Meet the entrepreneur who went from a £3 paper-round to a billion pound business

Raised by illiterate parents in a Coventry home, Jojar Dhinsa was your average working-class boy - until his drive for success fuelled him to start a multi-billion pound corporation.

From a paper-round giving him £3 per week to making £500k selling scrap components at 16-years-old, then to selling his first company for $70m by the age of 21, Dhinsa has achieved what others could only dream of doing in such a short amount of time.

Now, his company, Athlone Group, is investing his profits back into UK SMEs helping them to achieve rapid business success and growth.

He said: “As a child, I quickly learnt two things. The first, that I didn’t want to live in an underprivileged environment and second, that I’d have to work hard to get there.

“In business, success comes down to that sense of belief and three key things, passion, momentum and progress. Budding startups and aspiring entrepreneurs become so deterred by their failures, that they throw in the towel all too quickly. I live, breathe, eat and sleep business.”

Such drive and commitment was fuelled by Dhinsa’s penchant to provide for his family and prove his sixth-form teacher wrong for thinking he was a ‘nobody’.

Dhinsa is the chairman and CEO of Athlone Group; he founded the company in 2000. For the past 17 years, he has reinvested 90 per cent of the group’s profits into humanitarian aid and charitable projects.

He continued: “To be successful in business, the power of persistence and determination should not be underestimated. It takes a rare strength of character to stand up and move forwards with self-belief at every point of rejection.

“Whether you have had to divide your overarching goal into smaller objectives, or you set yourself milestones, obtaining and measuring real progress is a sure-fire way of reaching success. Without genuine drive and persistence, success in business is difficult to achieve.”

Dhinsa is also a valued supporter of Elephant Family, a conservation charity in which HRH The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall are presidents. He is currently finalising a humanitarian aid project in North Africa, investing in a 10k-unit housing development to provide decent shelter for the community.

Now, he wants to invest capital and his time working with entrepreneurs and SMEs in several industry sectors that are important to him, including educational technology.

Deals have already been put into progress, with specific company announcements due to be made in the near future.