Highlights
- Abrar Patel came to Australia as an international student at the age of 19.
- He wanted to pursue a career in medicine but is now a tech millionaire.
- His digital marketing business has won two APAC Search Awards this year.
Abrar Patel came to Australia as an international student. Today, he runs a digital marketing solutions start-up and is a millionaire.
Mr Patel didn’t choose technology, rather technology chose him.
He had always wanted to make it big, and fate wanted that for him too, just not on the path he had originally chosen to walk.
With a turnover of $1.4 million in 2020 his tech start-up, AP Web Solutions, has won two APAC Search Awards in 2021 and was a finalist in three other categories.
“Till the age of 17, I wanted to be a doctor. My family and I had this clear aspiration for me. Studying abroad was never a part of the plan,” says Mr Patel, who hails from Mumbai in India.
AP Web Solutions has won two APAC Search Awards in 2021. Source: Supplied by Abrar Patel
He missed sitting for India’s national medical entrance exam by merely two minutes. Not wanting to waste another year, Mr Patel decided to go to Russia for higher education.
“Russia didn’t turn out to be what I expected,” he says.
A young Abrar Patel in Russia. Source: Supplied by Abrar Patel
“There were a number of issues: extreme weather conditions, language barrier, and on top of everything, the quality of education didn’t meet Indian standards,” Mr Patel recalls.
It was then, at the age of 19, he decided to turn to Australia.
“My sister was in Australia at the time. Both of us were students. We come from a middle-class family and our parents were working at that time. With our high educational and living expenses in Australia, the family resources were stretched out,” he reminisces.
To support himself financially, Mr Patel began to look for work but found his first job only after nearly nine months of his arrival in Australia.
Abrar Patel in his new BMW. Source: Supplied by Abrar Patel
He began as a worker at a car wash, followed by a door-to-door salesman, and finally, became a call centre representative- all this while pursuing a full-time course in Bachelor of Nursing from Holmesglen Institute of TAFE.
“All this while, I planned to do the four-year-long graduation in medicine after my degree in Nursing was over,” he says.
But by the age of 22, Mr Patel had realised medicine was not his calling, after all. He had begun dabbling with online marketing services and quite liked it.
“It was a lot of experimenting at first. I tried my hand at multiple aspects of the field. At times, it was frustrating too,” he says.
Abrar Patel at the Young Entrepreneur Award Source: Supplied by Abrar Patel
Finally, the field of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in digital marketing clicked with him, and he established his start-up.
“The positive feedback from my clients made me change my investment from part-time to full-time. Now, I have a team of seven working with me in the company I started in 2015,” he says with pride.
When asked the secret of his success, he says he would could credit his success to perseverance.
“I didn’t give up, I worked hard and persevered, and I think that is what worked for me in the end,” Mr Patel signs off.
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