Indian American entrepreneur couple are ‘Harry and Sejal’ of online business world

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NEW YORK – Although a flop at the box office and a major disappointment for Shah Rukh Khan fans, Imtiaz Ali’s recent film Jab Harry Met Sejal, which also stars Anushka Sharma, is about a Punjabi guy who meets a Gujarati girl in Europe.

Upon reaching the airport with her family, Sejal realizes she has lost her engagement ring and asks Harry to take her back to all of the tourists’ spots they visited to look for her ring and in the process the two fall in love with each other.

Within a week of the release of the film, News India Times identified a ‘real’ Harry and Sejal: Sonny Ahuja and Ami Ahuja (Patel).

When Ami came to the U.S. with her family in 1997, they had no money and were living at her aunt’s house from where they used to travel by bus to get groceries in the snowy days of winter.

Being the eldest child in a family who was in search of a new life in the U.S., Ami started off by working three jobs a day until she stumbled upon a job at a perfume store in Wisconsin, which Sonny owned and even though she joined in September, it wasn’t until December that she saw him for the first time when he came to give her the inventory.

Then, when their district manager left, Ami took over the business handling all five stores they owned and they started doing 13 trade shows a year for 9 years. While travelling together on business, they eventually fell in love and got married in 2006.

After their business started declining in-store due to the online shopping boom, they decided to launch it online and since they were not experienced in the field of e-commerce, they had to learn the basics of it first, including SEO, so they could get traffic online.

“I knew how to get traffic in the store but not online,” Ami said, in an interview tyo News India Times, adding that they started their business online in 2009 and after gaining much confidence, closed down their last store in 2011.

Today, their business is thriving and they want to help other entrepreneurs start their online businesses so they don’t have to face similar types of problems.

Both husband and wife are also bloggers; Sonny provides tips on business while Ami writes about how to find love and happiness.

Sonny is a Social Media Trainer in his own online business KiLLitOnLine.com where he coaches members and clients on how to use Social Media to increase their business revenue.

He is also involved with High Converting Websites, Google AdWords and SEO at SonnyAhuja.com and Social Media Leap where he helps individuals and companies increase their web presence, revenue and personal brand by developing search engine optimized High Converting websites & blogs.

He also manages Pay Per Click & SEO campaigns for some prominent companies all over America along with consulting, coaching and training individuals and companies on Pay Per Click, SEO, Twitter, Facebook, Blogging and YouTube through boot camps, workshops and online webinars.

Sonny has been the President and CEO of GrandPerfumes.com for almost 21 years and was on the Board of Directors for the Better Business Bureau Wisconsin in the Greater Milwaukee Area for one and a half years.

Sonny was recently given the title of being one of Milwaukee’s 6-Pack. This is a distinct honor given to the top 6 “need-to-know” people in the city who are considered to be “Milwaukee’s Most Well-Connected” by The Milwaukee Press Club.

In addition, he is a member in good standing with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association and wants to expand his business into other states and areas to help smaller businesses become bigger on the online platform.

Ami works from home on her own schedule and helps her husband run his Social Media Business at www.SocialMediaLeap.com as well as www.KiLLiTOnLine.com.

In the past she ran for Mrs. Wisconsin and received 3 out of 5 awards along with writing a book called Live Positively with Ami’s Umbrella: 8 Easy Ways to Jump-Start Your Happiness, where she talks about her own struggles and how she has never lost hope in the hardships of life.

Ami says she gets her inspiration of never giving up from her mother who is a breast cancer survivor and has realized that having the support of her family and friends was what empowered her in her battle.

From that, Ami has started a woman’s group called A Woman’s Journey at meetup.com/awomansjourney/, which has over 1,036 members where she organizes free monthly events for them, calling in different guest speakers who talk on topics that will empower, motivate and help women and intends to expand her group from a small local community to a national and eventually an international level within the next two years.

Together, Sonny and Ami say they have become the first couple in the world to have a social media/internet marketing related membership site that keeps its members up dated on Social Media and Internet Marketing for less than one dollar a day and their business; GrandPerfumes.com, is a website that carries the largest variety of designer perfumes and Colognes worldwide.

Sonny is originally from New Delhi and has a B.A. in Marketing from the College of Vocational Studies while Ami is from Ahmedabad, Gujarat and has a Bachelors in Commerce from Indira Gandhi National Open University. They have four children.