The rags-to-riches story of a billionaire BARBER!

The rags-to-riches story of a billionaire BARBER!

Ramesh Babu has a barber shop and a booming car rental business in Bengaluru, but still prefers to cut hair so that he never forgets his humble beginnings.Fancy getting your hair styled for only Rs 65 by someone who goes to work at his barber shop in a Rs. 3-crore Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost?

Yes, this is the amazing rags-to-riches story of 41-year-old Ramesh Babu who made it big in this cut-throat world all on the dint of his honesty, hard work, humility and some foresight.

Life wasn't always hunky dory for this man. He was only 7 years old when his father, P Gopal, a barber in Bengaluru, died. All he left behind was a barber shop: little did he know that his son would become a billionaire even before he turned 40.

With her husband no more, Ramesh Babu's mother had to work as a cook to help feed her children, get them a semblance of an education and help them have a shot at life. Since she couldn't run the barber shop, she rented it out for Rs 5 a day.

"We grew up on one meal a day," says Ramesh Babu, in between giving instructions to his staff and answering his mobile phone.

As he grew older, his sense of responsibility tugged at him and he couldn't quite decide if he should study further or start working to support his mother and the family income.

However, upon his mother's insistence, he resolved study up to the pre-university level and then obtained a diploma in electronics. All this while, his father's shop was still being rented out for meagre amounts. He then decided to run it himself and in 1989, he began working at the salon that had first been established by his grandfather.

His barber shop -- Inner Space -- did well enough for him to be able to not just look after his family's needs, but also to save some money.

By 1994, Ramesh had saved enough to buy a Maruti Omni. He bought it for personal use, but it "used to lie idle most of the time" so he decided to put it out on rent.

And that was the seed that later bore fruit and turned into his new company Ramesh Tours and Travels.

Between 1994 and 2004, he bought seven more cars and rented them out too. He ensured that his drivers were well behaved and his clientele happy. Sampath was his first driver and he still works for Ramesh.

Ramesh had a small office till then. In 2004, he decided to enter the luxury car segment. He bought a Mercedes Benz for a cost of Rs 42 lakh (Rs 4.2 million).

He took a loan from the bank for this. "It ran very well because other travel agencies with the same car used old cars. We were the only ones who used a brand new car." From then on, it was a one-way street to success for Ramesh.

He now owns 90 cars in all, most Toyota Innovas. His fleet of cars also includes 27 luxury vehicles: from Mercedes to BMWs to a white Rolls-Royce Ghost. He actually needed a paper and pencil to count the number of cars he owns.

Today, all his cars had gone out on rent. The lowest rent for a car he lets out is Rs 1,000 a day and the most expensive is Rs 50,000 a day (for the Rolls-Royce, of course. You can now roughly calculate his daily income.

His first car -- the Maruti Omni -- is still with him, but it has been 'retired'. He does not rent it out any more.

He has 60 drivers working for him, but you can also rent a car from him and drive it yourself. At Inner Space, his salon, there are five more people working with him.

From 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. he works at his salon, cutting hair. "Today I had three customers," he says happily. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., he works at his car rental office. At 4 p.m., he goes back to his saloon and works there till 7 p.m. Thereafter, he comes back to the rental agency and stays there till 8.30 p.m.

He is happily married and has three kids, all in school. The elder two are girls, the youngest is a son. "I will teach my kids to work in both my businesses," he says.

The man is a shining example of dignity of labour. He is not a member of any club because he "does not have the time".

On Sundays, he works the whole day at the salon as it is the 'rush hour' there. That effectively means he does not have a single weekly holiday.

He still remembers the days when his mom worked as a cook. He still cuts and styles hair so that he never forgets his humble beginnings. He says he never disappoints his customers. He cuts men's hair for Rs 65 and ladies' hair for Rs 150.

Some of the costs that he incurs in his business include fines. Every month, they visit the traffic police and pay all the fines. The fine is taken out from the concerned driver's salary. He does not like authorities stopping his car anywhere and troubling his customers.

And all this happened just because he could not bear to see his Omni lying idle.

His formula for success is simple, "Hard work and honesty," he says, grinning. His humility is endearing. Success sits easily on his young shoulders even as he good-naturedly cribs about his drivers giving him all sorts of problems.

He has travelled to Germany as a tourist. He has also been to Singapore to learn how to cut women's hair. He works hard and says being honest is essential for success.

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King of Mathematics - SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan (22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920) was one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses. He made substantial contributions to the analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite series. His most famous work was on the number p(n) of partitions of an integer n into summands. Here are some interesting facts about him.

• By age 11, he had exhausted the mathematical knowledge of two college students who were lodgers at his home. He was later lent a book on Advanced Trigonometry written by S. L. Loney. He completely mastered this book by the age of 13 and discovered sophisticated theorems on his own.
• When he was 16, Ramanujan came across the book "A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics"  by George S. Carr. This book was a collection of 5000 theorems, and it introduced Ramanujan to the world of mathematics. The next year, he had independently developed and investigated the Bernoulli numbers and had calculated Euler's constant up to 15 decimal places.
• Ramanujan, with the help of Ramaswami Iyer(founder member of the Indian Mathematical Society) , had his work published in the Journal of Indian Mathematical Society.
• In January 1913 Ramanujan wrote to G .H. Hardy having seen a copy of his  book Orders of infinity. Hardy, together with Littlewood, studied the long list of unproved theorems which Ramanujan enclosed with his letter. 
• Hardy wrote back to Ramanujan and in 1914, Hardy brought Ramanujan to Trinity College, Cambridge, to begin an extraordinary collaboration.
• On 6 December 1917, he was elected to the London Mathematical Society. 
• In 1918, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society , and he was the youngest Fellow in the entire history of the Royal Society.
• On 13 October 1918, he became the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

TAXICAB NUMBER:

The number derives its name from the following story:
G. H. Hardy told about Ramanujan. I remember once going to see him when he was ill . I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
1729 is the second taxicab number (the first is 2= 1^3 + 1^3). The number was also found in one of Ramanujan's notebooks dated years before the incident.

Every positive integer is one of Ramanujan's personal friends" - John Littlewood, on hearing of the taxicab incident.

Ramanujan had problems settling in London. He was an orthodox Brahmin and right from the beginning he had problems with his diet. Ramanujan sailed to India on 27 February 1919 arriving on 13 March. However his health was very poor and, despite medical treatment, he died on April 6, 1920.

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King of forest - LION

Lion is known for it's strength and excellent hunting tactics.The lion (Panthera leo) is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera and a member of the family Felidae. They are known as KING OF FOREST. Here are some interesting facts about them.

•  African lions are the most social of all big cats and live together in groups or “prides.” A pride consists of about 15 lions.
• Male lions defend the pride’s territory while females do most of the hunting. Despite this, the males eat first.
• These majestic cats are threatened by habitat loss. The lion is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
• The lion was once found throughout Africa, Asia and Europe but now exists only in Africa with one exception. The last remaining Asiatic lions are found in Sasan-Gir National Park in India, which was primarily created to protect the species. Currently, there are approximately 350-400 lions in the park.
• A lion’s roar can be heard from as far as 5 miles away.
• A lion can run for short distances at 50 mph and leap as far as 36 feet.
• Even though the lion is sometimes referred to as the “king of the jungle,” it actually only lives in grasslands and plains. The expression may have come from an incorrect association between Africa and jungles or may refer to a less literal meaning of the word jungle.
• A good gauge of a male lion’s age is the darkness of his mane. The darker the mane, the older the lion.
• A lion’s heels don’t touch the ground when it walks.
• A lion may sleep up to 20 hours a day.

Top 5 Strange Lion Facts
The lion's worst enemy might come as a surprise, as the culprit is the size of a small dog: turns out the porcupine is the thorn in the big cat's side, or rather mouth, as a lion tricked into sniffing the clever porcupine's sharp quills often ends up with one or more stuck in its jaw for life.

Top 5 Strange Lion Facts

4. Tantalizing Tail
The lion is the only member of the cat family with a tasseled tail, which serves a purpose beyond aesthetics. It's often used to signal to other members of the pride, with messages ranging from directional, "this way" commands to flirtatious, "come hither" invitations!

3. A Manicurist's Nightmare
A lion's claws are not only very sharp, but also retractable, which helps maintain the big cat's slice-and-dice capabilities by preventing injury during play. Their claws grow as a series of layers. These eventually shred to expose new claws that can reach lengths of up to 1 1/2 inches from the base to tip.

2. Armed to the Teeth
A lion's back teeth (called carnassals) work like a pair of scissors, which comes in handy when tackling a fresh piece of meat. Though the teeth help cut up their meals, lions don't actually chew their food, but rather swallow it in chunks, using only one side of their mouth at a time.

1. Rub-a-Dub-Dub
Male and females greet each other not with a handshake but with a rub, which sometimes becomes so vigorous that one gets knocked down in the process. The act is meant as a means of bonding, as lions leave scent markings on each other during the process, similar to how house cats rub up against their pet parents to demonstrate ownership (but hopefully, with less injury!).

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Father of Cinema - Eadweard Muybridge

Galloping Horse - 1878

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) revolutionised photography. He is best known for his seminal work Animal Locomotion where he documented both humans and animals in motion. This body of work, initially began with a wager from one of Muybridges patrons in 1877 that a Horse does not at any one time have his feet off the ground while galloping. While this work is his most famous and has influenced photography, cinema and science for more than a century, the current Tate Britain retrospective (the first of this kind in the UK ans finishing on 16th January) has highlighted some other interesting facts about Eadweard Muybridge that you may not already know.

1  He changed his name more than his facial hair.

Eadweard Muybridge

People commonly mistake his name to be Edward Mybridge, but his name was just as much changed and mistaken during his own lifetime. He was born Edward James Muggeridge, has been listed as Muggeridge and Muygridge after moving to America, revised it to Edwardo Santiago Maybridge while in central America, changed his first name to Eduardo after a Saxon King, and was conferred as Professor Muybridge. The last form on his gravestone is Eadweard Muybridge. He also published some of his work under the name Helios. One thing that never changed though, was his beard. Apart from when he went grey.

2  He was acquitted for the Murder of his wife’s lover.

Flora Muybridge

In 1891, Muybridge married 19 year-old divorce Flora Stone, who was over 20 years his junior. Three years later she bore a child, Floredo Helious Muybridge. At first the child’s paternity was never in question, but as Muybridge spent many long periods away from home he eventually became suspicious that he may not be the child’s father. When his suspicions were confirmed, he then went and shot Harry Larkyns, Flora’s lover.

As Muybridge was a minor celebrity in San Francisco at the time, the murder and trial caused a scandal. However, Muybridge  was acquitted for the crime on the grounds of justifiable homicide for what he had discovered. Flora asked for a divorce but she mysteriously died of Typhoid soon after the trial, and Floredo was sent to an orphanage.

The story is very Sunset Beach, and was fictionalised in an opera by Phillip Glass in 1982 entitled The Photographer.

3  He created two panoramas of San Francisco, one seventeen foot long.

Section of 1878 San Francisco Panorama

Muybridge created two Panaromas of San Francisco, the city he was largely based in during his time in America. A fire destroyed the glass plate negatives of the first panorama created in 1877, so Muybridge set about creating another Panorama a year later. It is estimated that it took 15-25 minutes to to expose each of the 13 glass plates.

4  Francis Bacon owned four copies of Humans in Motion.

Francis Bacon - Triptych 1974-1977

Many of Muybridges stills served as inspirations for Francis Bacon’s own work, who always drew from photographs. Muybridges studies of motion drew countless inspiration for other Artists including Edgar Degas and Marcel Duchamp.

5  Muybridge also documented a Baboon in motion.

I had to finish with a red arse.

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Father of Electricity - Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He is one of the most highly regarded American inventors. Edison's creations have helped enhance the lives of people from all walks of life. He is responsible for the invention of several products that range from the commonplace to the highest ends of sophistication. Here are some interesting facts about Thomas Edison.

•  Despite going on to secure worldwide fame as an inventor extraordinaire, Edison was a school dropout. He had trouble concentrating due to his inquisitive mind, leading to his teachers thinking there was something wrong with him.
• Edison's most famous inventions are the phonograph and the paradigm-shifting design of the electric light bulb. Contrary to popular misconception, Edison didn't 'invent' the electric bulb; several designs had been made to that effect before Edison. Edison's design, however, stood out due to it being the most practical and the most efficient.
•  His first inventions included an electric vote recorder and a stock ticker.
• When Edison was nine years old, he received a book on physics. Even at that tender age, he did not believe all the experiments in the book until he had tested them himself. He used the basement of his house to carry out all the experiments. Later, he constructed a makeshift lab in a train carriage.
• Thomas Edison was partially deaf. At least three separate reasons for the deafness have been presented: that a train conductor slapped him hard across the face when a chemical reaction in his 'train lab' caused a fire, that he was pulled by the ear into a moving train by a conductor, and a bout of scarlet fever and recurring ear infections. Though his hearing was impaired from the age of 12, he said that it did not bother him, since it helped him concentrate.
• He invented the Edison battery, which made use of an alkaline electrolyte.
• At the age of 14, he saved a 3 year old boy -- Jimmie MacKenzie -- from being hit by a train. The father of the child (who was a station agent) was so grateful that he trained Thomas Edison to be a telegraph operator. This channeled Edison's genius towards the field of telegraph, and he produced several innovations in the field.
• The most popular of his inventions concerning the improvement of telegraph machines was the automatic repeater and the electric telegraph machine.
• He set up the world's first electric light power station in Lower Manhattan.
• With the invention of the phonograph in 1877, he acquired fame as The Wizard of Menlo Park.
• He formed the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878 in New York City. This was done with the help of several other financiers.
• He is also known as the first inventor to use the principles of mass production for inventions.
• He considered William J. Hammer as the pioneer of incandescent electric lighting. William J. Hammer was a consulting electrical engineer who assisted Edison in December 1879. He helped Edison with various experiments (phonograph, electric railway, telephone, electric lighting, etc), but primarily looked after the research on incandescent light bulbs.
• It has also been said that he tested about 6,000 vegetable growths. This was for the purpose of filaments to be used in his light bulbs.
• His mentor was Franklin Leonard Pope. He allowed Edison to live and experiment in his home in New Jersey.
• He also invented the carbon microphone between the period 1877-1878. This was used in all the telephones of the period.
• He was one of the pioneering researchers in the field of motion cameras and made one of the first designs for the same.
• Edison invented the forerunner of the modern tattoo machine!
• Despite his numerous brilliant inventions and innovations, several of his ideas were absolute duds. One of these was the idea of building houses that had everything molded from concrete -- right from the walls to the bathtubs. He set out to launch this project as a solution to the housing problems in New York by making them an affordable option for the common man. However, the idea failed and not a single house was sold from among the 11 concrete houses that were built. Edison also went on to build other concrete items, like pianos and cupboards. Unsurprisingly, they, too, found no buyers.
• Edison married his first wife Mary Stilwell at the age of 24. She was his employee. They had 3 children together. After Mary died, Edison married Mina Miller. An interesting fact about his marriage proposal to Miller was that he proposed using Morse code.
• Edison's untiring work was rewarded in the shape of the Congressional Gold Medal in 1928.
• Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931, due to complications arising from diabetes. He was outlived by his wife by 16 years.
• Edison was raised a Christian, but his scientific, rational mind didn't agree with the numerous illustrations of unnatural concepts, such as miracles and rebirth. Due to this, he considered himself a Deist. He viewed Nature -- rather than any specific deity described by any religion -- as the ultimate power in the universe.
• Postmortem, Edison was inducted in the New Jersey Hall of Fame, the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame, and received a Technical Grammy Award.
• Thomas Edison was famous for the following words, 'Genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration'. It shows Edison's dedication towards his work.

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Father of APPLE - Steve Jobs

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the man behind the first personal computer, died Wednesday at 56 after a long battle with cancer. The innovative genius revolutionized the technical world with the iMac, iTunes, iPod and iPhone.

"Extra" remembers Jobs and all of his world-changing accomplishments. Here are "7 Interesting Facts About Steve Jobs.

1. Steve Jobs admired Mark Zuckerberg.

Steve isn't a fan of Google or Microsoft, but the man tipped his hat to young CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Calling Facebook a "dominating" social network, the Apple cofounder said that he admired mark "for not selling out … for wanting to make a company."

2. Steve Jobs has only one book on his iPad.

With millions of books available on the iBookstore, you'd wager Steve had a least a couple dozen of them. But in fact, his iPad 2 held just a single work: An Autobiography of a Yogi, which he read once a year for decades.

3. Steve Jobs met his biological father before either knew they were related.

In the 1980s, Steve frequented a certain restaurant managed by a "balding Syrian" man, as Steve put it. This man was in fact Steve's biological father, though neither of them knew it at the time (his biological sister Mona Simpson would later connect the dots). The pair actually shook hands, too—all the while being unaware that they were father and son.

4. Steve Jobs was indeed plotting an Apple television.

Apple TV is a few years old now, but it's not actually a television—it's a tiny square that streams iTunes content onto one. Since its inception, rumours have come and gone (and come again) that Apple would release its own branded television, integrated deeply with Apple software. This has yet to materialize, but Steve said before he died that he "finally cracked it," referring to bringing such a product to market. He envisioned a simple remote, simple interface, iCloud syncing, and… well, I guess we'll have to find out, as this product could very likely end up a real thing in 2012 or 2013.

5. Steve Jobs was depressed after the iPad launched.

The iPad turned out to be one of the best-selling consumer items in history, not just in tech and not just in North America, and the iPad 2 has continued its amazing legacy. But initial reviews were critical—underwhelming features, unnecessary gap filled, awful name, so the pundits roared. Steve said the flames "knocked me back a bit." Surely, though, he got back on his feet after the initial hate faded and incredible sales surged.

6. Steve Jobs' only demand for his biography was to have a great cover.

Presentation is no doubt important to Steve Jobs and Apple carries a very specific and consistent aesthetic, from its packaging to its website and everything in between. Steve gave author Walter full control over the content but insisted that the cover be awesome. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think the cover is perfect.

7. Steve Jobs believed he had magical powers.

Steve Jobs could have lived several years longer had he gone into surgery just months earlier, medical experts say. However, Steve took a more spiritual root, believing that he could think things into (or out of) existence. He did this not only with his cancer—and it evidently failed him there—but also with his managing style. It helped push employees to do things they didn't think they could, and allowed him to maintain his characteristic stubbornness and focus… but his investment into this illusion of what some describe as percieved "magic" ultimately cost him an early death.

8. He was homeless: 

"I didn't have a dorm room," he said in a commencement address given at Stanford in 2005, "so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple."

9.Charity Schmarity:

When Jobs resumed control as Apple’s CEO in 1997, he stopped all of its philanthropic programs, saying, “Wait until we are profitable.”

Even after rising to the top to become a $40-billion company, Apple still doesn’t donate to charity.

10.Wealth:

As the CEO of Apple, Steve earned $1 a year. However, he held on to 5 million Apple shares and 138 million shares in Disney.

In 2010, Forbes estimated his net wealth to be $7 billion, making him one of the richest people in the world.

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Father of Physics - Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics.His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer. His mother was Pauline Einstein.Albert Einstein, the kid with abnormally large head who was unable to talk until he was four, later became world’s most remarkable Physicist. Later he won a Nobel Prize for his work and also named as Man of the Century by Time magazine but amazingly he was not that good at studies. His results were always poor and he once failed his university entrance exam. He was short of memory and mostly used to forget his tasks.

This post is dedicated to Albert Einstein and we’ll try to list 10 cool and interesting facts about him.

• As he didn’t talk until he was four, his parents were worried about him. But once while they were on the supper table, he broke his four year silence and said “”The soup is too hot.”
• He never loved hair cuts and wearing socks while sailing and violin were his passions. He named his violin Lina.
• After Einstein’s death, his brain was removed from his head without bringing in his family’s knowledge. This immoral act was done by Dr. Thomas Harvey who wanted to conduct a search on his brain. He was later permitted by Einstein’s son Hans Einstein.
• He had a very bad memory and he could not remember dates and phone numbers, in fact he even didn’t knew what his own phone number was.
• Once his mathematics professor called him a lazy dog because he could not find Einstein’s interest in studies.
• He was inspired by a compass which was gifted to him by his father while he was sick at age of 5. It was the start of his interest in science.
• In 1952, he was offered the presidency of Israel but he politely refused the offer.
• Almost all of his work is remarkable, but he got unimaginable fame when his paper on mass-energy equivalence was published.
• He used to charge people for his autographed and donate all this money to charity.
• In 1951, while leaving a party with his friends, he was rushed by a photographer who asked him to smile for a photograph. But Einstein who was already tired, just stuck his tongue out instead of a smile. The photographer luckily captured this memorable 

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