Ladi Delano founded Solidarnosc Asia, a Chinese alcoholic beverage business that produced the premium vodka Solid XS. He founded the business in 2004 at the age of just 24.
The business eventually acquired a 50% market share and rose to become one of the most popular alcoholic beverages in China. The alcohol brought in more than $20 million a year from sales in 30 Chinese cities.
Later, he would sell the liquor brand to one of his rivals for more than $15 million, using the proceeds to fund his next business venture. He founded The Delano Reid Group, a holding firm for real estate investments with a concentration on China’s mainland.
He oversaw a group of financiers that made investments in Nigeria. He was successful in convincing the Indonesian Bakrie Group to invest $1 billion over the course of five years in Nigeria’s mining, agricultural, and oil and gas sectors in a joint venture.
The serial entrepreneur was created in 1983 in Britain by parents from Nigeria. His slight dyslexia and one-ear deafness made learning difficult for him and ultimately had an impact on his college experience. After a while, he quit college and started his own business.
His father, a college lecturer for MBA programs, gave him advise on all of his business decisions. Offering career guidance to students and attempting to get recruiters to promote their organizations to students were Delano’s first forays into entrepreneurship. Additionally, he established a mobile commerce platform so that students could buy things using their smartphones. Six months later, the company faltered, costing him millions of dollars.
However, that did not stop him from starting his own business. He was attracted by Asian culture as a child and made the decision to travel there to experience life there. In the eight months leading up to his arrival in Chicago, he first journeyed from Thailand to Malaysia, then to Hong Kong.
He traveled to London after working an internship at Merryl Lynch while still in the United States. There, he and a group of pals made the decision to start a booze company. According to StartupTipsDaily, at the time, there was a vodka revolution happening on the streets of London, and Delano and his friends wanted to provide the shots.
His multimillion dollar liquor business, Solid XS vodka, was born as a result. Because conducting business in London was expensive, he relocated the company to China.