Two IIM Ahmedabad graduates launched an online taxi booking platform called Taxi For Sure in 2011. They have estimated revenues of Rs. 100 Crores by 2015. Taxi For Sure has partnered with over 25 cab operators in Bangalore and 15 in Delhi, branding over 550 cabs.
1. Two IIM Ahmedabad graduates, Radhakrishna and Raghunandan G decided to come up with their own business and launched an
online platform to rent taxis in 2011. Both the founders have estimated to earn a total revenue of about Rs 100 Crores by fiscal
2015.
The company initially partnered with around 25 cab operators in Bangalore and around 15 in Delhi. They also partnered with
operators like Mega Cabs and Cell Cabs. Taxi For Sure has reached an operational profitability and has branded about 550 cabs with
the Taxi For Sure label.
TAXI FOR SURE
2. ‘Red Bus’ a great business venture that was started by a group of three BITS Pilani alumni, Phanindra Sama , Charan Padmaraju
and Sudhakar Pasupunuri. They were around the age of 25 when they thought of computerizing the booking of bus tickets.
The business venture achieved great heights after a span of three and a half years, redBus introduced a bus ticketing software
for the operators that was linked to the redBus portal, simplifying the procedure to book tickets online. Initially redBus was
working on the basis of seat quotes from operators. The unsold tickets were returned to the operators within a defined time
before the departure of the bus.
June 2013, redBus was sold to Ibibo Group for a sum of Rs600- 700 Crores, one of the biggest overseas strategic acquisitions of
an Indian internet asset. Currently redBus is selling over a million tickets a month and the gross value of transactions is
estimated to be over Rs 600 crores.
REDBUS
3. Flipkart, co- founded by two IIT Delhi alumni Sachin Bansal
and Binny Bansal in 2007. They share a long history from
being college friends to colleagues in Amazon.com and
finally co founders of the country’s best known online retail
brand. They quit their jobs to start Flipkart which initially
focussed on online sale of books and later expanded its
horizons to electronic goods and life style products.
Sachin and Binny started Flipkart with an initial investment
of INR 4,00,000 in a small rented flat in southeast
Bangalore. It was only in 2008 that the business was
formally incorporated as a company in October 2008 as
Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd.
Flipkart received US$ 1 million from Accel India (2009),
US$10 (2010) and US$20 million (June 2011) from Tiger
Global, US$ 140 from MIH (Naspers Group) and ICONIQ
Capital (August 2012. The company announced, on 10 July
2013, that it has raised an additional $200 million from
existing investors including Tiger Global, Naspers, Accel
Partners and Iconiq Capital. In July 2013, Flipkart raised USD
160 million from private equity investors. In October 2013, it
was reported that Flipkart had raised an additional $160
million from new investors Dragoneer Investment
Group, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, Sofina SA
and Vulcan Inc. with participation from existing investor
Tiger Global. On 26 May 2014, Flipkart announced that it
has raised $210 million from Yuri Milner’s DST Global and its
existing investors Tiger Global, Naspers and Iconiq Capital
Flipkart, which currently employs over 4,500 people sells
nearly 20 products per minute and is aiming at generating a
revenue of 50 billion (US$0.81 billion) by 2015.
It has a huge list of acquisitions the most recent being
Myntra.com, which has been acquired in an estimated INR
2,000 crore deal.
FLIPKART
4. Snapdeal a joint effort of Kunal Bahl, a
Wharton graduate and his IIT Delhi alumni
Rohit Bansal. Bahl quit his secure job with
Microsoft job based in Seattle. The two
minds started working on this great
concept in 2007.
After three years of brain storming they
launched Snapdeal as a daily online deals
site in February, 2010 but expanded only in
September, 2011. Over time the model
went through a lot of changes and is now
one of India’s largest online market place. It
has about 20 million registered users that
offer an assortment of about 4 million+
products.
With three acquisitions (Grabbon.com,
esportsbuy.com and shopo.in), Snapdeal
emerged as a major player in the online
market space. It received 5 rounds of
funding $12 million from Nexus Venture
Partners( 2011), $45 million from Bessemer
Venture Partners (2011), $50 million from
eBay, $133 million again from eBay (Feb
2014) and finally $100 million from
Blackrock, Temasek Holdings, Premji Invest
and a few others (May 2014).
SNAPDEAL
5. Myntra was started by three IIT alumni Mukesh Bansal, Ashutosh Lawania, in February 2007 Myntra.com was in the business of
personalization of products online. The products ranged from T-shirts, mugs, greeting cards, calendars, key chains, diaries etc. It was
only in 2010 that the company expanded its catalogue to retail fashion and lifestyle products.
Myntra received its first funding from Accel Partners, Sasha Mirchandani from Mumbai Angels and another angel investor in October
2007 to start its venture. Subsequently, Myntra received $5 million from NEW- IdnoUS Ventures, IDG Ventures and Accel Partners. A
third funding worth (November 2008), $14 million from Tiger Global and a few existing investors, another $20 million from Tiger Global
(2011) finally it was Premji Invest and few other investors that pumped in a total of $50 million.
The biggest turning point for Myntra was marked on May 22, 2014 when Flipkart acquired Myntra for a total of $300 million.
MYNTRA
6. The history of TravelTriangle.com is one inspirational story of all times. The co- founders, childhood best friends and IIT graduates,
team up in a garage, quit their well paid jobs at Adobe and Yahoo to execute their idea which is currently minting crores for the
duo. Travel Traingle, an online travel service company was launched by Sankalp Agrawal and Sanchit Garg in 2011, a year later after
they quit their jobs. A third person named Prabhat Gupta an IIT graduate was their friend school was added to the team the same
year.
Their idea was to link customers with travel agents offering the best deals, customized according to the traveller’s requirement.
Every enquiry by a customer reached a total of three agents. The best deal was then presented before the customer.
TravelTriangle.Com
7. Lenskart founder Peyush Bansal has a very
interesting and inspiring history. His thirst to
become an Entrepreneur made him quit his well
paid job at Microsoft and come to India. With
seed money of Rs 25 Lakh and the basement of
his parent’s house, he started with Vayloo
Technologies which is a classifieds website in
June, 2008. Meanwhile he felt the need of
pursuing an MBA, hence enrolled himself into a
one-year post-graduate diploma in
entrepreneurship at IIM Bangalore to learn more
about managing a business.
His course made him realize that a classifieds
website would not help him reach his goal and
hence launched Flyrr in India in June, 2009. Flyrr
received a magnificent response but there were
issues regarding the delivery of products. He
later introduced the Flyrr model in India of
online selling of glasses, sunglasses and contact
lenses. Due to the great discount and the 14-
day, no-questions-asked return policy, Lenskart
became a hit and received a funding of $4
million from IDG Ventures India in 2011.
In addition to Lenskart, Bansal is also running a
few other websites namely Watchkart, Bagskart,
searchmycampus.com. Lenskart has estimated
to earn revenue of about Rs 5 Crores this year.
LENSKART
8. This is a story as to how a classroom project turned into a serious business option Samay Kohli and Akash Gupta. Kohli and Gupta are
BITS Pilani alumni and came up with a robot making company after building a robot that waited at tables in the college cafeteria. They
later programmed it to act as a tour guide to guests during seminars.
Inspired by their college project, Kohli and Gupta started a Grey Orange Robotics in 2009 to help some of India's largest online retailers
automate their warehouses. Grey Orange Robotics is the first and only robot making company in the Indian logistics industry. It builds
robots that can move shelves stacked with various products to a floor assistant who then scans a bar code to confirm the right items.
The robot in turn moves the chosen products to the shipping bay where workers seal the packages for final transport.
GOR has received funding from combined investment from BITS Spark Angels, a network run by the alumni of BITS Pilani, and Blume
Ventures Advisors.
Grey Orange Robotics
9. ReportBee was a joint venture by four alumni
of IIM Bangalore, Anantharaman Mani, Anan T,
Balaganesh S and Vinod Kumar. ReportBee has
brought about a digital report card that
enables the user to track the progress of a
child and make comparisons on various
tangents by making use of algorithms.
Report Bee is piloting in 64 government
schools in Tamil Nadu. It has also revamped
the report structure in five Chennai
Corporation schools. ReportBee also has three
data analysis projects for Tamil Nadu
Government Education Department in its
agenda. The application, which is available for
Rs 4,000-8,000 per month per school, is being
used by 18 schools in Tamil Nadu and is in pilot
phase in 30 more schools.
It was a normal walk in a school corridor that
made Anantharaman come up with the idea of
ReportBee. He had a meeting for a program to
help students in a school and during the walk
he saw a huge pile of ‘student progress cards’
dumped as garbage. This coupled with the
problems they faced in the compiling results
for the previous three years of every student,
inspired Anantharam to come up with digital
reports for students
ReportBee
10. Exotel was founded by Shivakumar Ganesan an alumni of BITS Pilani in 2011. After giving five years of his life to Yahoo, he switched to
Flipkart, six months into the job he felt the need to start his own business.
He started with Roopit, an online C2C marketplace which later motivated him into coming up with Exotel, that provides telephony on the
cloud for its clients. He felt that there was a need of one telephone number that would receive voice calls, SMS and ensured that not
one call should be missed that would have resulted in a business deal.
It provides telephony on the cloud for its clients, mainly small and medium enterprises. Exotel provides a quick and easy way for an SME
to purchase a telephone number, by-passing the cumbersome route to get a telephone connection. He found his client base in small and
medium enterprises and start ups.
Today he has a client base of 350 companies and has crossed Rs 1 crore in revenues. It received a funding of Rs 2.5 crores from Mumbai
Angels and Blume Ventures and is now working towards a second funding.
Exotel