It took Sanjeev Bikhchandani seven years of struggle to put together the jobs portal, Naukri.com. But today Info Edge is a hugely successful internet business leader in the country

I come from a family of working professionals, but I always knew that I would run my own business. I had been working at GlaxoSmithKline for almost two years when I quit my job. I was 27 years old, had five years of work experience, an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, and a fuzzy goal to start something of my own. I knew that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life chasing a one-foot longer car, or an address a few kilometres away from where I lived. So, I finally told my boss that I was moving out on my own. Later, he became my first client. At the time my wife, Surabhi, my batchmate from IIM-A, was working. We were living at my parents’ house, so I knew we would manage. A friend and I started two companies— Info Edge and Indmark. When I was at IIM-A, I escorted companies around the campus during placements and saw them fight over students. That’s when it struck me that a survey of the salaries being offered to fresh MBA talent would really sell. My partner had worked with his uncle, a trademarks attorney. In those days, trademarks were searched for at the registry in Mumbai, which kept manual records; it was a time-consuming and unreliable process. My partner knew that pharma companies were the largest users of this search. So, we decided to upload the information on pharma trademarks, and offer computerised searches. We used the money from salary surveys to fund this entire exercise. I wrote the software myself, looking at examples from my IIM-A textbooks. Neither my partner nor I took a penny out of the company in the first three years. I was really afraid initially; going back to a job would only have confirmed that I had failed. That’s what kept me going. In 1993, my partner and I went separate ways; he kept the trademarks company and I kept the salary survey business. I moved my office back into the servant quarter of my parents’ house and started life over. In our early years, we had made a pitch to the Department of Telecom to create a jobs database. That project, though, got cancelled. Then in 1996, I stumbled upon the internet at a fair in Pragati Maidan. I found out how I could start a site like that and was told that I would need a server connection and that all servers were in USA. My brother lived there, so I asked him to buy me server space. I got a friend to help me build the website and put it on the net. By April 1997, we had launched Naukri.com. We got traffic even though we were simply culling job information from newspapers and posting it on the site. When people applied for those jobs, our website was mentioned as a reference. That’s when various companies started taking interest in what we were doing. I then offered to advertise their vacancies at `350 a listing. In our first year of operation, Naukri earned a revenue of `2.5 lakh. By the next year, that figure jumped to `18 lakh. That’s when we decided to focus only on Naukri. By then, my wife had stopped working and our second child had arrived. Naukri was sucking up all the money, so I had to take up another job. Chandan Mitra, the editor of Pioneer, asked me to work on a marketing supplement, which I did for four years. By mid-1999, people started showing an interest in investing in our company. Some of these NRI investors were ready to pump in a million dollars. But once I heard their math, back into the servant quarter of my parents’ house and started life over. In our early years, we had made a pitch to the Department of Telecom to create a jobs database. That project, though, got cancelled. Then in 1996, I stumbled upon the internet at a fair in Pragati Maidan. I found out how I could start a site like that and was told that I would need a server connection and that all servers were in USA. My brother lived there, so I asked him to buy me server space. I got a friend to help me build the website and put it on the net. By April 1997, we had launched Naukri.com. We got traffic even though we were simply culling job information from newspapers and posting it on the site. When people applied for those jobs, our website was mentioned as a reference. That’s when various companies started taking interest in what we were doing. I then offered to advertise their vacancies at `350 a listing. In our first year of operation, Naukri earned a revenue of `2.5 lakh. By the next year, that figure jumped to `18 lakh. That’s when we decided to focus only on Naukri. By then, my wife had stopped working and our second child had arrived. Naukri was sucking up all the money, so I had to take up another job. Chandan Mitra, the editor of Pioneer, asked me to work on a marketing supplement, which I did for four years. By mid-1999, people started showing an interest in investing in our company. Some of these NRI investors were ready to pump in a million dollars. But once I heard their math, back into the servant quarter of my parents’ house and started life over. In our early years, we had made a pitch to the Department of Telecom to create a jobs database. That project, though, got cancelled. Then in 1996, I stumbled upon the internet at a fair in Pragati Maidan. I found out how I could start a site like that and was told that I would need a server connection and that all servers were in USA. My brother lived there, so I asked him to buy me server space. I got a friend to help me build the website and put it on the net. By April 1997, we had launched Naukri.com. We got traffic even though we were simply culling job information from newspapers and posting it on the site. When people applied for those jobs, our website was mentioned as a reference. That’s when various companies started taking interest in what we were doing. I then offered to advertise their vacancies at `350 a listing. In our first year of operation, Naukri earned a revenue of `2.5 lakh. By the next year, that figure jumped to `18 lakh. That’s when we decided to focus only on Naukri. By then, my wife had stopped working and our second child had arrived. Naukri was sucking up all the money, so I had to take up another job. Chandan Mitra, the editor of Pioneer, asked me to work on a marketing supplement, which I did for four years. By mid-1999, people started showing an interest in investing in our company. Some of these NRI investors were ready to pump in a million dollars. But once I heard their math,back into the servant quarter of my parents’ house and started life over. In our early years, we had made a pitch to the Department of Telecom to create a jobs database. That project, though, got cancelled. Then in 1996, I stumbled upon the internet at a fair in Pragati Maidan. I found out how I could start a site like that and was told that I would need a server connection and that all servers were in USA. My brother lived there, so I asked him to buy me server space. I got a friend to help me build the website and put it on the net. By April 1997, we had launched Naukri.com. We got traffic even though we were simply culling job information from newspapers and posting it on the site. When people applied for those jobs, our website was mentioned as a reference. That’s when various companies started taking interest in what we were doing. I then offered to advertise their vacancies at `350 a listing. In our first year of operation, Naukri earned a revenue of `2.5 lakh. By the next year, that figure jumped to `18 lakh. That’s when we decided to focus only on Naukri. By then, my wife had stopped working and our second child had arrived. Naukri was sucking up all the money, so I had to take up another job. Chandan Mitra, the editor of Pioneer, asked me to work on a marketing supplement, which I did for four years. By mid-1999, people started showing an interest in investing in our company. Some of these NRI investors were ready to pump in a million dollars. But once I heard their math, back into the servant quarter of my parents’ house and started life over. In our early years, we had made a pitch to the Department of Telecom to create a jobs database. That project, though, got cancelled. Then in 1996, I stumbled upon the internet at a fair in Pragati Maidan. I found out how I could start a site like that and was told that I would need a server connection and that all servers were in USA. My brother lived there, so I asked him to buy me server space. I got a friend to help me build the website and put it on the net. By April 1997, we had launched Naukri.com. We got traffic even though we were simply culling job information from newspapers and posting it on the site. When people applied for those jobs, our website was mentioned as a reference. That’s when various companies started taking interest in what we were doing. I then offered to advertise their vacancies at `350 a listing. In our first year of operation, Naukri earned a revenue of `2.5 lakh. By the next year, that figure jumped to `18 lakh. That’s when we decided to focus only on Naukri. By then, my wife had stopped working and our second child had arrived. Naukri was sucking up all the money, so I had to take up another job. Chandan Mitra, the editor of Pioneer, asked me to work on a marketing supplement, which I did for four years. By mid-1999, people started showing an interest in investing in our company. Some of these NRI investors were ready to pump in a million dollars. But once I heard their math, I realised that it didn't work for me—I had taken 10 years to reach that stage and they wanted to list us on the NASDAQ the next summer. However, we changed our minds in 2000, when a competitor launched its operations with an ad campaign that cost twice our annual turnover. We got `7 crore from ICICI Venture. From there on, Naukri gained a momentum of its own. But there’s no denying the early struggle—for six years, the company couldn’t pay me a salary, but we learned to live with uncertainty and still keep our cool. Entrepreneurship is about a few basic things. The first is persistence; it’s all about keeping at it. The second is ‘first mover, early mover’. And the third thing I believe is that it’s ok to start small. That way, you make your mistakes when the cost of those mistake is still low. Last year we had 42,000 users and this year we may see that go up by 10-15 per cent. We’ve also invested in about six start-ups. The major goal is to stay the dominant internet company of India. As for me, I gave up the CEO’s job in 2010. Now I look at external investments and work with younger companies, entrepreneurs and so on.

I Wish I Could...

I’ve always been interested in education. I have done some teaching at various business schools. If I wasn't an entrepreneur, I’m sure I would have been a professor somewhere.