With a little over $100, these African entrepreneurs started businesses which are now making millions of dollars

Heshan de Silva

Graduating high school at the age of 16 years old, Heshan De Silva was born into an upper-class family in Kenya. Due to their financial muscle, they sent him to continue his education at the University of Miami, Florida.

Despite reports that he was suicidal, alcoholic and a drug dropout, he wrestled his vices and began his small insurance business. With a startup capital of $116, the 29-year old Kenyan venture capitalist now controls an organization worth over $10million.

He had developed a passion for encouraging young people whose aim is to be successful in any business endeavor.  

“If you don’t have a degree, if you don’t have even a high school diploma, you will succeed if you plug a need,” he says. “You don’t require a piece of paper to be certified to do business.”

“I think education enables you to open your mind to a lot of possibilities, but at the end of the day you are narrowed to what you have studied and you lock out everything that is going on around you. The counter to that is people like me are not narrowed to anything; we see opportunity everywhere.”