The Apprentice star ‘proves Lord Sugar wrong’ with company worth over £1,000,000
The Apprentice candidate Amber-Rose Badrudin has revealed she’s already ‘proven Lord Alan Sugar wrong’ after missing out on his £250,000 investment.
The social media star made it to the notorious final five stage, facing a series of brutal interviews from Lord Sugar’s aides before she was ultimately fired from the process alongside Chisola Chitambala and Jordan Dargan.
Anisa Khan and Dean Franklin now have the opportunity to win The Apprentice season 19 and a life-changing sum for their own businesses, but Amber-Rose has claimed she doesn’t need the investment.
The 25-year-old entrepreneur opened South-Asian convenience store OreeMart with her business partner in 2022, and planned to use Lord Sugar’s investment to relaunch their bubble tea franchise.
Despite missing out on the £250,000, she is still set to open the doors to OreeBubbles in Croydon in a few weeks after renovations, telling Metro: ‘I’ve gone ahead with the business plan he said no to so that’s kind of my way of saying, “I’m going to prove him wrong”.’
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She also revealed their original company is now boasting seven figures, saying: ‘When I went on to The Apprentice we were a six-figure business, but during that time, we’ve now turned into a seven-figure business and I’ve opened a new business.
‘So with all of that, I didn’t need the investment.
‘Essentially, I wanted to prove the point that if Lord Sugar wasn’t going to invest in me, I’m going to invest in myself.’
As well as success with the convenience store and bubble tea business, Amber-Rose has grown a huge following on social media, with almost 800,000 followers on TikTok and over 40,000 on Instagram.
Citing her growth on social media since the series has been airing, she said: ‘I worked and worked and worked during the time we filmed to airing because I wanted to prove the point that I could do it by myself.
‘I was successful before going into the process, and I only want to go on to be more successful afterwards.
‘For me, it’s about pushing myself as far as I physically and possibly can, and if anything, it’s given me ammo, because if there is one thing I’m going to do is prove a point!’
Ahead of The Apprentice airing, Amber-Rose had said: ‘If Lord Sugar doesn’t invest in me, he would quite literally be leaving money on the table!’
She’s now stood by her comments, telling Metro: ‘When we first opened OreeMart we were able to generate six figures in six months and that was when we were nothing, we had zero followers and were starting from scratch.’
Now, they have a pre-existing customer base, a strong following, and the ability to ship UK-wide.
‘I really think this is going to explode, I’d love to see us open loads of bubble tea shops around the country, that would be the plan. I did talk about franchising when I was on the show and that is something we probably will go into as well.’
She added: ‘Yes, I didn’t win the investment but in my head I still won because I still went ahead with the business plan anyway.’
Talking about not making the final, Amber-Rose elsewhere said: ‘Obviously it was disappointing because I believe in myself and I am confident that I could have definitely been in that final spot.
‘However, I think Lord Sugar just wasn’t really interested in bubble tea, it’s one of those things where I think he just didn’t understand the vision and couldn’t quite fully get on board with it.
‘There wasn’t really much space for me to move around, I did what I could, and so I left the process with my head held high and the feeling that he didn’t get it but that’s ok because I do, so opened it anyway.’
She added that The Apprentice had been a ‘life-changing experience’, but was ‘an intense, gruelling process’.
‘For me personally, I’ve walked away from the process with a newfound confidence in myself, because it pushes you beyond imagination and you’re thrown in so many different situations that you usually wouldn’t be – nothing can compare to an Apprentice task,’ she added.
Despite the challenges, Amber-Rose never felt like she would quit the series.
‘This has been a life-long dream for me, and they would have to shove me out of there and say “You’re fired” which is exactly what they did for me to actually leave peacefully.
‘I would never have done that of my own accord because I felt like the stakes were too high.
‘The whole point of the process is to challenge you and it is going to take you to breaking point, but it’s what you do when you’re in that situation that really makes or breaks you.’
Ahead of entering the competition, Amber-Rose knew it would be a risk as the first influencer on The Apprentice, and admitted facing difficulties for that reason alone.
‘I think it was a huge risk, I knew that I would be under a lot more scrutiny than my other candidates and that was definitely proven over the last 10 weeks. I’ve definitely been up against it.
‘People have had a misconception of me a little bit, but I think that perception needs to shift and change.
‘I think that we need to stop shaming people for leveraging social media, because it goes hand in hand [with business].
‘There are great entrepreneurs and great businesses who have leveraged social media and I think it’s an insane tool to use, especially when you’re starting off as a budding entrepreneur and you don’t have that brand or platform, taking people along on that journey, showing them that you can make something from nothing is such an incredible, inspirational thing.
‘Lord Sugar himself started off with not much and has created something incredible – imagine if he’d vlogged that! It would have gone crazy on socials, it’s so inspiring.
‘In this new day and age, I wanted to come in as a trailblazer, I wanted to be the first person that showed that actually this is something that you can leverage, and I hope people can take inspiration from that.’
The Apprentice airs Thursdays at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.
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