William Lever Founder of Unilever
William Lever Founder of Unilever

Biography of William Lever

Early Life

William Lever founder of Unilever was a famous English Businessman. He was born in the year of 1888 on March 25th in Bolton, United Kingdom. His father name was William Hesketh Lever while his mother was Elizabeth Allen. He started his early education in his town school when he was very young. After his early education, he joined Eton College for further studies. He was enrolled in Cambridge University after his college studies and after a couple of years he got his graduation degree from there. In the year of 1913, he got his Masters in Arts degree from the same university.

Initial career and Interest in business

Soon after his education completion, he started to find any job for making his own career. After a lot of failures, he got a job in a grocery superstore as a sales officer. Working for some years over there, he accumulated the basic ideas and techniques of sales work. That was the reason, which raised his interest in business and he started to think about any prolonged business which may help him to become very famous. This idea can be said as base of Unilever which captured his attention into business.

Co Founder of Unilever

William Lever is widely credited as the Co Founder of Unilever which was founded in the year of 1930. His idea about starting any proper business was very attention picking but the actual problem he was facing, that was of shortage of financial resources to invest in the business and to start a company. Some of his friends asked him to present his idea in front of CEOs of Merger which was a very well known and prominent company of food industry sector. He met with Antonius Johannes Jurgens and Samuel Van Den Bergh and presented his idea about Unilever.

Unilever

Unilever was co founded by William Lever, Antonius Johannes Jurgens and Samuel Van Den Bergh in the year of 1930 on 1st January. Other founders except William Lever were already running a company named as Margarine Unie which was a food based company and was very well known in Holland. This company was merged with company of William Lever and as a result it became Unilever. It has been more than 80 year since foundation of Unilever and presently it is one of the biggest multinational food industries with branches and stores in more than 70 countries of the world. Presently this company is serving many kinds of goods which include food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products.

Death

He died on 27th of March in the year of 1949 in United Kingdom. At the time of his death, he was almost 61 years of age and he was buried in England in his home town.  He lived just for 19 years after the Unilever foundation but became an influential business pioneer in this short time.