Not everyone can do what Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal did — build a $7 billion dollar company before turning 40.
But more than a handful of first-generation entrepreneurs have managed to mint their first $100 million, and plenty more, in wealth while still in their thirties.
Divyank Turakhia, 32 and Bhavin Turakhia, 34
DIRECTI GROUP
Personal worth: About $350 million (Rs 2,100 crore)
The brothers set up a webhosting business while still in college, grew the bootstrapped venture and won customers in US, China and Brazil, among other places. Early this year, they sold the business to Nasdaq-listed Endurance Group, but they still own the internet advertising business and top-level domains such as .press, .website, and .space. Divyank, a hobby pilot, owns a single-engine Cessna.
Dhiraj C Rajaram, 39
MU-SIGMA
Company valuation: Over $1.5 billion (Rs 9,000 crore)
Rajaram started building a data analytics company exactly a decade ago, when big data was yet to become a buzzword even in Silicon Valley, let alone India. Now, with a quarter of Fortune 500 companies as its clients, the title ‘the Infosys of analytics’ sits easily on Mu-Sigma.
He started the company with $200,000 in savings, after stints as a strategy consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton and PwC. Mu-Sigma raised $45 million in 2012 at a $1.5 billion valuation, but its current valuation is likely to be higher as its revenues have since increased 3-4 times. Palantir Technologies, a peer company in Silicon Valley, is valued at $9 billion. A sign of things to come?
Rahul Sharma, Sumeet Arora and Vikas Jain (all 40)
MICROMAX INFORMATICS
Company valuation: Over $7-10 billion (Rs 42,000-60,000 crore)
An engineering graduate, Rahul Sharma had no work experience when he set up Micromax, with friends Sumeet Arora and Vikas Jain and neighbour Rajesh Agarwal in 2000.
Today, it has a topline of over Rs 7,000 crore. Sharma, Arora and Jain each own 18.5% in Micromax, which was planning to go public at $1 billion valuation in 2011. It has since grown in size, market share, reportedly toppling Samsung from the perch in India. And so have valuations — reportedly $7-10 billion.
Naveen Tewari 37, Abhay Singhal 34, Mohit Saxena 39, Amit Gupta 38
INMOBI
Company valuation: about $1.5 billion
The four IIT alumni, who started inMobi from a one-bedroom flat in Mumbai in 2007, are expected to raise a new round of funding at a valuation of $1.5-2 billion. They had raised $200 million from Softbank at a $1 billion valuation three years ago.
Founded on the mobile-first philosophy, the strength of this independent mobile ad network is its intellectual property, which allows targeted advertising based on a database of about 760 million users. Its software matches advertisers with content providers and serves about 5 billion ads on the mobile everyday.
Amar Goel, 38 and Rajeev Goel, 36
PUBMATIC
Company Valuation: Over $1 billion (Rs 6,000 crore)
The company is exploring a public listing in the US and reports suggest it could be valued at over $1 billion. Rajeev leads Pubmatic as its CEO, while Amar leads Komli Media, an online advertising network. Komli expects to end 2014 with $100 million in revenues.
Kunal Bahl, 32
SNAPDEAL
Company valuation: $1 billion (Rs 6,000 crore)
When initial plans for a discount coupon venture did not take off, Kunal Bahl turned it into a group buying website and then swung towards an online marketplace model. This has attracted customers and investors.
SnapDeal’s last round of financing of $100 million attracted sophisticated investors like Temasek and Blackrock. He is also an active angel with equity in Olacabs and software firm Unicommerce.
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