With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/950283
lIfE SToRY: Julius makarewicz is nothing if not persistent. The powell River native, whose parents left poland when it was under martial law, dropped out of university because he felt he had to get out in the world to learn. makarewicz, who originally came to Vancouver to attend SFU, badgered the hR department at customer research firm Vision Critical Communications Inc. until they gave him a job in sales. After working for a few other companies, he saw a gap in the adult beverage market; in 2015 he started working on a low-calorie, sugar-free, gluten-free vodka cooler. The product (available in lime, cucumber mint and strawberry kiwi, with another flavour in the works) took B.C. private stores by storm, bringing a few competitors into the market on the way. "We're the first unsweetened alcoholic beverage in B.C., but since we've launched, there are more coming to market as a direct result of us," makarewicz says. "They see how well we're doing." After more tireless work, makarewicz got Nude Vodka Soda on BC Liquor Stores shelves this march. THE boTToM lINE: Since it launched last July, Nude Vodka Soda has sold some 24,000 24-packs through the private channel in B.C., posting more than $1.3 million in sales. The company has three full-time employees and four contract staff. –N.C. J u L I u s m A k A R e W I C z Founder and CEO nuDe VoDka soDa age: 28 lIfE SToRY: Qayyum Rajan was born in Vancouver, but he took a global outlook from a very young age. he was just two weeks old when his parents moved his family to Kenya, where he grew up before returning to Canada as a teenager. Food and finance are Rajan's lifelong passions. his parents ran a Nairobi butcher shop and bistro, and he started trading stocks in Kenya when he was just 12. "I've always been a bit of a finance nerd," he says. A bachelor of business management with a finance specialization from UBC in 2015 led to jobs at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, RBC Dominion Secu- rities and Sentry Investments, but Rajan spent his own time learning about data science and blockchain, the distributed digital ledger behind cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. With matthias Kucharska- huelsmann, Alex Schumacher and matthew Unger, he founded iComply In- vestor Services (iComply ICO) last August. The Vancouver-based company aims to automate and streamline regulatory compliance processes for digital securi- ties such as cryptocurrencies. Long-term, Rajan wants to help create opportuni- ties for blockchain-based technology to mobilize capital, especially in developing countries like Kenya that lack sound financial infrastructure. THE boTToM lINE: iComply ICO has grown from a team of four to 15 and launched its automated compliance platform, digital identity tool and a pri- vate white-label product. The firm has closed two angel investment rounds, one from Uber Technologies Inc.'s first engineer, Conrad Whelan. –D.H. Q AY Y u m R A J A n Co-founder and product manager icoMPly inVestor serVices inc. age: 24 32 BCBusiness ApRIL 2018