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entrepreneurs 25


Andrew Stanley: teeing off to triumph


Sir Martin Sweeting: a successful space odyssey


Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FRS is a man with big ambitions. Nearly 30 years ago, armed with just £100 and a team of four, he set up Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL), which designs, builds, launches and operates small satellites in orbit. Since its inception, Guildford-based SSTL has become the world’s leading small satellite company, with applications ranging from scientific research to communications to disaster monitoring. Sweeting is driven by the importance of space to the UK economy and his plans to take business to the Moon.


Dr Rami Ranger: ‘from nothing to everything’


Andrew Stanley turned his passion for golf into big business when in 1998 he set up Golfbreaks from his bedroom.


Today, Windsor-based Golfbreaks is Europe’s largest golf travel company and in 2011 achieved a turnover of £31 million.


In fact in the past two years, in the midst of tough economic times, the company has had two of its biggest growth years yet.


Stanley says being an entrepreneur is in his bones, and speaks of the ‘Tiger Woods effect’; his ambition to get every one of the UK’s four million golfers on an annual golf break; and diversifying into the spa industry.


Founder and chief executive of the Golfbreaks Group, Stanley was born in 1969 in Johannesburg and grew up in Somerset after his British parents moved back to the UK in 1972.


He has a degree in hotel and catering management from Portsmouth University. After graduating in 1992 he worked for Airpic selling aerial photographs door to door, and by 1995 had risen to sales director. In 1996 he joined Consumer Exhibitions and launched the first consumer golf show in the UK. In May 1998, Stanley founded Golfbreaks and in August 1999 launched Golfbreaks. com. In 2007 he launched Teeofftimes.co.uk and in 2010 launched BookaSpa.com.


Stanley was a finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2006 and the company won the RBS Company of the Year award in 2007. He is married with three children, and his current handicap is 8.


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – NOVEMBER 2012


This is the ultimate rags to riches story. Dr Rami Ranger, MBE, was born in 1947 in Punjab, just two months after his father, Shaheed Nanak Singh, was assassinated while trying to save students in a procession against the break-up of India. He started life in a refugee camp with his mother and seven siblings. After immigrating to the UK, he set up his own business from a shed with just £2, and today he is both founder and chairman of two of the UK’s fastest-growing companies: Sun Mark and Sea, Air & Land Forwarding, based in Greenford, which have a combined turnover of over £150 million.


Ranger graduated with a BA degree from Govt College Chandigarh before immigrating to the UK in 1971. In 1987 he founded shipping company Sea, Air & Land Forwarding and in 1995 founded Sun Mark, which exports British supermarket products to over 100 countries worldwide.


Sea, Air & Land Forwarding received The Queen’s Award for Export in 1999, and Sun Mark has recently celebrated an unprecedented fourth consecutive Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade.


Sun Mark was ranked 25th in The Sunday Times Profit Track 100 2012, up from 33 in 2011, and Ranger was ranked 785th in The Sunday Times Rich List 2012, his wealth rising from £55m in 2011 to £95m. He is chairman, founder or patron of numerous organisations, including chairman of the Pakistan, India & UK Friendship Forum, chairman of the British Sikh Association and a patron of The Princes Trust.


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Sweeting is now group executive chairman of SSTL as well as director of the Surrey Space Centre. He was born in London in 1951 and has a PhD in electronic engineering and communications. Having pioneered the concept of small, low-cost and highly- capable satellites, in 1981 he built and launched the UK’s first research microsatellite at the University of Surrey, using commercial off-the-shelf components. This was followed by a second satellite which launched in 1984.


In 1985 Sweeting formed SSTL as a spinout from the University of Surrey, and today the company employs 400 staff across four sites, has total export orders of £600 million, achieved turnover of £92m for 2011, and has launched 36 satellites to date, including the international Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC). In 1995, Sweeting was awarded an OBE for his pioneering work in small satellites; in 2000 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; and in 2002 he was knighted for his services to the small satellite industry.


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