Ruchi Shrestha

Business name: Apex Hunting

Age: 25

State: NSW

Shrestha heads up Apex Hunting, which supplies archery equipment for everyone from beginners to professionals via a website and an eBay store. It was founded in January last year.

Since then, revenue has climbed to $900,000. But it’s been a bumpy ride for Shrestha, who became inspired to start her business while juggling a job and a fulltime university course.

“Things were especially harder for me being an international student, paying my uni fees by myself while also supporting my living expenses,” she says.

“I realised I did not want to work for someone else, ever… My hobby was to own a successful business. Me and my partner, Jonas Rohrl, started looking very hard.”

“We realised there was a huge potential for archery supplies in Australia so we flew over to see our manufacturer, convinced them to give us an exclusive distributorship, and since then there’s been no looking back.”