Spotlight on Warda Ali
Teen Creator of an online business.

Necessity has been called the mother of invention. For Warda Ali, a 15-year-old from San Jose, California, she created a business so her father and her two uncles could play their favorite weekend pasttime: cricket.

Ali noticed the cricket players often complained they didn’t have enough cricket bats. Her father and uncles’ Bay Area team played on deserted basketball courts and the hard surface wore out the bats more quickly than if they had played on traditional grass playing fields. So the team had a constant need for new bats.

The problem was that local sports shops didn’t stock cricket bats, so the team constantly had them shipped over from Pakistan. So, Ali, a high school sophomore, enrolled in an entrepreneurship course provided by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), and decided to explore the idea of creating an online cricket retailer.

“I thought that creating [a company] would be beneficial to the Evergreen Cricket team and others in the San Francisco Bay Area,” says Ali.

Ali drew up a business plan for Sure Shot Cricket Gear, an online company that would sell customized cricket bats to teams in the Northwest at prices lower than those offered at other retailers.

Her uncles helped her find out how much it would cost to buy cricket bats wholesale. Ali decided to source her bats from her homeland, Pakistan, rather than from cricket bat manufacturers in the United Kingdom or Australia.

Ali says her plan calls for Sure Shot Cricket Gear to sell CA brand tape-tennis cricket bats. A leather strip is glued on the end of the bat to give it extra protection, so it doesn’t wear out as quickly when used on hard surfaces.

Ali’s business plan was part of her international business curriculum in the Pacific Rim International Studies Program at Silver Creek High School. Students had to submit their plans to the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s (NFTE) global competition. NFTE, a non-profit based in New York City, teaches entrepreneurship to young people from lower income communities around the world. NFTE’s goal is to give young people the skills and confidence to unlock their true potential, so they can improve their lives and their communities.

“As things in the contest progressed, so did my interest in entrepreneurship,” Ali says.
Her interest paid off. Ali took first prize at NFTE’s national business-plan competition last fall, winning a $10,000 prize. She is also a recipient of the 2008 Global Youth Entrepreneur of the Year Award sponsored by The Goldman Sachs Foundation. The investment bank is one of NFTE’s financial sponsors.

Ali told a local TV station she had an “amazing experience” at the awards ceremony in New York City in October. “You meet so many great people and to see so many young teenagers who have amazing business ides,” she said. “You know they are more than capable of running their own businesses.”

“Pretty much every young person has owned a business–usually a lemonade stand,” says Steve Mariotti, NFTE’s president and founder. “This rite of passage ignites the powerful feelings that go hand in hand with being your own boss and reaping the financial awards. But for kids from low income and/or minority families, selling lemonade is often the first and last business they may ever run. This is not the case for teens such as Warda,” says Mariotti.

With her prize money, Ali wants to start her company. This summer, she plans to travel to Pakistan with her family to hire a manufacturer to supply her company’s bats.

“I would definitely have an adult with me, preferably my uncle or father,” she says. “But I would like to be there and sit in on the negotiations, not just have someone represent me.”

Ali credits her business teacher and family for helping her become an entrepreneur. When she was a little girl, her father and uncles owned their own business. “They’re the ones who made cricket a big part of my family’s life in the U.S. as well as introducing me to the business world early on,” she says. “My mother and aunt were huge supporters, as was the rest of the family.”

When she’s not going to school or watching her family’s cricket matches, Ali loves to read. To encourage children to read, she joined her local library’s Teen Reach Club and is now the president. Ali is involved in other philanthropic activities. As a member of her school’s National Honors Society, she helped raise money for underprivileged children in Ethiopia.

Like any teen, Ali also sets aside time for play. Every week, she and her siblings attend classes of kajekembo, a form of martial arts.

When she goes to college, Ali says she will consider a major international business. She believes anyone can be an entrepreneur, even if you’re young.

“If you have an idea, don’t think that you have to wait till you’re older to make it a reality. You can start your own business now, at whatever age you are, and you can be successful. All you need is conviction and drive.”