Hamdi Ulukaya, Founder of Chobani became a billionaire in five years by making great yogurt and using innovative marketing.
“Only in America” can a Turkish dairy farmer come to learn English, start a small business with borrowed money and become a billionaire in five years while beating the pants off of Fortune 500, writes Bryan Gruley of Bloomberg Businessweek. That’s the life story of Hamdi Ulukaya, founder and sole owner of Chobani, maker of Greek yogurt.
Ulukaya’s path to entrepreneurial success began when he decided to buy a yogurt plant that was closing close to his home in New York. Using an SBA loan, he acquired the plant and then set out to make yogurt like his mother made back in Turkey. It took almost two years to perfect the formula. He then choose innovative European-style packaging to enhance the experience of eating a European-style Yogurt. This combination of quality and packaging allowed the company to capture marketshare from large food conglomerates.
Chobani controls about one-third of the U.S. Yogurt market today, only five years after starting his company. The billionaire is expanding aggressively to ensure he builds enough scale to compete effectively with larger companies.
About Mike Periu
Mike is a seasoned executive with experience in small business finance and management. He is the founder of Proximo, LLC a leading provider of corporate, consumer and small business education and training services with an emphasis on finance and technology.
Mike Periu is also a leading national voice for individual empowerment through financial education and entrepreneurship. He has been interviewed over 500 times in national and international media, including NBC, Univision, CNN en español, Telemundo, HITN, TVE, RTE, SBS, MegaTV and others.
Mike writes regularly for American Express OpenForum, Yahoo! Finanzas and is a Huffington Post contributor.
Mike has degrees in Finance and International Business from Georgetown University. He is on the Board of Directors of the Council for Economic Education and was a Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation’s Labs for Enterprise Creation.
