Carlos Wizard Martins

Carlos Wizard Martins is close to making the ranks of The World’s Billionaires, according to Forbes Magazine. [1]  As stated in Forbes, Martin’s share of “his language company, Multi Group, is worth close to $700 million today (his various language school franchises include Wizard, Skill, Alps, Quatrum and Yazigi).”  Brazil ranks very low in its citizens’ ability to communicate in English, the language of world commerce.  And yet, Brazil is one of the top five economic powerhouses in the world.

Martins, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, started off as a teacher.  He grew up in Campinas, Brazil, and learned to speak English through Mormon missionaries at age 12. Fascinated by English, he took off to New Jersey at age 17 and began working as a waiter while practicing his English. He served a mission for the Mormon or LDS Church, and then taught Portuguese and studied computer science.  He settled back in Brazil as an executive for a paper company, and he began to teach English informally to friends and associates.  Eventually, the money he was charging for English lessons exceeded the money he earned at work, and Martins quit his corporate position.  He called his new language school, “Wizard.”

With the motto, “speak English in 24 hours,”  Martins began franchising the learning system.  The group has aggressively expanded in the last five years, acquiring more schools.  The schools now teach computer classes and various second language classes, some even outside Brazil (already in China, the US, Japan, Mexico and four other countries, they most recently announced another school opening in Panama). [1]

Grupo Multi has grown into a massive company boasting about $1.4 billion in revenues in 2010. It has 45,000 employees throughout Brazil and 3,500 school franchises servicing 1.4 million students a year. Last year it announced that an investment branch of Brazil’s Banco Itau was investing R$200 million (about $125 million) in Grupo Multi for a 15% stake in the company. Now there are talks of a potential IPO, something Martins says could happen this year or next.

Currently, only 2% of Brazil’s population is bilingual, and the country will be hosting an Olympic games soon.  Martins’ dream is to transform Brazil into a bilingual country.