Once a barber, Ramesh Babu is now a billionaire business tycoon who owns a very successful luxury-car rental service named Ramesh Tours and Travels. His car collection includes a wide range of luxurious and expensive cars such as BMW, Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota.
Company
His company Ramesh Tours and Travels now operates in Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi, and is working towards conquering Hyderabad and Vijayawada next. Not only common people, but his car-rental services are being availed by many well-known high-profile celebrities, sportsmen, businessmen, and politicians as well. The company is also working to reach greater horizons through online platforms as well.
Personal Net Worth
With a successful business, his personal net worth is about 2 billion (200 Crores) USD.
Family Background
Ramesh Babu was born in a family belonging to the poor strata of the society. His father, P. Gopal, was a barber in Bangalore. After the death of his father in 1979, when Ramesh was just seven years old, his mother started working as a maid, making about 40-50 INR per month.
Success Story
We surely feel proud, when a person of a financially poor background rises to fame and achieves great success, and such is the rags to riches journey of Ramesh Babu, from working as an ordinary barber to being hailed as a billionaire barber.
As mentioned above, his father died when Ramesh was just a young boy of seven, and had left behind his barber shop for his family. To financially support their family, Ramesh’s mother took up a job as a maid, and all those 40-50 INR she made each month were used for managing things like their school fees, books, clothes and other supplies. Ramesh’s family rented their barber shop to his uncle for 5 INR a day. Ramesh got new clothes once a year and managed the rest with his school uniforms and older clothes, and could afford only one mealy every day.
As he saw his family struggling to sustain their lives and finding it difficult to arrange for even the basic essentials like food and clothing, he decided to take up various jobs to contribute to his family income. He found many odd jobs initially, like delivering newspapers and milk bottles, which he took up to support his family while continuing his studies.
Post finishing his higher secondary education, he decided to discontinue his education and run his father’s barber shop. His salon was named ‘Inner Space’, which soon became a trendy styling outlet for youngsters, due to his hard work and dedication.
Ramesh had been fond of cars since the very beginning, and wanted to buy one for himself. So, he arranged for a loan with the help of his grandfather and his own savings and earnings from his barber shop, and bought his first vehicle- a Maruti van for his person use.
But then he realised that his vehicle would be left idle most of the time as he would be busy with his barber shop, he instead decided to rent his car when not in use. So, he would work in his salon and his customers would often avail his car-rental services. His unique and determined idea of renting his vehicle turned out to be the turning-point of his life.
He received his first business contract from the company Intel, through references from a family for whom his mother had worked as a maid. As he slowly gathered a substantial customer base, soon he began to realise the potential of operating a high-end automobile rental service, following which he began building a fleet of cars.
Running this business made him face a lot of complexities as he dealt with multiple commitments, and managed all sorts of workers working under him. If his drivers weren’t available, he would drive the cars around for his customers himself. It took him a lot of perseverance to establish his loyal customer-base.
One risky decision he took was when he bought his expensive car – Rolls-Royce, back in 2011, which brought his journey to a sudden halt. It was already too expensive, and the heavy taxes levied on it by the government made things even more difficult for him. He was almost on the verge of bankruptcy and even had to mortgage his wife’s jewellery. He was being told by everyone to sell his expensive car to brings things back to normal, but he did not give up and kept trying, and finally managed to succeed in his journey again.
At present, he owns a fleet of over 400 cars, and his business of renting luxury cars has made him a Billionaire.
Despite owning a successful car-rental business, he still spends four to five hours in his salon daily, and personally styles the hair
of his regular customers, as he wants to always stay connected with his roots as a professional barber.
Ramesh Babu- An Inspiration
Starting from the scratch, with determination, perseverance and hard work, facing all the ups and downs in his journey, he climbed up the stairs of success and eventually began to be hailed as the Billionaire Barber of India.
When he struggled in his life with financial adversities, he took up the charge to change his fate and bring about his own luck. Despite facing all the downs throughout his life and business, he worked towards overcoming them, and, as expected, he succeeded in rising up. Instead of listening to the people or bending down before his tough times, he listened to his intuitions and went ahead taking a lot of risks in his business as well as his life.
His entire journey to success inspires us to think smartly and out-of-the-box, and to not hesitate in taking risks, to face all the ups and downs of life with patience, and most importantly, decide and control our own fate.
A small barber dared to dream, and fulfilled his dreams to finally become a billionaire, his story is truly an inspiration to all the budding entrepreneurs out there!
