The Success Story Of Naukri Sanjeev Bikhchandani (PGP '89),

The Background Does NOT Matter

• BA Economics• MBA from IIM A• Heard about internet only in 1993.• Rejected IIT• Always dreamt for working for his own.

Know What You Want to Do

• “At that stage, the idea started forming in my head that, look, somewhere along the way, I should be starting a company of my own.”– In his own words speaking about his dream as a 12 years old guy.

Role Of the Other Half

• “I had told Surabhi, even before we got married that I would soon quit and become an entrepreneur. I had told her that we will be living off your salary for quite a while. She was cool with it.” –about stating his business plan to his wife.

He was cool with it. Not all men are. (Rashmi Bansal)

About the Attitude

• The thing with entrepreneurship is you can't afford to have a big ego. You want to stay in business, you do every bit of business that comes along. You want to keep the dream afloat, you don't care what the neighbors and relatives have to say about who wears the pants in your house.

How Do You Get Your BIG Idea

• Ideas can come from anywhere. You could be sitting in a tub and have a eureka moment. Or in a bus or at your dining table.

• That one idea which makes you a brand.

The eureka moment?

• Sitting around in the open plan HMM office Sanjeev would see colleagues flipping through Business India, the leading business magazine of that era. In those days the back of the magazine carried 35 to 40 pages of appointment ads and Sanjeev noticed that everyone read the magazine back to front.

Idea All right BUT..

• There was no way to compile such a database and make it accessible easily and cheaply to users. And so it became one of those 'file and forget' ideas

Hope

• Department of Telecom appeared in the paper. The ad talked about ‘Videotex’ – a service where people would be able to access information stored on a central server from terminals all across Delhi.

First Setback

• Info Edge was shortlisted. A detailed project report with screens, navigation and UI was submitted. Alas, DoT shelved the project.

Don’t Ignore Your Income

• But life went back to the usual - reports, databases, market studies. Standardized stuff sold at a cheap price. Info Edge shifted back to the servant’s quarters from the office in south Delhi it had inhabited for a brief while.

Wow Moment

• Sanjeev visited an exhibition at Pragati Maidan called ‘IT Asia’. Here, he was introduced to the internet for the very first time.

Morality

• The shared server cost 25 dollars a month. In return, Sanjeev gave his brother a 5% share in the company. “He didn't ask for it, but I just thought it was fair”.

Then comes recession

• It was October ‘96 and the recession had hit. The company was back in the red. With one kid in the family and another on the way, Surabhi had also taken a break. By then Sanjeev had taken up a second job at the Pioneer newspaper as consulting editor of the career supplement.

Faith in People

• Saroja looked after operations in the start up team and got a 9% stake.

• Anil became a founding partner of naukri.com with a stake of 7%.

Conditions not Suitable well No Problem

• “For the first six months we did not have an internet connection. We would go to Anil Lall's house with two floppies and he would upload the site. And our promise then was 1,000 jobs minimum on the site. Live and current. No job older then 30 days, all jobs taken from the newspapers.”

Little Joy

• “I put all people, all resources to naukri, and said: ‘This is the future’.”

• “I figured that perhaps this is the Big Idea. India is a large country, large working population, internationally growing.”

Then Comes the Dragon

Luck Favors the Brave

• Just one month prior to dot com bubble roped in Huge capital.

• ICICI Venture Funded valued the firm at 45 cr when the turnover was 36 lakhs.

Adversary ?? Grow More!

• When you truly believe in the fundamental value of a business, it's not about cyclical ups and downs. People need to eat, they need to bathe, they need to get jobs. When the market crashed the bankers put away their jeans and brought back the ties. But the entrepreneur simply rolls up his sleeve and works twice as hard.

Common Sense

• A salesperson costs the company 10,000 rupees salary plus a mobile phone plus conveyance plus office space and use of the computer. All in all, 20,000 bucks a month.

• So if this salesman can recover Rs 25,000 a month, he is contributing.

• WOW Marginal Revenue MODEL

Promise Less Deliver More

• “In the year we made Rs 84 crores (2005-06), our business plan had said we will make Rs 12 crores. So we had massively underestimated our growth. The good bit was that whenever there was an audit in ICICI, on who committed what and is delivering what, we came out smelling like roses.”

Advice To New Entrepreneurs

• Be early.• Do not exaggerate in your business plan.• Get great people.• If you are starting a business to make money,

don't do it.• And do keep in mind that every choice you

make impacts the family.

THANK YOU