MY FIRST DECADE AS AN ENTREPRENEUR SANJEEV BIKHCHANDANI Founder, Info Edge Services
“Going back to a job would have meant I had failed.” He’s the classic dotcom poster boy. At a time when most Indians were clueless about the World Wide Web, Sanjeev Bikhchandani had already put together an online job postings portal, targeting the domestic market. His site turned out to be an industry game-changer and Info Edge Services shot to fame as one of the most successful internet businesses of the country. Not many know that this IIM Ahmedabad graduate struggled for nearly seven years, before he launched Naukri.com in 1997. AS TOLD TO POOJA KOTHARI | CARICATURE BY JOFFY JOSE
I COME FROM A FAMILY where everyone has been a working professional. Yet, I knew from a very young age that I was going to run my own business. I had been working with GlaxoSmithKline for almost two years when I quit my
job. I was 27 years old, and all I had was five years of work experience, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a fuzzy goal to start something of my own. Luckily for me, my family didn’t have any
issues with that. For weeks, I had been going to office with the intention of putting in my papers, but had difficulty doing so. Yet, I knew that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life chasing a one-foot longer car, or an address a few kms away from where I lived. So, one night, I finally went to my boss’ FEBRUARY 2011
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