Being young is wonderful, but being young and rich on your own merit is a badge. To raise enough capital to start a business and maintain it is among the toughest things. There are young men in India who have risen and managed to start and develop big businesses into empires and fortunes.
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Reams have been written about the world of technology and startups across India and around the globe. Despite that, there are many who managed to reach amazing heights in their field and yet very few people know much about them. There have been those who at a very early age broke the shackles of ‘normal’ and set a unique path for themselves, those who dreamt of starting a company just out of school and then see their dreams blossom and grow into a megacorporation. There are many in India who have dared to dream big and make it happen. Here’s a glimpse into some of those daring Indians, men and women.
Ranjan Pai: Health and Education
He is the man who is the driving force behind the Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG). Ranjan Pai built a billion-dollar education and healthcare business in less than 15 years. He is now turning his attention to investing heavily in tech and the life sciences.
In 2000, he set up business in a small rented house in Bangalore’s famous central district, in a place near MG Road with an initial capital of $200,000. In the next 14 years, his business leapfrogged into a billion-dollar business
Ranjan diversified from the family’s not-forprofit education trust, Manipal Academy of Higher Education and built MEMG.
Ranjan’s success in health care and education—both highly regulated areas—has been hard won. In some part, he owes his accomplishments to what he calls his “wake-up call” when as a teenager he failed to get admission into his family’s institute, the prestigious Kasturba Medical College (KMC) in Manipal. He had no choice but to enroll in a lower-ranked institute before transferring to KMC in his second year. That incident made him realise that he had to make it on his own.
The Pai family has been operating in the field of education for three generations and, under the aegis of Ranjan’s grandfather Dr Tonse Madhava Ananth Pai, it set up India’s first private, selffinanced medical college in 1953. Ranjan graduated with a medical degree from this institute.
Sriram Subramanya: Desktop Dreams
Brought up in India, Sriram grew up in Pondicherry and started work in the auto ancillary business, with postings in Chennai and Bangalore and training in Germany. He is one of the so many entrepreneurs with an interest in the Internet and computers. He was to later shift to desktop publishing, moving into digital content from print designs. In fact, Sriram’s wife sold her jewellery to fund his business and his company Integra. Keeping a tight control on quality, precision and business culture, Sriram was able to fast-track his company into one of the world’s Top 10 companies in the publishing BPO sector. Through his desktop publishing business, Sriram was able to notch up huge profits, making him one of the grand rich young Indians of business
Turakhias: Cowboys of the Internet
It is not often that Internet entrepreneurs dodge the glare of arc lights to seal deals in the millions, not once but twice over. Brothers Bhavin and Divyank Turakhia, who snagged a nearly billion dollar payout for their online venture are that rare breeds of founders who in over a decade and a half have built a dozen firms, exited five, netted returns of over $1 billion and still managed to stay largely unknown.
And all this, not because they shy away from glitz and glamour. They boast a collection of homes across the globe, snazzy cars and private planes.
Media.net, the latest from Turakhias’ portfolio of businesses, which was sold to a Chinese consortium led by Beijing Miteno Communication Technology Chairman Zhiyong Zhang, has hosted parties for its clients at the Playboy Mansion, famed for being a venue for lavish celebrations.
Such spectacular returns have become the norm for the brothers, whose Directi Group, which doesn’t have any external investors, is now estimated to be worth $1.4 billion. Directi, the company they launched in 1998 with money borrowed from and since returned to their father, was the first to hit the big time. Bhavin did not even bother to finish school simply because he did not value or see the importance of such an education.
Farrhad A: Rockstah
He is the budding ‘Rockstah’ of the entrepreneurial world. While most 15 year-olds struggle with school and the demands of those adolescent years, this youngster handles more than what most adults do or possibly can. Though Farrhad answered his ICSE examination only recently, he is one of India’s youngest entrepreneurs. In addition, he has been ranked by micro-blogging and social networking website Twitter as one of the country’s most-followed ‘Twitterers’.
Farrhad is the founder of Rockstah Media, a web development firm that satisfies clients’ media needs. His experience and youthful perspective are best summed up by his description of his work: “We conceive, conceptualise, visualise and materialise awesomeness on the web. We offer top-of-the-line custom website designs and even market sites and products — from scratch to the sky.”
The internet as we know it has more than its share of websites; and Farrhad believes that to be noticed, one needs more than just a few nice pictures. “Every day, thousands of websites are created. People nowadays understand the importance of professional websites, which stand out from and give them an edge over the rest. This is what Rockstah Media is targeting for is clients. We also offer marketing services, which means that we are a complete service station. And being noticed online brings added value,” this young entrepreneur said.
Amritanshu Anand: Retention
Amritanshu is the founder of Retention Company, which deals majorly with applications concerning their performance and impact on society. Retention.ai was in fact founded by four friends and IIT Kharagpur alumni – Amritanshu Anand, Anshul Singhle, Manan Shah and Abhimanyu Dikshit. They launched their enterprise in 2013 and since have worked on more than 12.5 million devices.
Earlier this year, they had raised Series A funding from Mercury Fund, with participation from angel investors like Anshu Sharma (Ex-VP Salesforce, Venture Partner Storm Ventures), Pratyush Prasanna (Ex-VP PayTM) and Punit Soni (Chief Product Officer, Flipkart). The startup was also a part of TLabs accelerator.
Today Amritanshu features amongst the Top 10 Richest Young India Entrepreneurs.
Syed Balkhi: WPBeginner
Founder of WPBeginner, Syed is one more entrepreneur who has made it good in the Web and Internet business. His love for the Web from an early age made Syed turn that into a fastgrowing and successful business. The WPBeginner story began in 2006 when he first discovered WordPress while searching for a blogging platform. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the platform. In 2008, he decided to use WordPress for all his client websites.
This came with a set of challenges: PDF guides and 1-on-1 walk-throughs were incredibly time consuming and inefficient. He then scoured the web to find a resource that could help clients and other new WordPress users. At the time, most WordPress tutorials were written by developers for developers. That’s why he launched the WPBeginner on July 4, 2009, as a resource targeted for WordPress beginners and DIY users.
Since then, WPBeginner has become the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry. Syed has designed and developed websites for some of the big names in the industry in India and around the world. He owns Uzzz Productions, a company with huge profits and growth.
Ankit Oberoi: AdPushup
New Delhi-based entrepreneur Ankit Oberoi has been launching Internet startups for nearly a decade. Like many entrepreneurs, Ankit wears many hats; he describes himself as a programmer, online marketer, webmaster, and growth hacker. His current venture, AdPushup is an A/B testing tool for Web publishers. He has graciously agreed to take some time to share his thoughts on entrepreneurship and Web revenue monetisation. Ankit decided to leave school early and never really reflected on the importance of a formal education as he felt that school was a waste of time since he had already found a whole new world on the Internet.
Sameer Gehlaut: Indiabulls
Born on the 3rd of March 1974; Sameer Gehlaut, with a net worth of US$ 1.2 billion is the Founder of Indiabulls Group.
Described as “India’s youngest self-made billionaire” by Forbes, Sameer serves as the Chairman of the group, which holds its presence in sectors ranging from Real Estate, Infrastructure, Housing Finance, and Securities.
As of 2015; with a staffing of 7000 employees, the group holds a market valuation of more than Rs 34,000 crores
Indiabulls is also said to be one of the highest dividend paying groups amongst the Indian listed promoter owned group/companies.
Born in Rohtak, Haryana; Sameer is a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering from IIT (Delhi), and now lives with wife Divya Gehlaut and two children in Mumbai. His father Balwan Singh Gehlaut was once known to be a powerful mining businessman of his times.
SIX WOMEN WHO ROCKED INDIAN STARTUPS
There was a time in the Nineties when a lot of women were experimenting with some of the business based on the distribution model such as Amway and Oriflame. Things have come a long way since. Today, women are rocking the boat by taking on businesses which so far were known to be male-dominated.
In fact the startup business has been a huge equalizer providing a level playing field to so many women with innovative ideas and business acumen. We profile six such women who have been ruling the Indian startup scene with some great disruptive ideas – from being a software developer to a recruiter, from travelling alone for days and evaluating hotels in small cities to someone who is helping women pamper themselves or the one who helps with messages even after life.
Sakshi Tulsian: POSist
She and her husband wanted to start a restaurant venture, but were able to find any good software for it. From that need, emerged POSist which is a Cloud-based management software that automates almost all restaurant operations, including online reservation, inventory management, and billing. The programme covers every need for all types and sizes of food outlets. And like so many good business ideas that come out of filling a void, POSist too was the proverbial necessity is the mother of all invention. It was designed to fill the major gap to work out a workable hotel management software.
Nidhi Agarwal: Desing N Buy
Design ‘N’ Buy provides high-end e-commerce software solutions for B2B and B2C companies such as print service providers, trade printers, and distributors. Remember the time you got cool personalised messages on a t-shirt or mug? Design ‘N’ Buy builds web-to-print software to empower corporate websites to automate that. You can get a tailored web-to-print solution to design caps, t-shirts, banners, posters, greetings, mobile covers, and much more. You just need to plug in this printing and designing software to your website and you’re set.
The idea behind Design ‘N’ Buy came to Nidhi Agarwal, a quintessential small town girl who overcame all obstacles, from learning English to mastering open source technologies, to actualise her dream. Today she is heading a 30+ team with over 500 projects to her credit.
Design ‘N’ Buy is already ruling the personalised merchandise scene in the US with 80 per cent of their clientele coming from California, Texas, Florida and New York. Nidhi has built a woman-centric team because early in the game she understood the women’s potential and ability to multi-task with ease.
Almas Khan: VTest
VTest provides software testing services accompanied by detailed test reports and a digital certificate. Their business is restricted only to testing, a niche software development pain point.
Director and COO Almas Khan started out in the recruitment field but grew increasingly interested in tech. In the middle of a few lifechanging scenarios and a break from work, she found herself sitting at home, doing nothing. Initially, she did testing pro-bono for a friend. Soon, she realised this was what she wanted to do, and VTest was born. With her USP of focusing on “what not to do” VTest has made major inroads towards becoming a major player in the app testing business.
Ankita Sheth: Vista Rooms
Vista Rooms is a niche business that offers lowcost luxury accommodation in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities across India. Launched in April 2015, their website now offers stays in more than 70 cities and over 500 hotels.
Theirs is a budget business model; so, they are leveraging existing platforms instead of making heavy investments, unlike competitors. For instance, instead of creating a standalone app, they created a complete app experience on Instagram that allows everything from browsing to booking to sharing reviews.
Co-founder Ankita Sheth travelled for one and a half month to various small cities and experienced the true horrors of bad hospitability. Slowly but surely, she and her partners put together a plan for offering standardised hospitality and making pleasant budget travel a reality in India.
Niharika Jhunjhunwala: Sugarbox
Sugarbox is a gift subscription service, a first of its kind service in India that allows women to indulge themselves). All you need to do is subscribe, and you’ll get gifts – which could be fashion, beauty, lifestyle and gourmet products – handpicked by in-house stylists every month. That’s not all, you don’t know what your box contains is until it is delivered. Every month, Sugarbox has a new theme for the goodies.
It’s been barely over a year since Niharika Jhunjhunwala started Sugarbox, but the business is doing pretty well with 30-40 per cent monthon-month subscription growth.
Niharika feels extremely happy about being able to spoil women, and now that she has cornered the market in metro cities, she is looking forward to capturing a slice of Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
Vedika Goel: With You
Although the idea of this startup is a little morbid, it is beyond doubt one of the most disruptive ideas in a very long time. A website to leave a message for your loved ones after your death, in a country like India, seems as strange to us as the idea of snake charmers to the west.
Nevertheless, Vedika Goel went on and gave shape to this thoughtful idea, and created With You. So many things happen today – heart attacks, accidents, etc. – that snatch away lives and worlds in a fleeting moment. With You allows you to leave messages for your loved ones – it might be a secret that you don’t want to take to your grave, a financial will, or just that “I love you” that you never got around to saying.
Vedika calls it the insurance of emotions; saying that her venture takes care of the emotions of people that are left behind when someone passes away