2012-06-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

Inspiring 50 Entrepreneurs of India

Deep Kalra - MakeMyTrip.com

He made instant booking of tickets a general phenomena.

The past decade has witnessed a humongous behavioral change among Indian travelers. And the change was induced by MakeMytrip.

Deep Kalra, MakeMyTrip.com

Started with the aim to empower the Indian traveller with instant booking and comprehensive choices, it has made online travel booking a common practice among Indians who until lately were inclined to research online while they only trusted traditional modes of payment for making payments.

Founded by Deep Kalra, an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, in a small office in Okhla, Delhi, MakeMyTrip started its journey in the US-India travel market in 2000 and its Indian operations in 2005. It offers its customers a bouquet of travel services and products with international and domestic airline tickets, Indian railways tickets, domestic bus tickets, international and domestic hotel reservations, car rentals, international and domestic holiday packages, and much more.

Just about a decade since its inception, the online travel agency has captured an enviable chunk of 48 percent in the online travel market. Today it is one of the most preferred names in the industry with one out of every twelve domestic flights in India booked via it. Currently, it has offices in 20 cities across India and two international offices in New York and San Francisco, in addition to several franchise locations.

While the core proposition of best deals to its customers at their convenience has helped the enterprise grab adequate attention, what has truly made the initiative a phenomenal success in the industry is the series of conscious and deliberate steps taken at the right time by the management. For instance, the enterprise’s decision to grow the high-margin non-air business by offering holidays and online hotel bookings beyond just selling air-tickets has been crucial in maintaining the growth rate. Kalra says, “While the initial growth driver for MakeMyTrip was air tickets category, we could foresee that the ridiculously low costs were not sustainable for airlines in the long run. Therefore, we also made efforts to grow the non-air business.”

Again, its decision to not market itself in India but exclusively target the NRIs and the US-India travel sector initially has paid off well.“By focusing solely on the NRI market, we managed to conserve precious marketing dollars while our competitors burned their fingers in a premature online market,” he tells us.

However, the Indian domestic market was soon ready to bring home the experience of buying tickets online. MakeMyTrip decided to launch its Indian operation in 2005. Kalra says, “We decided to launch in India with our own money. We had around Rs2 crore in the bank and we thought that we should do it.” But ultimately, they didn’t deploy their own money and instead went for private equity. “We realized that in the long run, India was going to be a hot market and all the big players would be investing in online travel which would make it important for us to focus on technology and build the brand to sustain us,” says the content entrepreneur.

Fact Sheet

Name of the Founder: Deep Kalra
Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi (1990) & MBA (PGDM) from IIM-A (1992)
Company: MakeMyTrip.com
Year of Inception: Launched in the US in 2000. Launched in India in September 2005
Products/ Services:
- International and Domestic Air Tickets, Holiday Packages, Hotels- Domestic Bus and Rail Tickets- Private Car and Taxi Rentals: MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, & Exhibitions)- B2B and Affiliate Services
Key Clients: B2C brand
Topline: US $ 465 Million
Bottomline: Revenue US $ 40.23 Million, Net Loss of US $ 6.21 Million
YoY Growth:In February 2011, revenue increased by 56.7% year over year to $35.8 million. Revenue less service cost increased by $6.4 million to $17.3 million, representing a growth of 59.2% year over year
Investors: SAIF (SB Asia Investment Fund), Helion Venture Partners, Sierra Ventures, Tiger Fund
IPO: Listed on NASDAQ in August 2010
Expansion Plans: In Feb 2011 MakeMyTrip.com acquired Singapore-based travel firm Luxury Tours & Travel Pte Limited (LTT)
Biggest Mistake: Could have launched in India 6-12 months earlier

Business Milestones

Launch of MakeMyTrip in US in - 2000
Setting up of India operations in - 2005
Successfully listing their IPO in - 2010

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Jay Gupta - The Loot India

Delivering complete customer satisfaction has always been the motto of this entrepreneur. Jay Gupta’s chain of multi-brand discount stores is now one of the most successful stores in the retail chain today.

During his college days Jay stumbled upon an article in a magazine which stated chain of hotels, banks and retail as evergreen businesses. He opted for retail, initially to get into the garment and footwear business and pursued his dreams by opening some multi-brand outlets. Soon displeasure set into him for not being able to provide the customer with a complete satisfactory shopping experience.

Jay Gupta, The Loot (India) Private Ltd.

The customers wanted variety. He then opened some exclusive brand outlets of Adidas, Weekender, Color Plus etc. The stores received a good number of footfalls but conversions were still quite low. After a lot of pondering he came up with an idea of opening factory outlets, and with this the conversions drastically increased but the customer was still unhappy with the poor after sales service, no exchange, shabby shopping conditions etc. The main aim was customer satisfaction and to provide a delightful shopping experience to them and with this thought The Loot was born!

The conceptualization of the multi brand discount store occurred in 2004. It was well accepted and supported by both the customers and business associates. Soon there was multiplication of stores and the chain today has 150 stores (300000 square feet built up) throughout the country.

Hailing from the small town of Raxaur located at the border at Nepal, Jay spent his childhood in Darjeeling. Right from his early years he revealed a fine business sense that transferred into an adamant goal to start his own company. He now has experience in working with almost all the brands of the country. He realized the need to bring on board professionals to run The Loot and did so by recruiting some of the best talents in the retail industry. In a mission to portray The Loot as a value retail store rather than a discount store, Jay works by one motto of “Life is always tough, but one can make it easier by sharing one’s dreams and creating co-dreamers to move up on the success path.”

Along with the employees even the partners like Levis, Lee, Wrangler, Spykar, Reebok, Adidas etc have played an important role in building up the brand. With Bollywood actor Gulshan Grover as the brand ambassador, the Loot has spread its visibility in smaller towns. There are challenges faced by the creative team to inform the people about the concept and USP’s of The Loot which has been successfully managed by the marketing team.

“We have strongly followed being thematic in in-store communication. Ambiance plays a pivotal role in positioning of The Loot store. As soon as one enters he/she will realize the difference between an ordinary factory outlet/ seconds store and The Loot store in terms of the ‘entire shopping experience’”, says Jay.

It has set an amusing theme to the store by having trial rooms which look like a prison, complementing the theme of The Loot. Outside this is the Ramp, on which people can model and show-off their newly adorned clothes. This Ramp also has the creative of the barcode slashed with The Loot logo stating that they destroy the original prices creating new discounted rates for customers. The Grab your weapon box – is an innovative box embedded in the floor of the store right near the entrance which denotes that they give the customers the license to loot- ‘Go grab your weapon and Loot’.

“Today’s customer does not look for mere shopping, but an entire process of comfort; friendly sales executives, appropriate lighting, proper stacking of the merchandise, after sales service leads to ultimate customer satisfaction and loyalty”, explains Jay.

Fact Sheet

Name of the Founder: Jay Gupta
Education: Graduate from S.I.E.S College
Company: The Loot (India) Private Ltd.
Year of inception: 2004
Product/Services: Retail- multibrand discount stores selling garments, footwear and accessories for men, women & kids
Key Clients: Young generation and other consumers
Motto: Let’s loot, drive, deliver and enjoy!
Vision: Next door most loved global discount retailer
Topline: Not Available
Bottomline: Not Available
YoY Growth: 60%
Investors: We are looking towards funding with the help of private equity/ IPO.
IPO: Not Public
Expansion Plans: To propel the growth of the company and to move to the next level. The Loot has invested skillfully in IT. The company focus is also on personnel training and great emphasis is being laid on preparing the backend to take growth to about 200 stores by June 2011. A modern fully equipped and technologically upgraded warehouse has been set up at Bhiwandi, which can accommodate about 8-10 lacs pieces of merchandise to meet the growing demand of the expansion
Biggest Failure: The Loot has faced issues such as to building a competent team for growth and development and clearing internal and external misconceptions about the concept of The Loot. Particularly in convincing the consumers about the quality of the merchandise and convincing them that they are not dealing in seconds /defectives etc but original surplus product stores

Business Milestones

Five years into the making, The Loot has been rapidly expanding and set up 100 stores - 2009
The Loot bags four prestigious awards - Star Entrepreneur Award, Young Retail Achiever of the Year Award, Star Youth Achiever Award, Pioneering efforts in Retail Concept Creation Award - 2009
The Loot launched its first Shop-in-Shop format in Mumbai - 2010

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Sanjeev Bikhchandani - CEO, Naukri.com

Sanjeev Bikhchandani is a classic story of spotting an opportunity and chasing it with guts, determination, lots of hard work and a little bit of luck.Naukri.com (the company is listed as Info Edge India Ltd on the Bombay Stock Exchange) is Indias number one job portal at a time when there is a serious scarcity of employable people in just about every sector of business and industry. It is also an extremely successful dot-com, having weathered the 2000 meltdown. How much better can it get? Naukris CEO spoke to MoneyLIFE editors Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu about the road he took and its various turning points.

Shall we start with a little bit about your background and your upbringing?

When and how did you decide to be an entrepreneur?

There are no business people in my family. My father is a doctor and he was in the government from 1950 to 1983. So we were brought up in government colonies. I studied at St. Columbus School in Delhi, so did my brother. There was no business background in the family, no great financial acumen or anything. My brother went to IIT, Kanpur, then IIM Ahmedabad and then did his PhD from Stanford. It was forgone in our family that one would do engineering or become a doctor -- the standard middle class aspirations of parents in government

service. So I dutifully prepared for IIT entrance, took the exams and qualified. Then two or three things happened. My rank wasnt great. I wouldnt have got the top three or four departments.

2 | .Success Stories | 1.aukri.com

Secondly, I went for a medical test and found out I was colour-blind -- partially. Thirdly, it was a five-year course. So, I decided it was a better option to go to DelhiUniversity and study economics. Meanwhile, my brother had passed from IIM and he told me not to do an MBA right away because it is useless unless you work for a while. Then Lintas came to college for hiring in 1985. I joined as an Executive Trainee and worked in

advertising for three years.

Lintas was hiring graduates those days?

They were hiring MBAs as Management Trainees who would be given a one-year training and graduates would be given two years of training and they would be equalized after three years or so. We were actually the first batch of graduate hires.

For a year I was in Delhi then I was transferred to Mumbai. I then wrote the CAT and went off to IIM Ahmedabad. Typically, in an ad agency you have this thing about meeting clients and then wanting to be on the other side of the table since an Ad Agency executive is typically at the lower end of the food chain. So I decided I want to be on the other side and in Marketing. I got a job at HMM, which is now Glaxo SmithKline.

I was in brand management, handling Horlicks. I was there for a year and a half. But all along, ever since I was in school, I was pretty clear that I was going to do my MBA, I was going to work for a few years and then start my company. This was there since I was 12 or 13.

Were you clear even in those days what was involved in running a

company?

No clue! But I knew that I didnt want to join government service, after my fathers experience, because in government, you are financially very badly off if you are honest. There was no way I was going to be dishonest, because those were not the values we were brought up with. .

Since I wanted independence, it had to be in a business. This was my dream, a distant goal till I passed

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How Infosys was born???

The idea of Infosys was born on a morning in January 1981. That fateful day, N R Narayana Murthy and six software engineers sat in his apartment debating how they could create a company to write software codes.

Six months later, Infosys was registered as a private limited company on July 2, 1981. Infosys co-founder N S Raghavans house in Matunga, northcentral Mumbai, was its registered office. It was then known as Infosys Consultants Pvt Ltd.

What was the companys starting capital?

US $250. Murthy borrowed $250 from his wife Sudha to start the company. The front room of Murthys home was Infosys first office, although the registered office was Raghavans home.

Who were Murthys six friends who joined hands to launch Infosys?

Nandan Nilekani, N S Raghavan, S Gopalakrishnan, S D Shibulal, K Dinesh and Ashok Arora.

Are all of them still the founding directors?

Murthy is currently chief mentor and chairman while Nilekani is the chief executive officer and managing director. Gopalakrishnan, Shibulal and Dinesh are directors. Raghavan retired as joint managing director in 2000. He is currently the chairman of the advisory council of the N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Ashok Arora worked for the company till 1988 and left after selling his shares in the then unlisted company back to the other promoters. He moved to the

United States

where he now works as a consultant.

Murthy was always broke

Murthy was always broke. He always owed me money. We used to go for dinner and he would say, I dont have money with me, you pay my share, will return it to you later. For three years, I maintained a book of Murthys debts to me. No, he never returned the money and I finally tore it up after our wedding. The amount was a little over Rs 4,000.
-- An excerpt from Sudha Murthys reminiscences. She is the wife of Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy.

Those days, Murthy wanted to do something with his life, but he had no money. Murthy was married to Sudha on February 10, 1978, while he was working with Patni Computers.

In 1981, it was Murthys idea to start Infosys. Murthy had a dream, and no money. So Sudha gave him Rs 10,000, which she had saved without his knowledge. Murthy and his six colleagues started Infosys in 1981.

No, it was not in Bangalore, but in Pune that Infosys set up its first office, in 1981. The house that Murthy and Sudha bought with a loan became the first Infosys office. As Murthy ran Infosys, Sudha took up a job as a systems analyst with the Walchand Group of Industries to support their household.

In 1983, Infosys moved to Bangalore when it got its first client, Data Basics Corporation from the

United States

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FaceBook ( Founder)

Mark Zuckerberg - CEO, facebook.com

"Im just lucky to be alive." Mark Zuckerberg, the 22-year-old founder and CEO of social-networking site Facebook, is talking about the time he came face-to face with the barrel of a gun. It was the spring of 2005, and he was driving from Palo Alto toBerkeley.

Just a few hours earlier, he had signed documents that secured a heady $12.7 million in venture capital to finance his fledgling business. It was a coming-of-age moment, and he was on his way to celebrate with friends in the East Bay. But things turned weird when he pulled off the road for gas. As Zuckerberg got out of the car to fill the tank, a man appeared from the shadows, waving a gun and ranting. "He didnt say what he wanted," Zuckerberg says. "I figured he was on drugs." Keeping his eyes down, Zuckerberg said nothing, got back into his car, and drove off, unscathed. Today, it is an episode that he talks about only reluctantly. (A former

employee spilled the beans.) But it fits the road he has taken--an adventure with unexpected, sometimes harrowing, moments that has turned out better than anyone might have predicted. Zuckerbergs life so far is like a movie script. A supersmart kid invents a tech phenomenon while attending an Ivy League school--lets say, Harvard—and launches it to rave reviews. Big shots circle his dorm to make his acquaintance; he

drops out of college to grow his baby and Change The World As We Know It. Just three years in, what started as a networking site for college students has become a go-to tool for 19 million registered users, including employees of government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. More than half of the users visit

every day. When a poorly explained new feature brought howls of protests from users--some 700,000--the media old and new jumped to cover the backlash. But Facebook emerged stronger than ever. According to comScore Media Metrix, which tracks Web activity, it is now the sixth most-trafficked site in the United States -- 1% of all Internet time is spent on Facebook. ComScore also rates it the number-one photo-sharing site on the Web, with 6 million pictures uploaded daily.

And it is starting to compete with Google and other tech titans as a destination for top young engineering talent in Silicon Valley. Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer, says it is on track to bring in $100 million in revenue this year--serious money indeed. Yet there is an undercurrent of controversy about whether Mark Zuckerberg is making the right decisions about the juggernaut he has created. Late last year, a blog called TechCrunch posted documents said to be a part of an internal valuation of Facebook by Yahoo. The documents projected that Facebook would generate $969 million in revenue, with 48 million users, by 2010.

The New York Times and others reported that Yahoo had made a $1 billion offer to buy Facebook -- and Zuckerberg and his partners had turned it down. This followed an earlier rumor of a $750 million offer from Viacom. Yahoo, Viacom, and Facebook would not comment on the deal talk (and they still wont). But Silicon Valley has been abuzz ever since. "Its all been very interesting," deadpans Zuckerberg, sitting in a conference

room in Facebooks Palo Alto headquarters. He looks every bit the geek in his zippered brown sweatshirt, baggy khakis, and Adidas sandals. He came into the room eating breakfast cereal from a paper bowl with a plastic spoon. He still lives in a rented apartment, with a mattress on the floor and only two chairs and a table for furniture. ("I cooked dinner for a girlfriend once," he admits at one point. "It didnt work well.") He walks or bikes to the office every day.

Zuckerbergs college-kid style reinforces the doubts of those who see the decision to keep Facebook independent as a lapse in judgment. In less than two years, the two reigning Web 2.0 titans have sold out to major corporations: MySpace accepted $580 million to join News Corp., and YouTube took $1.5 billion from Google. Surely any smart entrepreneur would jump at a chance to piggyback on those deals. Looming over the

Facebook talk is the specter of Friendster, the first significant social-networking site. It reportedly turned down a chance to sell out to Google in 2002 for $30 million, which if paid in stock, would be worth about $1 billion today.

Now Friendster is struggling in the Web-o-sphere, having been swiftly eclipsed by the next generation of sites. The same thing could happen to Facebook. New social-networking sites are popping up every day. Cisco bought Five Across, which sells a software platform for social networking to corporate clients. Microsoft is beta-testing a site named Wallop.

Even Reuters is planning to launch its own online face book, targeting fund managers and traders. So is Zuckerberg being greedy--holding out for a bigger money buyout? If so, will that come back to haunt him? If not, what exactly is his game lan? Zuckerbergs answer is that hes playing a different kind of game. "Im here to build something for the long term," he says. "Anything else is a distraction." He and his compatriots at the helm of the company--cofounder and VP of engineering Dustin Moskovitz, 22, his roommate at Harvard, and chief technology officer Adam DAngel

The BackBenchers Club

Inspiring 50 Entrepreneurs of India

Deep Kalra - MakeMyTrip.com

Jay Gupta - The Loot India

Sanjeev Bikhchandani - CEO, Naukri.com

Mark Zuckerberg - CEO, facebook.com