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Man Becomes UK's Youngest Billionaire After Launching Business During Lockdown

Man Becomes UK's Youngest Billionaire After Launching Business During Lockdown

Johnny Boufarhat launched video conferencing app Hopin which is valued at £4.1 billion

Rebecca Shepherd

Rebecca Shepherd

The 'UK's youngest billionaire' sounds alright, doesn't it? Titleholder Johnny Boufarhat probably agrees.

The 26-year-old has become Britain's youngest self-made billionaire after he launched a video conferencing app just as the country went into the first coronavirus lockdown.

Boufarhat, who studied at The University of Manchester, said his idea for the app Hopin came two years prior to coronavirus but, unfortunately, he wasn't able to get any money to start things moving.

CNBC

How the tables have turned, eh?

The Zoom-style app enables staff to communicate remotely and speak via video calls. It also lets companies stream live conferences over the internet.

Johnny got the ball rolling back in 2018 when he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease which left him unable to get out of bed.

It was while he was stuck in his girlfriend's bedroom that he had his lightbulb moment, the Mirror reports.

Hopin

Then following the pandemic, the amount of users sky-rocketed to over five million including 80,000 organisations like American Express. This, in turn, gave it a value of £4.1 billion ($5.7bn).

From then, Hopin has continued to fly and now Boufarhat has a net worth of £1.4 billion ($1.9bn), placing him at the 113th place on the Sunday Times Rich List.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, Boufarhat - who technically lives in Barcelona but his company is registered in the UK - said: "I'm very, very work-focused. I just want to be as impactful as I can, in a positive way for the world... I'm boring - I don't drink, I don't do anything like that.

"I make sure all my food is organic. That's the biggest change I've made. I'm very, very work-focused."

YouTube/Hopin

The firm now has around 500 employees who are based mainly in the US and the UK. As expected, they have no offices. They use Microsoft Teams instead (joke, I'm sure they use Hopin).

In the year to January 2021, Hopin reported sales of £54 million ($76m) and it's now forecast to bring in £130 million ($183m) this year. Not too shabby, right?

Things started moving fast when the entrepreneur managed to secure millions of pounds in funding to launch the app in March 2020 and after that he says 'things went crazy'.

Well, we're mighty happy for him... wanna lend us a tenner?

Featured Image Credit: Hopin

Topics: News, UK