A true domestic goddess who swept away the competition has been named as a finalist in the British Franchiser of the Year awards.

Businesswomen Pam Bader, of Vicarage Road, Maidenhead, has gained recognition from the British Franchise Association (BFA) after succesfully franchising Molly Maid Ltd in the UK 22 years ago.

Pam’s career began as a nursery nurse and boutique owner before she and her husband gambled on a franchise opportunity from Molly Maid to start up a small scale cleaning business in Farnham Road, Slough.
Fighting hard to carve a niche cleaning domestic homes the business has prospered under Pam’s leadership and she is now UK chief executive.

From a minor operation in Slough, to 68 franchises across the UK, the company currently reels in an annual turnover of more than £12 million. 

“The awards from the British Franchise Association are very important to Molly Maid,” said the entrepreneur who lives in Maidenhead.
“Years ago myself and my husband made the very frightening step of starting our own business and through franchising we have turned Molly Maid UK into a great success.”

In 1995, Pam was awarded an OBE in recognition of her services to training and also became the first woman to be elected chair of the British Franchise Association.

The awards at London’s Sheraton Park Hotel will showcase Britain’s best performing franchisers. Pam will attend the ceremony on May 22 with marketing and communications manager Kirsten Ware, and franchise development manager Andrew Parsons.

They hope to be named Express Newspapers brand builder of the year after gaining 7,000 new customers in 2007.

A SHEFFIELD entrepreneur who used her own experiences to start a gluten and wheat-free food company is hoping to be in the running for a £50,000 business award.

Sheffield Hallam University graduate Emma Killilea set up Delicious Alchemy after discovering she suffered a severe wheat and gluten intolerance.

Just 15 months on and Emma, aged 36, who took a degree in Food prior to setting the business up selects items to a strict criteria herself. Credit to her expertise has won Emma a gold in the Guild of Fine Foods Gold Great Taste Awards, and been awarded the Excellence in Food and Drink Award.

Now her latest challenge is to land a place as a regional finalist in the 2008 HSBC Start-Up Stars Awards - an annual search for the country’s most promising start-up businesses and the inspiration entrepreneurs behind them.

The heats generate 60 winners, with 10 businesses which are less than three years old then chosen by business experts to represent their region in the final with the chance of winning £50,000.

Company: VideoEgg

Funding: About $27 million from August Capital, First Round Capital, Maveron, WPP, and Focus Ventures

Co-founder and CEO Sanchez originally launched VideoEgg in 2005 as a Web-based video player capable of playing clips in a variety of formats and embedding them in Web sites. But it has evolved into an ad network that displays ads within the widget applications and services that have taken off on social networking sites. Facebook widget makers earned $1.5 million in revenue from ads placed in their applications by VideoEgg’s network over the course of five months last year. VideoEgg has also pioneered new advertising techniques. These include translucent ads laid over Web videos, and pricing models such as pay-per-engagement, which charges marketers only when users click, roll over, or otherwise interact with an ad.

Advice: “Downturns are often the best cycles for entrepreneurs looking to bring a new approach to market. Existing businesses look for efficiencies in tough times and create opportunities for disruptive models and innovative practices. At the earliest stage, your job is to find a fit in the market for your product, and you are growing revenue from a very small base. Even in a contracting market there should be a ton of room to grow.”

After earning his diploma from the Flint School of Therapeutic Massage nearly eight years ago, Bernie Kissane decided to promote his massage therapy practice by building another business around it.

Kissame, a life-long Auburn resident, thought about the local video rental store that had closed its doors.

“I saw a void in town that wasn’t currently being filled,” he said. Kissame decided to recreate the video rental store and theorized it would bring in traffic that would, in turn, flow into his massage practice.

From there, his business ventures continued to grow. In addition to his 22-year-old mobile disc jockey service New Horizons, Kissane expanded the video store, Superstar Video, to include an Alltel mobile phone dealership and changed the name to Superstar Video and Wireless. His massage practice has grown into a full salon called Absolute Harmony.

The tight economy has meant fewer holiday season gigs for his disc jockeying, but one of his businesses has been affected more than any of the others.

“It seems like massage therapy takes the most hit when the economy takes a downturn,” he said.

Kissane partly attributes the thump to health insurance companies. Therapeutic massage is an alternative to chiropractic services, he said, but most health insurance companies cover little to none of the expenses, while chiropractic visits may be covered up to 100 percent.

Superstar Video and Wireless has found its own niche within the Auburn community, and isn’t affected by larger video rental stores and wireless providers, he said.

“There’s only one in town, so there is no direct competition,” he said.

Kissane prices his videos and games competitively, as well as his late fees. The store carries Blu-ray discs as well. With gas prices steeply rising, Kissane also said more people come to his store so they don’t have to travel as far.

The wireless phone business has all the benefits of an Alltel corporate store, including functionality, phones and accessories, but with two additional advantages: Kissane can offer better pricing than corporate stores on phones and accessories, he claimed, and the store provides a loaner phone for customers to use while they wait for a permanent replacement to their broken or lost cell.

Future plans for the cluster of businesses vary, but Kissane foresees his DVDs eventually being replaced by Blu-ray disks, and as the use of cell phones continues to grow, he hopes to add more room for those to his store. He is looking for an additional stylist for the salon and a woman massage therapist to join him in his practice. He also is contemplating the addition of indoor tanning to Absolute Harmony.

Kissane appreciates all his business ventures for separate reasons, but said he especially prefers massage therapy.

“I enjoy helping people feel better and to help relieve their problems,” he said.

2050 Britain could have hundreds of thousands of millionaires if more people sign up to pensions saving schemes. Impossible? In fact, all it takes is £300 per month.

If a couple aged 25 both start saving £300 per month, then by the time they reach the official retirement age of 68, they will have a fund of over £1 million between them and will be able to draw a lifetime income of over £55,000. This assumes they increase their contributions in line with increases in their earnings, and that they get a return of 6% a year on the investments in their pension plan.

According to Fidelity, there are already several hundred thousand people in this age group who will reach millionairedom if they keep up their current plans. Of course, it’s true that a million doesn’t buy what it used to.

In fact, recent studies show that the maximum annual income you can safely draw from a lump sum starting in your sixties if you want to draw an inflation-proof income for the rest of your life is just 4%. That means a million in your pension fund would generate just £40,000 a year.

You must choose growth investments

But other research from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows that the vast majority of people aren’t ready to become millionaires. Over two-thirds of those surveyed said that starting their own personal pension linked to the stock market was too risky.

Think like that and there’s no chance you will end up comfortably off. In fact, it’s only assets that can grow in value faster than inflation, like shares and property, that are worth considering for your retirement savings, whether that saving is in a pension plan, an ISA or other ways.

The ONS survey also showed that almost half of 55-64 year-olds said they wouldn’t have enough for a comfortable retirement. The trouble is that if you leave it that late, you simply can’t save enough to make up the shortfall.

You have to start young, because then compound interest has the time it needs to work its magic.

Compound interest can make you rich

Here’s a simple example. Say you are going to save £200 per month for 40 years towards your retirement. Let’s assume you earn a return of 5% a year. That will accumulate a capital sum of £305,000. (This is less than in the examples cited earlier because this time I assume no increase in the contributions).

Now assume you wait two years before starting saving. The capital value from the same monthly contribution will now be £272,000. So by deferring two years and not saving £4,800 you have cut £33,000 off your pension pot.

My view is that financial incentives for basic rate taxpayers to save in a pension aren’t good enough - they are actually worth only about 6-7% overall by the time you factor in the tax you’ll pay when you withdraw income in retirement. And the whole system of tax relief is unnecessarily complicated. A sensible government would alter it to a simpler ‘matching’ system where for every £1 you put in a pension plan, it would add 50p.

The new Personal Accounts pension scheme that will start in 2012 and is designed for people who aren’t already in an employer pension scheme is closer to this matching system but suffers from a fatal flaw: the overall contribution rate will be only 8% of earnings above about £5,000 a year, whereas a realistic minimum for 20-30 year-olds is 10% of all your earnings.

Choose your own investments

Despite the ONS survey I cited earlier, there is a boom going on in personal pensions, with thousands of people setting up their own SIPP or Self Invested Personal Pension every month.

This is a plan under your own control where you choose the investments. There are several very low-cost plans such as HL Vantage, sippdealextra, Fidelity and Alliance Trust, where you can invest in your choice of thousands of funds as well as shares listed on the UK and foreign share markets.

If that sounds a bit daunting, set up such a plan and then invest alongside Lord Jacob Rothschild or the City’s Cayzer family. Both have family investment companies - Rothschild Capital Partners and Caledonia Investments - that you can buy into in the knowledge that extraordinarily capable and wealthy people have tens of millions of their own money invested alongside yours.

A £400 per month pension savings plan

If you are setting up a plan to accumulate capital from monthly savings, use a low-cost SIPP and from the start create a set of funds that gives you a stake in very different types of investment. Here’s my suggestion for a £400 per month contribution in a set of top-quality funds with highly capable managers and excellent track records.

A £400 per month pension saving plan

Important risk warning - please read

The value of your investment and the income from it can go down as well as up and you may not get back a significant proportion of your investment. Past performance is not an indication of future performance. If you are in any doubt as to the suitability of an investment, you should seek independent financial advice.

Companies: Mint.com

Funding: $17.5 million from Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, and angels Ram Shriram, Ron Conway and former Intuit (INTU) executive Mark Goines

For six months, Patzer holed up alone in a room for 100 hours a week to write the code he hoped would result in a smarter alternative to Intuit’s Quicken. Two years on, he’s distributing the resulting product free through a startup named Mint.com, which has amassed more than 200,000 users—and is adding 10,000 new ones a week. Fans say it’s easier to use and does a better job categorizing expenses and flagging problem spending than competing software from Intuit and Microsoft (MSFT). “Quicken and [Microsoft’s] Money are for bookkeeping enthusiasts,” Patzer says. In March, he raised $12 million, led by Benchmark, to help bring Mint’s message of simplicity to the masses.

Advice: “Recessions are great because they unlock the best people,” Patzer says. “If you’re well capitalized and can survive through the recession, it’s the best time to grow. You’ll have more access to more talent at a better price than you’ll ever have.”

A British web-millionaire is to launch a social networking site to help raise awareness about malaria worldwide.

Tom Hadfield set up Soccer.net when just a teen and sold the site for $40 million to to US sports network ESPN when he was just 17-years-old. He then managed to raise millions to setup Schoolsnet.com

However, he has now turned his attention to charity projects and believes that the power of the web, specifically social networking sites, could be used to help fight malaria, which kills an estimated one million people a year.

“I believe in the power of friends telling friends telling friends”, Hadfield told Reuters in an interview.

“Our dream is tens of thousands of people will use social networking tools to build a movement that eradicates malaria.”

Hadfield, who is now 25-years-old and studying at Harvard University, thought of www.MalariaEngage.org during a trip to Zambia last summer.

“Traveling across Africa and seeing the devastation caused by malaria made me realize there was more to life than putting up soccer scores”, said Hadfield.

“Everyone I met at an aid project making mosquito nets in Zambia had either lost a child to malaria or knew someone who had.”

The trip also took in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania where Hadfield met researchers working on malaria treatments.

The new website will ask people to donate $10 or more to support seven research projects in Tanzania, but it will also be unique in connecting the people who donate directly with the researchers so that donors can really see where their money is going.

“It’s about more than about giving money - it’s about creating connections. By encouraging individual participation and involvement, we will create international communities of common interest. This is the essence of social networking”, explained Hadfield.

One of Britain’s youngest self-made multi-millionaires has won a prestigious business and commerce award. Azeem Ibrahim, 32, whose various concerns have earned him an estimated worth of around £58m, has secured the Lloyds TSB - KPMG Business and Commerce Excellence Jewel Award 2008.

In various categories, the Jewel Awards celebrate positive contributions to the social and economic fabric of the country. Ibrahim was presented with his award at a glittering ceremony held on 19th April at The Palace Hotel in Manchester.

Glaswegian Ibrahim, who was inaugurated on to The Sunday Times Scots Rich List last year, has gained an understanding and passion for global markets that have made him one of the industry’s most skilled investment managers.
Glasgow-born Azeem Ibrahim has been described by his peers as a brilliant young scholar, financial wizard and gifted entrepreneur. A self-made multi-millionaire and one of the wealthiest young people in the UK, Azeem was inaugurated onto The Sunday Times Scots’ Rich List at the age of just 31, with an estimated fortune of US$106m.

In 2007, Azeem became the youngest member of the Bank of Scotland Asian Power 100 produced by Carter Anderson, who described him as one of the most influential and highest-achieving people in Britain. The same year Azeem was included in the Observer Courvoisier Future 500 – a definitive list of the nation’s most forward-thinking and brightest young innovators.

In December 2007, a Scottish Parliament motion signed by a number of MSPs congratulated Azeem and his contribution to the country and in April 2008 Azeem accepted the Lloyds TSB and KPMG Business and Commerce Excellence Jewel Award.

His achievements have attracted considerable recognition around the globe and over the last few years Azeem has met and advised a number of world leaders, including the Prime Minister of Turkey and leaders in the Gulf States.

Business Interests

It all began in 1997, when Azeem launched his own IT consultancy. In 2001, he began a similar but larger operation in Europe. Three years later, he set up his own insurance corporation focusing on the niche maritime-transportation market.
Later in 2004, Azeem established the European Commerce and Mercantile Bank, a private offshore concern specialising in accounts for commodity traders. Valued at over $100m by independent auditors, the bank has offices in Sweden and Dubai’s Emirates Tower.

ECM Bank’s parent company, ECM Holdings, also includes ECM Asset Management, a Swedish-registered credit union building society, and ECM Clearing House, a Panamanian-registered financial clearing house licensed to trade in currencies, precious metals and commodities.

Azeem Ibrahim’s most recent and ambitious venture is ECM Investment, a private equity hedge fund that has outperformed all the other big institutions, netting over 40% a year on investment. Azeem aims to target high-net-worth individuals, particularly in the Gulf and sovereign funds, with a view to taking his fund to 1 billion pounds within the next five years. Backed by a start-up team awash with Oxbridge and Ivy League MBAs and PhDs, the fund has succeeded despite world credit problems.

A keen scholar and former member of the elite Parachute Regiment, Azeem is said to bring his academic mind, strategic thinking and love of military planning to his business dealings.

Academic life

Azeem’s former professors refer to him as a ‘highly intellectual scholar’ and a ‘first-class critical thinker’. He obtained an MBA and an M.Sc.(Econ) in Strategic Studies, then read for a PhD at the University of Cambridge on Geopolitical Strategy and served as a Research Scholar on the International Security Program at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University.

Azeem was also elected a Full Member of the Institute of Directors in 2004 and is an active member of several US and UK think-tanks and academic institutions. These include the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. He is regularly invited to deliver papers in front of these bodies and attend meetings to discuss strategic problems with academics, politicians, diplomats and foreign-affairs analysts.

Azeem also sits alongside former UK Defence Chiefs as a Director and Board Member of the UKNDA - United Kingdom National Defence Association - which operates to improve the position of the armed forces in government circles.

Charity works

Much of Azeem’s time is now devoted to his own charities. The Benevolence Fund sponsors high-achieving Bosnian students onto postgraduate education in Europe, which they use to rebuild their communities. In developing countries, PURIFI aims to provide clean drinking water. Closer to home, Azeem established Unity Family Services, a Scottish marriage counselling and family solutions charity. The Ibrahim Foundation, his most recent venture, was established in 2008 and endowed with his own holdings. It will provide funding to cutting edge community projects after inviting applications from the public.

Azeem Ibrahim at RAF Brize Norton in 1999 (centre back).

Other interests

For seven years until early 2006, Azeem was a reservist in the IV Battalion Parachute Regiment – the British army’s elite airborne infantry reserve where they are trained to be inserted by parachute behind enemy lines at short notice. A citizen of both the US and the UK, he is a fitness fanatic keen on marathon and fell running, and speaks four languages.

Company: Etsy

Funding: $31.6 million from Jim Breyer at Accel Partners, Union Square Ventures, Hubert Burda Media, and angel investors including Caterina Fake of Flickr and Delicious’ Joshua Schachter.

Inspired by a desire to sell his own handmade furniture and by the resurgence in the crafts market, Kalin launched Etsy in July, 2005. The service is now the largest online marketplace for people to buy and sell handmade crafts. Etsy boasts 73,440 active sellers and 1 million registered members. Last year those merchants sold 1.92 million items worth a total of $26.5 million. The company is just under the breakeven point.

Advice: “I don’t think an economic slump will hurt good ideas,” Kalin says. “It might mean that mediocre or marginally useful services get weeded out, but that’s the nature of the game anyway…There’s nothing I’d advise an entrepreneur to do during a slump that I wouldn’t advise them to do during a boom. Stay hungry. and bootstrap.”

The difficulties of global economy haven’t affected the increase in millionaire number. What’s more, millionaires of emerging nations have joined the race.
 
The developed economies yet lead in number of millionaires. The United States is ahead of others (3.1 million) and it is followed by Japan, Britain and Germany. At the same time, the emerging nations manifest higher rates of growth. China, for instance, has neared Germany in that indicator. In Russia, the number of millionaires stepped up by 7 percent past year to 131,000. India drags behind with 114,000 millionaires. Kazakhstan and Argentine manifest the highest acceleration as well.The wealthiest people have more chances to avoid negative aftereffects of the crisis, being able not only to lose but also to step up revenues, the analysts explain.