made a huge difference to their lives, as he believed that true education cannot be the privilege of those who have money.

His struggles are the reason why he hates reading fiction. How can one be inspired by made up tales!

Vijay stands testimony to the saying, “A man makes his own destiny.”

Life has been busy for this go-getter ever since he entered college. A true lover of all kinds of music, Coldplay, U2, Jim Morrison being his favourites, he takes respite in music to relieve his stress. He is also the resident DJ at One97, added Vijay with a whole-hearted laugh, often forcing his colleagues and teammates to listen to the music he discovers.

Inspite of all these, his attitude to life can be best defined in his own simple words.

“It (his success) still seems so surreal.”

Who Is Jeff Bezos? 

Entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bezos had an early love of computers and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. After graduation he worked on Wall Street, and in 1990 he became the youngest senior vice president at the investment firm D.E. Shaw. Four years later, he quit his lucrative job to open Amazon.com, a virtual bookstore that became one of the internet's biggest success stories. In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post in a $250 million deal. His successful business ventures have made him one of the richest people in the world. 

Early Life and Career

Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother, Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. The Jorgensens were married less than a year, and when Bezos was 4 years old his mother re-married, to Cuban immigrant Mike Bezos.
As a child, Jeff Bezos showed an early interest in how things work, turning his parents' garage into a laboratory and rigging electrical contraptions around his house. He moved to Miami with his family as a teenager, where he developed a love for computers and graduated valedictorian of his high school. It was during high school that he started his first business, the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders.

Bezos pursued his interest in computers at Princeton University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1986 with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. After graduation, he found work at several firms on Wall Street, including Fitel, Bankers Trust and the investment firm D.E. Shaw. It was there he met his wife, Mackenzie, and became the company's youngest vice president in 1990.
While his career in finance was extremely lucrative, Bezos chose to make a risky move into the nascent world of e-commerce. He quit his job in 1994, moved to Seattle and targeted the untapped potential of the internet market by opening an online bookstore.

Launching Amazon.com

Bezos set up the office for his fledgling company in his garage where, along with a few employees, he began developing software. They expanded operations into a two-bedroom house, equipped with three Sun Microstations, and eventually developed a test site. After inviting 300 friends to beta test the site, Bezos opened Amazon.com, named after the meandering South American River, on July 16, 1995.
The initial success of the company was meteoric. With no press promotion, Amazon.com sold books across the United States and in 45 foreign countries within 30 days. In two months, sales reached $20,000 a week, growing faster than Bezos and his start-up team had envisioned.
Amazon.com went public in 1997, leading many market analysts to question whether the company could hold its own when traditional retailers launched their own e-commerce sites. Two years later, the start-up not only kept up, but also outpaced competitors, becoming an e-commerce leader.
Bezos continued to diversify Amazon’s offerings with the sale of CDs and videos in 1998, and later clothes, electronics, toys and more through major retail partnerships. While many dot.coms of the early '90s went bust, Amazon flourished with yearly sales that jumped from $510,000 in 1995 to over $17 billion in 2011.
In 2006, Amazon.com launched its video on demand service; initially known as Amazon Unbox on TiVo, it was eventually rebranded as Amazon Instant Video. In 2007, the company released the Kindle, a handheld digital book reader that allowed users to buy, download, read and store their book selections. That same year, Bezos announced his investment in Blue Origin, a Seattle-based aerospace company that develops technologies to offer space travel to paying customers.
Bezos entered Amazon into the tablet marketplace with the unveiling of the Kindle Fire in 2011. The following September, he announced the new Kindle Fire HD, the company's next generation tablet designed to give Apple's iPad a run for its money. "We haven't built the best tablet at a certain price. We have built the best tablet at any price," Bezos said, according to ABC News.

Buying 'The Washington Post'

Bezos made headlines worldwide on August 5, 2013, when he purchased The Washington Post and other publications affiliated with its parent company, The Washington Post Co., for $250 million. The deal marked the end of the four-generation reign over The Post Co. by the Graham family, which included Donald E. Graham, the company's chairman and chief executive, and his niece, Post publisher Katharine Weymouth.
"The Post could have survived under the company's ownership and been profitable for the foreseeable future," Graham stated, in an effort to explain the transaction. "But we wanted to do more than survive. I'm not saying this guarantees success, but it gives us a much greater chance of success."
In a statement to Post employees on August 5, Bezos wrote: "The values of The Post do not need changing. ...There will, of course, be change at The Post over the coming years. That's essential and would have happened with or without new ownership. The internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about—government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports—and working backwards from there. I'm excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention."

Amazon Prime & Amazon Studios

In early December 2013, Bezos made headlines when he revealed a new, experimental initiative by Amazon, called "Amazon Prime Air," using drones—remote-controlled machines that can perform an array of human tasks—to provide delivery services to customers. According to Bezos, these drones are able to carry items weighing up to five pounds, and are capable of traveling within a 10-mile distance of the company's distribution center. He also stated that Prime Air could become a reality within as little as four or five years.

Bezos oversaw one of Amazon's few major missteps when the company launched the Fire Phone in 2014; criticized for being too gimmicky, it was discontinued the following year. However, Bezos did score a victory with the development of original content through Amazon Studios. After premiering several new programs in 2013, Amazon hit it big in 2014 with the critically acclaimed Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle. In 2015, the company produced and released Spike Lee's Chi-Raq as its first original feature film.
In 2016, Bezos stepped in front of the camera for a cameo appearance playing an alien in Star Trek Beyond. A Star Trek fan since childhood, Bezos is listed as a Starfleet Official in the movie credits on IMDb.
In July 2017, Bezos briefly surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates to become the richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg, before dropping back to No. 2. The Amazon chief then reclaimed the top spot in October, and in January 2018, Bloomberg pegged his net worth at $105.1 billion, making Bezos the richest person in history. Two months later, that figure was up to $127 billion, equal to the combined wealth of 2.3 million average Americans.

Healthcare Venture

On January 30, 2018, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase delivered a joint press release in which they announced plans to pool their resources to form a new healthcare company for their U.S. employees.
According to the release, the company will be "free from profit-making incentives and constraints" as it tries to find ways to cut costs and boost satisfaction for patients, with an initial focus on technology solutions.
"The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," said Bezos. "Hard as it might be, reducing healthcare's burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort."
Not long afterward, The Seattle Times reported that more changes were afoot for Amazon, with the company consolidating its consumer retail operations in order to focus on Alexa, AWS, digital entertainment and other growing areas. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the news, saying, "As part of our annual planning process, we are making head count adjustments across the company — small reductions in a couple of places and aggressive hiring in many others."
In April 2018, as part of his annual shareholder letter, Bezos said the company had surpassed 100 million paid subscribers for Amazon Prime. He added that 2017 had been an outstanding year for hardware sales, and that Amazon would continue to invest in expanding its customer base, brand and infrastructure.


Source: www.biography.com

Who Is Warren Buffett?

Born in Nebraska in 1930, Warren Buffett demonstrated keen business abilities at a young age. He formed Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956, and by 1965 he had assumed control of Berkshire Hathaway. Overseeing the growth of a conglomerate with holdings in the media, insurance, energy and food and beverage industries, Buffett became one of the world's richest men and a celebrated philanthropist.

Wife and Children

In 2006 Buffett, at age 76, married his longtime companion Astrid Menks.
Buffet was previously married to his first wife Susan Thompson from 1952 until her death in 2004, although the couple separated in the 70s. He and Susan had three children: Susan, Howard and Peter.

Net Worth

As for 2018, Buffett has an estimated net worth of $84 billion.

How Much Did Warren Buffett Give Away to Charity?

Between 2006 and 2017, Buffett has given away close to $28 billion in charity, according to a report by USA Today.

Company: Berkshire Hathaway

In 1956 Buffet formed the firm Buffett Partnership Ltd. in his hometown of Omaha. Utilizing the techniques learned from Graham, he was successful in identifying undervalued companies and became a millionaire. One such enterprise Buffett valued was a textile company named Berkshire Hathaway. He began accumulating stock in the early 1960s, and by 1965 he had assumed control of the company.
Despite the success of Buffett Partnership, its founder dissolved the firm in 1969 to focus on the development of Berkshire Hathaway. He phased out its textile manufacturing division, instead expanding the company by buying assets in media (The Washington Post), insurance (GEICO) and oil (Exxon). Immensely successful, the "Oracle of Omaha" even managed to spin seemingly poor investments into gold, most notably with his purchase of scandal-plagued Salomon Brothers in 1987.
Following Berkshire Hathaway's significant investment in Coca-Cola, Buffett became director of the company from 1989 until 2006. He has also served as director of Citigroup Global Markets Holdings, Graham Holdings Company and The Gillette Company.

Education & Early Career

Buffett enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 16 to study business. He stayed two years, moved to the University of Nebraska to finish up his degree, and emerged from college at age 20 with nearly $10,000 from his childhood businesses.
In 1951 he received his master's degree in economics at Columbia University, where he studied under economist Benjamin Graham, and furthered his education at the New York Institute of Finance.
Influenced by Graham's 1949 book, The Intelligent Investor, Buffett sold securities for Buffett-Falk & Company for three years, then worked for his mentor for two years as an analyst at Graham-Newman Corp.

Recent Activity and Philanthropy

In June 2006, Buffett made an announcement that he would be giving his entire fortune away to charity, committing 85 percent of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This donation became the largest act of charitable giving in United States history. In 2010 Buffett and Gates announced they had formed The Giving Pledge campaign to recruit more wealthy individuals for philanthropic causes.
In 2012 Buffett disclosed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He began undergoing radiation treatment in July, and successfully completed his treatment in November.
The health scare did little to slow the octogenarian, who annually ranks near the top of the Forbes world billionaires list. In February 2013, Buffett purchased H. J. Heinz with private equity group 3G Capital for $28 billion. Later additions to the Berkshire Hathaway stable included battery maker Duracell and Kraft Foods Group, which merged with Heinz in 2015 to form the third-largest food and beverage company in North America.

 

About

Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani was one of the founders of Reliance industries in Bombay. When he was 16 years old, he moved to Aden,Yemen. Initially, Dhirubhai worked as a dispatch clerk with A. Besse & Co. He also worked in Dubai for sometime. Dhirubhai returned to India and founded the Reliance Commercial Corporation with an initial capital of Rs 15000. Dhirubhai set up the business in partnership with Champaklal Damani from whom he parted ways in 1965. The Sunday Times figured him as one of the top 50 businessmen in Asia.
He was bestowed posthumously with Padma Vibhushan for his contributions towards the field of Trade and Industry.

Personal Life

Dhirubhai Ambani was born on 28 December 1932, at Chorwad, Junagadh in Gujarat. Married to Kokilaben, the couple has two sons and two daughters, Mukesh and Anil Ambani and Neena Kothari and Deepti Salgaonkar.

Career

Dhirubhai started his first textile mill at Naroda, near Ahmedabad in 1966 and started the brand “Vimal”. Dhirubhai Ambani is credited with having started the equity cult in India. With the passage of time, Dhirubhai diversified into petrochemicals and sectors like telecommunications, information technology, energy, power, retail, textiles, infrastructure services, capital markets, and logistics.
Dhirubhai courted controversy all throug his life. Many a times, he has been accused of unethical business practices and has been accused of having manipulated government policies to suit his own needs. He was involved in an open spat with Nusli Wadia of Bombay Dyeing. The end to this tussle came only after Dhirubhai Ambani suffered a stroke. While Dhirubhai Ambani was recovering in San Diego, his sons Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani managed the affairs. The Indian Express had turned the guns against Reliance and was directly blaming the government for not doing enough to penalize Reliance Industries. The battle between Wadia-Goenka and the Ambanis took a new direction and became a national crisis. Gurumurthy and another journalist, Mulgaokar consorted with President Giani Zail Singh and ghost-wrote a hostile letter to the Prime Minister on his behalf. The Indian Express published a draft of the President’s letter as a scoop, not realizing that Zail Singh had made changes to the letter before sending it to Rajiv Gandhi. Ambani had won the battle at this point. Now, while the tussle was directly between the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Ramnath Goenka, Ambani made a quiet exit. The government then raided the Express guest house in Delhi’s Sunder Nagar and found the original draft with corrections in Mulgaokar’s handwriting. By 1988-89, Rajiv’s government retaliated with a series of prosecutions against the Indian Express. Even then, Goenka retained his iconic stature because, to many people, he seemed to be replaying his heroic defiance during the Emergency regime.

Awards and Recognitions

• Conferred Man of the Century award by Chemtech Foundation and Chemical Engineering World in recognition of his contribution to the growth and development of the chemical industry in India in November 2000.
• He was featured among Power 50-the most powerful people in Asia by Asiaweek magazine in 1996, 1998, 2000.
• “Dean’s Medal” by The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, for setting an outstanding example of leadership in June 1998.
• The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) named him the “Man of 20th Century”.
• The Times of India conducted a poll in 2000 and voted him “Greatest Creator of Wealth in the Centuries”.
• Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence for Lifetime Achievement in August 2001.
• Bestowed posthumously with the ABLF Global Asian Award at the Asian Business Leadership Forum Awards in October 2011.
• Awarded Padma Vibhushan, country’s second highest civilian award in January 2016.

Death

Dhirubhai Ambani had suffered another stroke in February 1986 which had paralyzed his right hand. He suffered a brain stroke on 24 June, 2002 and was admitted to the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai. He passed away on 6 July, 2002. On Dhirubhai Ambani’s first death anniversary, the Union Government released a postage stamp in his memory.

1. Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.

2. Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

3. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

4. I want to put a ding in the universe.

5. My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

6. I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

7. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

8. Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

9. Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

10. I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.

11. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

12. That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.

13. The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

14. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.

15. You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

16. My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others’ negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.

17. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

18. Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.