5 Internet Entrepreneurs of India
- 1. By, Faisal Ahmed Khan MBA- 2nd Sem HKBK-CE 5 Best Indian Entrepreneurs 1
- 2. 1. Housing.com: Rahul Yadav(CEO) Rahul Yadav, Housing.com’s CEO, the 24-year-old from Alwar, Rajasthan, wasn’t the finest, academically: He ranked 20th in a class of 30 in his Class 10 exams. Then a sarcastic comment from his uncle about his grades changed his life. In his Class 12 board exams, Yadav topped Rajasthan in physics- chemistry-maths, based on which he got a 75 percent scholarship for preparing for IIT-JEE. He became class representative in his second year at IIT Bombay and, later, secretary of its student association. A group of boys including Rahul Yadav, CEO, Housing.com & Advitiya Sharma, Co-Founder of Housing.com came down to Mumbai for studies in IIT-B but found it literally impossible to find their accommodation. They spent a month on the roads of Mumbai searching for a decent accommodation but failed! After a long and tiring search they found a house near the IIT-B campus, Powai. 2
- 3. Since they had a good network of potential clients among their IIT friends and batch mates, they become brokers and made INR 1-2 lakhs a month within a short period of time. It was now time for national expansion. But they lacked extensive local knowledge of different cities and states. So a well-planned map-based portal, “housing.co.in” was made open for public in June 2012. “If something doesn’t exist, build it yourself, and if it doesn’t work, move on” –Rahul Yadav, CEO, housing.com 3
- 4. 2. Healthkart.com:Sameer Maheshwari Sameer Maheshwari, 37, and Co- Founder Prashant Tandon, 33, IIT Delhi graduates returned to India from the United States to start Healthchakra.com, a startup focused on scheduling medical appointments. After six months they started wondering whether they had taken the right decision to return, said Maheshwari, who found their business was stagnating. They turned to a few mentors to help them through the rough patch and changed their business model to ecommerce. The pivoted company, now known as Healthkart.com, has recently raised close to $22.5 million (Rs 140 crore) from a group of investors. 4
- 5. 5 Sameer Maheshwari & Prashant Tandon
- 6. 3. Olacabs.com: Bhavish Aggarwal Bhavish graduated with a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2008 and worked at Microsoft Research for 2 years after that, filing 2 patents and publishing 3 papers in International Journals. Sensing the need to change the way transportation is consumed in India and create a choice of reliable personal transportation in a country that's as unique as India, Bhavish quit his job in August 2010 to start Ola! Within 3 years, Ola became India's largest network of personal transportation options and also the most popular app amongst customers and users in over 22 cities of its operations. Bhavish was featured as one of Hindustan Times’ 30 Achievers under 30 as well as in the Forbes India list of 30 under 30. 6
- 7. “I have three key points to share – (a) Take that Chance: Few take the leap to follow their dreams, doubting whether they will make it. But you'll never know unless you take the big step. There will be situations where your actions will have different outputs. Still, believe in what you do. (b) Solve Real Problems: Focus on solving real problems. There will be enough takers for your solutions. You will help make lives of some people better and money will follow. (c) Settle for the Best: Don't take short-cuts while building your company — keep trying for the best,” Mr. Bhavish Aggarwal. 7
- 8. 4. Paytm.com: Vijay Shekhar Sharma With little knowledge of English, tough times in college, to literally living on the streets, this is a story of Vijay Shekhar Sharma, a true inspiration to not just entrepreneurs but to many more. Coming from a small town and hindi-medium educational background, he faced numerous hurdles all through his college days. He passed Class XII at the age of 14 and started his first business venture in his third year at engineering college. Despite the challenges, he managed to start his small internet-based business while in college and later moved on to forming Xs! Corporations in 1999. He later sold this to Lotus Interworks and continued working with them for a year. In December 2000, Sharma founded One97, a company which provides a platform for delivering mobile value-added services. 8
- 9. 9 The headquaters of Paytm is in Delhi. A leading mobile marketplace and mobile wallet company, Paytm has also sought permit for payment banking recently. Interestingly, Sharma reveals the mobile payment business wasn't even on the company's agenda. Paytm is on course to be the first company to get internet giant Alibaba's funding.
- 10. 5. Quikr.com: Pranay Chulet Pranay earned a B. Tech. from IIT Delhi and graduated with a Gold Medal from IIM Calcutta. Pranay worked in Brand Management at P&G in India then he spent eleven years in New York where he was a Principal in the Media Practice at Booz Allen, subsequent to which he founded Zobyx, a company focused on creating unique online content in the entertainment and education sectors. Pranay helped a number of media companies in the US structure internet businesses while he was in management consulting, and closely saw the internet classifieds business grow from its infancy in the late 90s to its current dominating position in the US. Earlier in his career, he also incubated an internet venture at Walker Digital, the company behind Priceline.com. He said “One of the greatest examples of the impact of digital media is Craigslist which came from nowhere and became the phenomenon it is today. 10
- 11. 11 That sort of answers the question “why Quikr”. Because it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. If Craigslist could come to dominate local commerce in the US where most people have credit cards and could also directly buy things online, there is no reason why a platform like Quikr should not be able to dominate local commerce in India where anyway most people don’t have credit cards and/or shy away from pure online purchases. History shows that classifieds businesses grow as societies become affluent and purchase cycles get shorter, so it’s an exciting time to be in this business in India.”
- 12. 12 Thank you