Danube owner and billionaire business Rizwan Sajan was just 16 when his father died. Since Rizwan, now 55, was the oldest among three siblings, he was given the responsibility to take care of family’s financial needs.

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Rizwan Sajan started working as a street vendor and sold books and stationary to earn money for his family. He also worked as a milk delivery boy for extra income.

"Things were tough, really tough. My father worked as a supervisor in a steel factory earning Rs 7,000 a month. It was a hand-to-mouth situation with running the household and paying school fees,” Sajan said in an interview to Gulf News.

But Rizwan Sajan did not give up and worked really hard to launch Danube Group in 1993. As of 2019, the annual turnover of Danube Group was around USD 1.3 billion.

The Danube group manages several portfolios, including building materials company, a real estate firm and an infrastructure company.

Rizwan Sajan’s uncle played an important role in his growth as he offered him a job in Kuwait when he turned 18 in 1981. In Kuwait, Rizwan Sajan worked as a sales trainee for a monthly salary of 150 Kuwaiti dinar or Rs 18,000.

Rizwan worked in Kuwait for eight years and became a sales manager. But then Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait and destroyed the city in 1990. Sajan returned to Mumbai after the Gulf War and started looking for job again. He then got a job in Dubai and joined a brokerage business which was into building materials. One day, Rizwan decided to quit job and set up his own building materials trading company and that’s how Danube was born.