A High School Dropout Builds a Bus Empire After Selling His Car
- Kimi Takura, an outlier in risk-shy Japan, plans IPO next year
- Heisei Enterprises has expanded fleet of buses to 400 from 1
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Kimi Takura quit his fast-paced job as a deliveryman when he was 22 after he was hospitalized for a month with exhaustion. Out of work, he sold his much-loved Jaguar car, bought a secondhand bus and started a one-man business driving Taiwanese tourists around Japan.
He worked every day he could for the next year, ferrying passengers between Tokyo and Osaka, and to Kyoto and other sightseeing spots, when a travel agent offered to lend him money to buy three more buses. Takura’s business boomed so much he found he needed even more.