UMER ASHRAF should really take a taste of his own medicine. The brains behind iCafe looks around the coffee shop he opened as a teenager and declares that he started out with a plan to build a place "that he would want to go to relax".

From the number of people battling for a seat in his Great Western Road premises on this particular Monday morning, it seems he's got the brew right.

But the place he designed with a mind for unwinding has stopped the 23-year-old from doing just that.

In less than four years he has gone from a boy with a big idea and a big overdraft to a man who presides over three coffee shops across the West End, has just launched a training company, and has had just one proper night off in 1460 days.

COFFEE BREAKS . . . Five other homegrown success stories TINDERBOX LAUNCHED, with a little help from Glasgow coffee traders Matthew Algie and Carlo Ventisei, in 1998, the first cafe, on Byres Road, was an instant hit. The formula was simple, everything that was in the chrome plated shop was for sale - including the Vespa scooter hanging in the window. A second operation has since opened in the Merchant City. TAPA NEW ZEALANDERS Virginia Webb and Robert Winters have become cult figures in the East End of the city. The duo opted for Whitehill Street in Dennistoun to open their Tapa organic bakery and coffee shop instead of the more obvious choice of the West End or Strathbungo. It has done them no harm, with people travelling from far and wide to visit their establishment. FIFI & ALLY COUSINS Fiona Hamilton and Alison Fielding launched their cafe, bar and shop Fifi & Ally in Princes Square in 2005. Tapping into the yummy mummy' market of ladies who want to see and be seen, the place became a huge hit, to the extent that the pair have now opened a dedicated restaurant in Wellington Street and there is talk of expanding the brand to the rest of the UK. COPPUCINO COATBRIDGE businessman Gavin Wright knew that Glasgow's old blue police boxes deserved a better end than becoming spaces for fly posting so created Coppucino - coffee takeaways built into the old boxes. Starting with a box at the Botanics, there is now one on Buchanan Street and he has taken on the rights to all of the city's remaining boxes. WILLOW TEAROOMS ANNE MULHERN'S decision to reopen Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Willow Tearooms 25 years ago has proved to be a big success. A quarter of a century on from reviving the art nouveau salon in Sauchiehall Street it is still going strong, with its Buchanan Street sister shop celebrating 10 years of success this year.

And that night off was to collect a gong at the Asian Business Awards, for which the Evening Times was media partner.

"I find it tough to switch off but it is in the genes I think," smiles Umer, as his phone beeps for the fourth time in 10 minutes.

"My mum Farah has always been a worker. Even though she is in her 50s she works with the heart of a 21-year-old.

"Even though I tell her to take it easy, stop working and start enjoying life, she looks at me and says: what do you mean? this is enjoying myself!'"

Umer is always smiling. It is the first thing you notice when you meet him. But then with a flat on the South Side, a black 4x4 parked outside, and a nice line in digital gadgets in his manbag, some would say the 23-year-old has plenty to beam about.

But his jovial style hides the hard slog and the nomadic upbringing that led him here.

With family in the Middle and Far East, he spent the first few years of his life in Hong Kong before moving, aged eight, to Pakistan.

He remembers his age clearly. It was the year that the first flashes of his entrepreneurial spirit burst into life.

"My first business venture came on the playing fields in my school - selling friendship bracelets," he laughs.

"One of my best friends was a girl. She taught me how to make friendship bands.

"I said to my mum, these are really fun to make.

It started as a hobby but soon I realised that there was demand for them. So I started selling them for five rupees."

But the friendships formed on the school playing fields were left behind when, shortly before his 12th birthday, the family made the decision to move to Britain, living first in Middlesex, before migrating north to Liverpool.

Culturally, socially and financially the move brought a shock to the Ashraf family, who were well to do back in Pakistan.

"We were very comfortable in Pakistan but my family felt that there were greater opportunities for us here," he explains.

"But moving here, well, it was hard. The exchange rate meant all we had was worthless.

"All the money my family had made and saved was used up in two weeks. So we really had nothing.

"I was working from the moment I got here.

"My first job was working in a Chinese restaurant doing the washing up.

"I was in the middle of my GCSEs waking at 6.30am, leaving for school at 7.30am, coming back home at 3.30pm then heading out to start work at 5pm at the restaurant and finish at 12.30pm, almost every day of the week.

"The money wasn't for me - it went to the family. We needed to save to build our lives."

His mum and dad had originally seen the move to Liverpool as a stop-gap measure. But it lasted for four years.

Despite not complaining and achieving grades that could get him into university, Umer even admits it was tough going.

But Umer, and his younger siblings Aliem and Amna were getting older. His parents had to make a decision, if Liverpool was meant to be stop-gap then they would have to make a move now.

They moved. And headed for Glasgow.

His mum opened a hair and beauty salon on the South Side while Umer headed to university to study telecommunications.

It was during his studies that the idea for a coffee chain that had internet access and allowed people to work on their dissertation or write e-mails home over a cappuccino.

But rather than waiting until he had graduated to pursue his idea degree was finished, a teenage Umer decided to take the chance to create his vision in the middle of his finals.

"My mum is always the optimistic one. Give things a try, but my dad Malik is the realist, asking what if?," says Umer.

"But they both have the attitude of: well, see how it goes, if it doesn't work it doesn't change who you are or means you've failed. It means it wasn't the right path for you."

So he gave it a try, setting up in a corner of a video store on Great Western Road. In less than a year his annex consumed the rest of the block - iCafe was born.

There is another coffee shop on Gibson Street and work has just finished on the third on Argyle Street, marking the company's transition from a small to a medium enterprise, employing 50 people.

He's also just launched a new venture called Bellissima, a beauty training academy which calls on his own asian heritage and his mum's business skills.

"If I can't bring the experience and what I've learned in 23 years of my life into something then I shouldn't be doing it," he says.

"The point for me is to have passion for the thing that I'm working on and to do that I need to be happy with it.

"That's why with the cafes we don't serve alcohol and we don't serve pork. It is something that conflicts with my beliefs.

"But I don't shout about it. Advisors and suppliers can say, but if you did this you would make an extra x amount'.

"If you just think about money you lose sight of your reasons for setting up in business in the first place - and lose sight of what is important to you.

"Integrity and how you treated others is important."

It is for this reason that Umer is delighted by the fact that his staff call him by his first name, and staff turnover is low.

And his approach seems to be working. He was named young achiever of the year at the Asian Business Awards, turning him from glorified barista to business doyenne, featuring in Asian lifestyle magazines and being asked to offer his tips to the trade press.

Such adulation should have turned him into one of those abrasive characters that you find on the Apprentice, but he is such a likeable person It is nigh on impossible to find fault.

The only person who might take issue with him is his girlfriend. On the rare moments he does take some time out with her he is often staring over her shoulder, watching how the restaurant or bar they are visiting does business.

Or worse, stopping in mid-conversation to write a note in his big book of ideas - his equivalent of Bob Monkhouse's famous joke book. But he has made a vow to his family and friends that he will take the foot of the gas.

"This year I've made a promise to take it easier," he smiles.

"I'll take a holiday. I'll sit-in for a cup of coffee rather than order it to go."