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Continued from page 1 But the UK failed to live up to his expecttaions. “It was a total cultural shock. I realised my perception of the UK was totally wrong. I’d seen English movies and I thought everything would be so easy here. But the government had changed the rules to say that overseas students had to be in the country for three years before he or she could qualify for grants.” Looking at the soaring expenses for his education, he decided to earn some money before returning to India. This proved easier said than done, because everybody asked for experience. The first job he got was cleaning cars. The second was working as a cook for KFC, the fast food chain, in south London, earning 35p an hour. He had two frustrating stints running convenience stores. “In those days Asians were buying corner shops, so I did the same. Those were difficult times because Asian immigrants were not treated as well as they are now.” Fed up with the early starts, he sold the shops and got a job at Dixons, the electrical retailer, where he noticed a trend of people coming to the UK on holiday and buying televisions, videos and other electronics to take home. Excess baggage was expensive, so in 1987 he started Sea, Air and Land Forwarding to help them ship the products back from a shed with just £2 and a typewriter. He says that he is not a risk-taker and his approach to building the company has been slow and steady. After ten years, the business was a success, turning over £10 million. By then he was being asked to ship other items aside from electrical goods and personal effects. In 1995 he started a second company, Sun Mark, which makes cheaper versions of the branded British
products sold by fast-moving consumer goods giants. He told the Times, “I took the model of Sainsbury’s and Tesco, who had their own versions of products they were selling more cheaply. But whereas these supermarkets do not give nice names to these products, calling them ‘value’ or ‘basic’, I decided to give nice names like Pure Heaven, English Breeze and Golden Country.” The approach worked. “My business just snowballed.” The company has won numerous Queen’s awards for enterprise. Africa, the Middle East and Far East are proving his most lucrative markets and his big sellers include energy drinks and cooking oils. Dr Ranger’s strategy is to sell products that are overpriced in the target market, so customers save 30 to 40 per cent if they buy his brands. He is now chairman of both businesses and the day-to-day operation is overseen by his son-in-law, who is chief executive. Mr Ranger says that the secret to his success is that he did not rush to prove himself. Now that Sun Mark has scale on its side Mr Ranger is ready for a calculated gamble or two. “We are financially strong and able to fight the competition. We can sustain ourselves until the product is accepted.” Speaking about Brexit, he added, “For the last 40 years we only looked at Europe and we were under the influence of the EU,” he says. “Its rules and regulations [meant] we couldn’t think for ourselves. We were told by the EU where to go, what to think and do. “I’m very optimistic that Brexit will be a great thing for us. We will be able to forge relationships on our own terms.”
Ambarish Mitra: The tech-entrepreneur to change your world view Ambarish Mitra's working life started two decades ago in a Delhi slum, after he ran away from his home as a teenager. Now he is building a technology business, set up in London in 2011, that has ambitions eventually to rival Facebook and Google. He is the Chief Executive and CoFounder of Blippar, a tech company, growing rapidly, specialising in augmented reality, artificial intelligence and computer vision. He was named ‘EY Entrepreneur Of The Year UK 2016 overall winner’ at a ceremony in London on Monday night. Blippar's free app turns a smartphone camera into a tool that scans, recognises and identifies everyday objects and brings up online information about them on the screen. While working two jobs, as a door-todoor salesman by day and at a tea stall by night, Mitra won a nationwide business plan competition. The prize money funded the launch of his first business, Women Infoline, which gave free internet access to women earning below a certain wage. At 21 Mitra sold the business and moved to the UK, where he started three business ventures over the next ten years. His ‘lightbulb moment’ happened in a pub, after sharing a joke with Blippar’s co-founder, Omar Tayeb, about the Queen coming to life out of a £20 note. A few days later a prototype was created and Blippar was born. The company now has twelve offices across the globe, including London, New York, San Francisco, Delhi and Singapore, with plans to expand. Blippar harnesses image recognition, augmented reality and computer vision technology to bring the physical world to life through smart and wearable devices. Once they have downloaded the app, consumers can blipp (‘scan’) objects they are curious about and unlock content. The
app has over 65 million users in 175 countries. The judges described Mitra as “a man with big vision and a driving ambition, but also one that is matched by his social conscience, driven at least in part by his own early life experiences”.
Stuart Watson, UK Entrepreneur Of The Year Programme Leader said: “Ambarish wowed the judges with his technology and his entrepreneurial spirit. This is an entrepreneur with an unwavering determination to succeed, who sees each triumph and failure as feedback to help drive the business forward. They were also impressed by his personal journey from teenage runaway in New Delhi, to a CEO of a fast growth, high-tech multi-national, transforming interactions with consumers.” Mitra has entered the awards programme three times in the last three years and will now go on to represent the UK at EY’s World Entrepreneur Of The Year in Monaco next June, competing with more than 50 other country winners for the global title. An independent judging panel chaired by Rosemary Squire OBE, Founder Director and Deputy Chairman, Ambassador Theatre Group and EY Entrepreneur Of The Year UK 2014 overall winner, selected the winners from 40 UK finalists, who have combined revenue of £2.4bn and employ a workforce of over 16,000.
UK Asian Voice | 8th October 2016
Medical Misdiagnosis and Delay in Treatment When you are feeling unwell and you seek professional m e d i c a l treatment, you expect your doctor, dentist or any other q u a l i f i e d m e d i c a l practitioner to provide you Divya Anand with a competent standard of care when treating you. The last thing you want is for your ailments to worsen or remain untreated due to professional negligence. A misdiagnosis or delay in treatment can lead to devastating effects and can even lead to fatality. Patients place an enormous amount of trust in medical professionals and they often receive an early diagnosis leading to urgent definitive treatment. There are some cases where, despite making numerous attendances to see your GP, doctor or dentist, there are delays in providing you with a diagnosis which, in turn causes a delay in treatment. In some instances, you may be misdiagnosed and it is only a number of months later that you are given the correct diagnosis. In some cases, this delay can have substantial repercussions as certain conditions need to be treated promptly to improve your prognosis. Recognising professional negligence can sometimes be tricky and it is not always obvious breach has occurred. Some are a little more apparent, for instance, a patient suffering from severe headaches has been told by their GP that they were suffering from migraines. Later on, the patient will be diagnosed with a brain tumour which proved fatal. Had this been diagnosed and treated earlier, the outcome may have been very different. Even less serious cases, such as
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appendicitis, if not treated on time, could lead to perforation and require invasive open surgery. Or, due to the delay in treatment of a patient’s fracture, his or her mobility might be impaired for life. At Duncan Lewis Solicitors, our team of specialist Clinical Negligence Solicitors are experts in medical negligence claims in relation to misdiagnosis and delay in treatment. We instruct medical experts in order to assess the following: l l
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The severity of any misdiagnosis or delay in treatment; Whether there was an misinterpretation of radiology imaging, tests etc; The duration of any delay in diagnosis; The duration of any delay in treatment; The requirement for any care and equipment; Whether you have incurred any financial loss; Changes in life expectancy.
In most cases, your case will be funded on a “no-win, no-fee” basis, also known as a “Conditional Fee Agreement”. If you or a loved one have suffered from a misdiagnosis or delay in treatment, please contact Duncan Lewis specialist clinical negligence solicitors on 020 7923 4020 for a free initial consultation. About the author: Divya Anand Divya is a Solicitor at Duncan Lewis within the Clinical Negligence Department. Divya has significant experience with multiple clinical negligence claims relating to negligent laser eye surgery, orthopaedic claims, amputation claims, birth injury claims and spinal injury claims. Divya has also significant experience with claims relating to cerebral palsy, cardiac related injuries and gynaecological claims.
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