AKSHAY RUPARELIA, ESTATE AGENT

WHEN AKSHAY WAS 11, his family moved house in north London. Both his father, a Royal Mail worker, and his mother, a teaching assistant, are deaf, so Akshay and his older sister were heavily involved with the move. That was when Akshay knew he wanted to work in property. ‘Over the next few years, I kept thinking about it,’ he says. ‘I realised that the customer wasn’t at the centre of the business transaction, and it was just about how much money the estate agent could make. That didn’t appeal to me, and I kept thinking that it shouldn’t be that way in this day and age.’

After his GCSES (in which he achieved seven A*s and four As), he decided to set up an estate agency that charged a flat fee of £99. ‘Instead of making it about money, I wanted to make it about the customer,’ he explains. ‘I didn’t feel it was necessary for estate agents to charge so much – it’s easy to do it cheaply.’

He asked friends to help with the website, borrowed £7,000 from relatives, and soon found his first customer in East Sussex. He had to beg his older sister to drive him to the property because he couldn’t drive, and ended up selling it for the asking price. ‘The customer said, “You’re the friendliest estate agent I’ve ever met,”’ says Akshay. ‘He did say I looked a bit young, but that I was fresh. People are constantly surprised by my age, but if you present yourself confidently and get the job done, that’s all that matters.’ From there, the business started blossoming, and when Akshay received a place to study economics and management at Oxford University after getting three A*s and two As at A level, he turned it down to focus on the business. ‘People said go to uni and then do it, but timing is everything in business, so it was a nobrainer really,’ he says. ‘My parents were really supportive. It was hard for them to comprehend me turning down uni places but they could see the drive and passion.’

A year and a half later, Doorsteps.co.uk has an estimated value of £20 million. It has listed 4,000 properties to date, with 15 full-time employees and 25 consultants around the UK, and claims to have saved customers £5-6 million in fees. But even so, Akshay still lives at home with his parents and pays himself only £1,000-£2,000 per month. ‘My friends always joke about it, like you can’t afford a car but you’re worth £20 million,’ he says.

‘But my interest is in the growth of the company and everyone else in it. I know it’s valued at that much, but a start-up means you’re never risk-free. It’s a lot of hard work and keeping up the quality of my work and leadership is vital to our survival. That’s kept me more than humble, because there’s no security. I haven’t treated myself – I’ve not had time. Maybe one day I’ll get a chance to give myself a week off.’

Akshay works 100 hours a week, and ‘used to have a life’. ‘The plan is to keep growing. I want to be the number one estate agent in Britain.’

BUSINESS VALUED AT £20 MILLION AGE 20 EMPLOYEES 15