At the age of 23, Daniel Radcliffe embarked on an extraordinary journey.
He quit his job in New Zealand and traveled to Kenya to volunteer as a teacher in the North Rift region. Little did he know that the trip would be the catalyst for a life-changing idea, ultimately leading to his multimillion business.
In an interview with Stratford Press, a New Zealand media outlet, Radcliffe narrated his journey, indicating how the Kenyan trip birthed his business, International Volunteer HQ.
From a young age, Radcliffe aspired to challenge himself, and this decision would influence the choices he would make throughout his life.
After graduating from the University of Otago with a Bachelor of Commerce and Master of Business, he took a job through a corporate graduate programme.
Shortly after, Radcliffe stated that he realised the business wasn't meant for him and quit after a few days.
"I call it my quarter-life crisis. I’d spent nearly five years studying, and now I was in the workplace and wasn’t sure it was what I wanted. I quit after a few days. I wanted to take myself out of my comfort zone, so I went to Africa to volunteer," he noted.
“ Why Africa? Because it seemed daunting. Africa wasn’t a place I knew. Really the only knowledge I had from it was from the news, and that normally didn’t give the best image of the place. Kenya appealed the most, so I started looking for organisations that arranged volunteer experiences there.”
Radcliffe observed during his research that all the companies he looked at offered expensive packages. He noted that he was paying more to go overseas and volunteer than to go on a holiday.
"Once I got to Kenya and talked to people there, I realised the companies were overcharging."
The businessman flew back to New Zealand in 2007, inspired by the idea of venturing into the volunteer travel industry.
While in Uruti, New Zealand, he took out a Ksh4.5 million loan to launch the business. He used the funds to set up a professional website and hired an outsourced marketing team to promote the service.
"When I set it up, the big companies at the time were doing about 2,000 people a year and I was a one-man band then, so I thought if I could do 200 people in my first year that would be a great result."
According to Radcliffe, he projected the business to have 2,000 clients within a year. He noted that his company grew from 400 clients in the first year to over 20,000 people using his company to travel overseas and conduct volunteer services.
He was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 in recognition of his success and was inducted into the World Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in 2015.
