From Vision to Venture: The Inspiring Journey of Sanjeev Bikhchandani

Dream big, start small

Born into a middle-class family of doctors and engineers, Sanjeev Bikhchandani was always taught the importance of hard work. His elder brother studied at IIT Kanpur, and the expectations for him were just as high. Such was the rigour at his home, that it was presumed that he would do either medicine or engineering. But soon, it was found out that he was color-blind, hence closing the doors for some of those prospective careers. He graduated from the reputed St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, specializing in Economics. He then went on to pursue an MBA at the esteemed IIM Ahmedabad, which proved to be a pivotal point in his life as it was here that the seed for his first venture was first sown.

Sanjeev was a volunteer at his campus placements at IIM Ahmedabad when he noticed a huge tussle between two major companies trying to secure the best talent at the institute. This deeply astounded young Sanjeev, because these were grown men - senior managers on top of that, and top executives at these big companies who were screaming and shouting just to recruit the most talented students amongst the crowd that had applied. That was when he realised the price companies were willing to pay to recruit the best of the best. He had found a gap that he could capitalise on.

Sanjeev was never scared to go against the norm. He always had a knack for experimentation. He ditched placements at the campus, going on to approach companies on his own, writing to them requesting for an interview. He went on to secure a comfortable marketing job at GlaxoSmithKline, manufacturer of Horlicks.
It was at this job that he noticed that all his colleagues - most of them from IIMs would be reading the magazine “Business India” back to front, barely even reading the articles in the front. This was because the last few pages of the magazine were filled with job advertisements. Bikhchandani thought to himself that if someone builds a database of jobs, and keeps it updated with all the latest job postings, then it could be a very powerful product indeed. It was one of the many ideas that he toyed with at this time.

He continued to work, but always determined to work for his own self, the job left him deeply unfulfilled. Even the substantial monetary compensation at his job wasn't enough to make him stay. So, just after 18 months there, he decided it was time to leave - right about the time he ended up launching his first venture under the trademark - InfoEdge. In hindsight, he says, “I managed to quit my well-paying job only because I had confidence in myself."

He moved into the servant quarters at his father’s place, paying him Rs. 800 as monthly rent. InfoEdge initially sold salary surveys & reports detailing what companies were offering to MBA and engineering freshers in IIT/IIM campuses. Since the business was at a very novice stage and not growing fast, they often faced financial crises. This resulted in him largely living off of his wife’s salary, and give tuition classes on the weekends as a side income.

Cut to October 1996, when Bikhchandani was visiting an IT Expo at Pragati Maidan, Delhi, and he came across a stall with a sign that read ‘WWW’. He was told it stood for the “World Wide Web” or the internet. The stall manager gave him a demo on a black-and-white screen and went to a site called “Yahoo” and asked Sanjeev what he wanted to “browse" on "the internet”. And like any good Indian, he asked him to search for ‘India’. A whole bunch of results popped up and Bikhchandani, clearly impressed, made up his mind in 10 minutes to launch a job aggregation website which he called Naukri.com.

At that time, all major servers were based in the USA. So, Sanjeev called up his brother at UCLA business school and asked him to rent a server for him. At that time, it cost $25 monthly. He didn't have the money then but he promised to pay him back when he was able.

In April 1997, he launched Naukri.com with some 1,000 ads taken out of various magazines. He was hoping that over time companies would begin to approach them directly for advertising jobs if they managed to gather sufficient traffic on their website.

This turned out to be true quite soon, credits to Naukri’s unique pricing strategy. Their price per listing was ₹350 and an annual subscription was ₹6,000, where the company could list all jobs for one year. Their competition, i.e. magazines and newspapers priced a single job listing for ₹3,500. Inevitably, Naukri was a huge hit among the young population, encompassing a huge database of all kinds of professional jobs. Over time, companies and preferred online listings over papers ads, and hence traffic at Naukri grew exponentially.

Since then, there has been no looking back for InfoEdge.

After 10 years, Naukri.com became the first dot com firm listed in India.InfoEdge went on to establish several more website businesses like Jeevansathi.com, Shiksha.com, 99acres.com. Along with managing InfoEdge, Sanjeev is an active investor, with over 15.3% stake in Zomato and 13.3% stake in PolicyBazaar making his networth a staggering $2.7 billion.

Education, according to Sanjeev, is the single most effective investment to turn somebody’s life around. In 2014, he co-founded Ashoka University, a not-for-profit educational institute in Haryana, focussed on the liberal arts.  He believes that quality education at mass scale is paramount for the progress of any nation.
Nowadays, Sanjeev starts his day at 6 am in the morning, with meditation and yoga. Then, most of his day is spent managing InfoEdge diverse portfolio.
As for what he looks for in the startups he invests in - a combination of compelling value proposition and committed founders. Value proposition is important because it is evidence that there is a need for the product - after all, one doesn't want to have to convince people of a problem after a solution has been built. But equally as important as a good value proposition, in his opinion, are founders with calibre. Founders with grit and vision can turn around any value proposition, however bad.

He believes there are no bad investments, only investments he earns or learns from. If an investment doesn’t work out, it can be due to various reasons, often completely out of control of the founder - like too much competition, money mishandling, change in rules by the government, or maybe it’s just a pure mistake. Whatever it is, and however the investment turns out, it is important to be respectful to all entrepreneurs. Because when a entrepreneur fails, his hardwork of 7-8 years, if not more, fails. It is easier to make a company work than to close it down. Even if an investment turns sour due to disintegrity on the part of founder, he emphasises that it is a opportunity to learn to gauge people’s character better.

Needless to say, in the world of startups, Sanjeev Bikhchandani is the master architect, building careers and companies alike.