Rayeesa Asghar-Sandys, managing director of Rayeesa’s Indian Kitchen Ltd, explains why Farah Asghar-Sandys should win the Rising Star category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
Farah is a full time law undergraduate at Durham university, and full times Sales director for Rayeesa’s Indian Kitchen. Her natural entrepreneurial skills started to emerge when she took on the role of sales and marketing apprentice in her gap year. She played a key part in market research, coordinating events and rebranding of our products to position the business for huge growth potential.
Her skills are in overall business strategy, great communications and sales, and hard grafting to get the job done. She has helped grow the business from a local business to a national one from 12 stockists to 70+ over the past two years, as well as securing two major distributors and pitching to a number of well established stockists.
She was the youngest finalist at the Midlands Business awards 2015, and has started a video blog on her journey as a student entrepreneur. Farah is always willing to listen and learn, to get involved with every aspect of the business, and is not afraid to question or challenge existing practices.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
