Startup Founders in India

The Indian startup ecosystem has grown rapidly in the last few decades, and this thing happened due to lots of visionary entrepreneurs, who helped the Indian startup ecosystem rise. There are lots of startup owners such as Sachin Bansal of Flipkart, Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, and Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola, and many more entrepreneurs who have successfully run their business and established themselves in the Indian market as well as worldwide.

Successful Startup Founders

Here, we will make some Successful startup founders, who prove themselves in the Indian market 

Sachin Bansal, Flipkart

Sachin Bansal along with his school mate Binny Bansal started Flipkart in 2007 from a one-room apartment in Bangalore. Initially, the store focused on selling books online before expanding into categories like apparel and electronics.

Now valued at over US$37 billion, it is one of the top ecommerce companies globally. Formerly an employee at Amazon India, Sachin is now one of India’s wealthiest internet millionaires. 

• Founded – 2007
• Founders – Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal

Navneet Singh, Pepper Tap

Navneet Singh the founder of PepperTap comes from a very small town from uttar pradesh. He has worn many hats throughout his career. He started his career in the merchant navy, and later leading two successful startups in India. A movie enthusiast and a gadget-lover, Navneet enjoys spending time with his kid and reading tech blogs.

• Founded – 2014
• Founders – Navneet Singh

Kunal Bahl, Snapdeal

After his work visa extension was denied in the US, Kunal Bahl, a former Microsoft employee, returned to India in 2008. With the help of his schoolmate Rohit Bansal, Kunal experimented with several business ideas over four years before launching Snapdeal as a discount and daily deals site.

Inspired by Flipkart success in India, Kunal pivoted Snapdeal to conventional ecommerce platform in 2012, which led to significant growth in the business.

• Founded by – Kunal Bahl
• Founded – 2012

Richa Kar, Zivame 

After completing her education in 2002, she started working with software firms like i-Flex and Intergraph. She also gained experience at the Indian retail chain Spencers before joining SAP as a consultant. During a consulting assignment with a global lingerie retailer, Richa recognised the need for a specialised online lingerie retailer in India. In June 2011, she founded zivame, which is now one of the biggest online lingerie retailers.

Richa also manages a blog where she offers advice to Indian women on selecting the right lingerie sizes based on their body shapes.

• Founded – 2011
• Founders – Richa kar

Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola

It was Co-founded by tech graduate Bhavish Aggarwal in 2010, Ola Cabs is now one of the biggest online taxi and car aggregators in India, posing a strong challenge to Uber.

The transportation startup founded in Mumbai initially secured angel funding from Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl and Shaadi founder Anupam Mittal. Valued at more than US$6.99 billion today, Ola has approximately 250,000 cabs and auto rickshaws on its app, operational in around 85 Indian cities.

• Founded – 2010
• Founded by – Bhavish Agarwal

Sumit Jain, CommonFloor

Sumit jain, the Son of a construction materials store owner, felt confident about running a business when his father asked him to run the shop while he was gone.

After graduation, Sumit jain worked at Oracle India for a year before deciding that business was his true passion. His colleague Lalit Mangal, also left Oracle India. Later Vikas Malpani also joined as the third co-founder. 

• Founded – 2007
• Founded by – Sumit jain, Lalit Mangal and vikas Malpani

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm

Born in a small town near Delhi, Vijay Shekhar Sharma was the first in his immediate family to graduate from a tech school and work abroad. He started One97 as a telecoms software company in the early 2000s and later transformed it into Paytm, an online marketplace in 2009.

• Founded – Vijay Shekhar Sharma 
• Founded by – 2010

Amit Jain CarDekho

Amit Jain’s CarDekho is a success story of a small-town startup in India. In his office in Jaipur, he has a big mediaeval map showing old empires. From Jaipur, Amit wants to expand in classifieds and automobile-related web services. After growing in India, he is now focusing on Southeast Asia, where carDekho is already active in countries like Indonesia.

• Founded by – Amit Jain 
• Founded by – 2008

Pranay Chulet, Quikr

Pranay Chulet, from Rajasthan is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

After working at consulting firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers and Booz Allen Hamilton, Chulet founded Quikr. It’s now one of India’s largest online classifieds portals, with the only larger competitor being the Indian version of OLX.

In 2007, Pranay launched his first business venture, Excellere. The following year he founded Kijiji India, which was later renamed as Quikr.

Pranay is known in startup circles as a huge movie enthusiast. On weekends, you’ll find him easily watching movies.

• Founders – Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas
• Founded – 2008

Supam Maheshwari, FirstCry

Supam has completed his education from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, the Delhi College of Engineering.

He started FirstCry, in 2010, which is an online retailer for baby products. The idea comes when he is struggling to find quality toys for his new-born daughter. First cry was supported by Temasek, SAIF Partners, and IDG Ventures India.

Before starting his entrepreneurial journey, he worked at Brainvisa Technologies as a CEO.

• Founded in – 2010
• Founded- Supam Maheswari 

Naveen Tewari, InMobi

Naveen Tewari founded  InMobi, which is a worldwide global mobile advertising platform. 

He comes from a family of professors, Naveen Tewari followed in their footsteps and completed his tech studies at the Indian Institute of Technology in 2000. It was there that he met his future co-founders Amit Gupta and Abhay Singhal. In 2007, the trio launched  Mkhoj, an SMS-based search engine.

• Founded by – Amit Mkhoj
• Founded in – 2007

Ashish Goel, UrbanLadder

Ashish Goel always wanted to start his own business. So, with the help of  his schoolmate Rajiv Srivatsa he started a business where they sell furniture online.

Ashish was intrigued by the lack of major online sellers in the furniture market, despite the US$15 billion industry in India. The company raised US$1 million in seed capital from Kalaari Capital in 2012 and there has been no turning back. In 2014, Indian billionaire Ratan Tata joined as an investor and mentor. It is one of the well known companies due to its high quality product.

• Founded – Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa
• Founder – 2012

Deepinder Goyal, Zomato

After collecting and pinning menus on his office soft board at Bain & Co, Deepinder Goyal decided to take his hobby online by scanning the menus and sharing them on website. Deepinder and his friend Pankaj Chaddah, decided to turn it into commercially.

In the initial days they hired a CEO but  after 18 months, they decided to quit her jobs and commit to the startup life full-time.

The website quickly added 1,200 restaurants in New Delhi and the team has continued to grow since then. It is now available in more than 22 countries.

However, like many Indian parents, Deepinder’s parents also advised him to shut down the venture and do a job, but chose not to listen. The company is now valued at nearly US$1 billion.

• Founded – Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah
• Founded – 2008

Yashish Dahiya, Policybazaar

Gurgaon-based Yashish Dahiya is recognised in Indian startup circles as one of the fittest CEOs, often spotted training for the annual Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, one of the toughest sports events in the world. An alumnus of two of India’s top institutes – Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad – Yashish worked at companies like Bain & Co and Ebookers before funding PolicyBazaar in 2008.

PolicyBazaar is the top online insurance aggregation in India. It has received funding from VCs like Tiger Global Management and Temasek.

• Founded Year – 2008
• Founded – Yashish Dahiya, Alok Bansal and Avaneesh Nirjar.

Albinder Dhindsa, Grofers

Albinder Dhindsa, a former early employee at Zomato,  founded Grofers in 2013 with it is a hyperlocal shopping startup.

Albinder worked in Silicon Valley before returning to India to join Zomato, which was founded by his childhood friend Deepinder Goyal

• Founder – Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar 
• Founded Year – 2013

Kavin Bharti Mittal, Hike

Delhi-based Kavin Bharti Mittal, scion to the massive Bharti Group, faces an unusual problem: his prepaid account runs out of data every week due to heavy internet usage. Kavin intentionally uses a prepaid number on a low-end smartphone to understand the challenges faced by India’s 950 million mobile users, 95 percent of whom use pay-as-you-go packages.

To tackle these issues, Kavin plans to transform Hike into an all in one mobile app where users can buy groceries, book a cab, or order food. Hike also introduced a feature that allows messaging to work on phones without internet connection.

• Founders – Kavin Bharti Mittal
• Year – 2012

TA Krishnan, Ecom Express

TA Krishnan, the former India head of Blue Dart Express, left the company to start an ecommerce logistics company called Ecom Express. Three other senior members from Blue Dart joined him. In 2013, they started their operations.It’s one of the top names for ecommerce deliveries and has expanded to more than 200 cities

• Founders – Manju Dhawan, K. Satyanarayana, Late T. A. Krishnan
• Years – 2012

Girish Mathrubootham, FreshDesk

FreshDesk is a cloud based help -desk software platform. It was created by Former Zoho employees Girish Mathrubootham and Shanmugam Krishnasamy, who teamed up after having a poor customer support experience with a broken TV set.

The duo saw that the business needed better software for after-sales support . So they started making it. In 2010, they got their  first customer in Australia in October 2010. Within five years, the company grew and made 50,000 corporate customers of every size. 

Girish is a well-known mentor in the Chennai startup scene and also a foosball champion at his company.

• Founders – Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy
• Years – 2010

Phanindra Sama, Redbus

In 2005 during Diwali, Phanindra Sama wanted to travel to Hyderabad from Bengaluru but he  couldn’t find any bus seats. To solve this problem he co-founded Redbus, an online bus ticketing startup, which is now one of the largest portals in India.

• Founders – Phanindra Sama, Sudhakar Pasupunuri and Charan Padmaraju
• Year – 2006

Abhinay Choudhari, BigBasket 

Abhinay Choudhari, Hari Menon, and Vipul Parekh founded BigBasket . It is one of the largest online grocery in India. Hari and Vipul were one of the earliest pioneers in ecommerce, having started Fabmall in 1999, while Abhinay was a retail consultant at IT giant Infosys.

• Founder – Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, V S Sudhakar, Abhinay Choudhari, and V S Ramesh
• Year – 2011

Ritesh Aggarwal, OyoRooms

At the age of 21 years old, Ritesh Aggarwal is India’s youngest millionaire entrepreneur, having founded the budget hotel startup OyoRooms.

In his struggling days Ritesh was thrown out of rented house because he didn’t have money to pay the rent. He slept all night in the stairway.

Ritesh came to Delhi to attend college but within three days he realised that formal education is not for him. He dropped out and started a bed-and-breakfast chain called Oravel Stays, which later changed into OyoRooms.

• Founders – Ritesh Agarwal 
• Year – 2013

Vivek Gaur, YepMe

A serial entrepreneur, Vivek Gaur first  launched Bagittoday, an e-store for bags, accessories, and sunglasses. He also co-founded Yepme, a fashion apparel portal.

• Founders – Vivek Gaur, Sandeep Sharma and Anand Jadhav
• Year – 2011

Ambareesh Murty, PepperFry

Ambareesh Murty was leading eBay in India before he started PepperFry, a home furnishings marketplace in 2012. He teamed up with  Ashish Shah, who was the former head of eBay Motors in India and the Philippines, to launch the venture.

PepperFry competes with  UrbanLadder, Fabfurnish and Flipkart.

• Founders – Ambareesh Murty and Ashish Shah
• Years – 2011

VSS Mani, JustDial

Mumbai-based Just Dial was founded in 1996, is one of the well-known household names. It provides classified listings of small businesses for a yearly fee. People can find businesses by phone, SMS, the website, or the mobile app.

It was started with a few pieces of borrowed furniture, rented computers, and a rented garage. It began with seed capital of INR 50,000.

Now, the company is one of the few in India to go for an IPO. It is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange with a valuation of just under US$1 billion. The company has more than 15 million listings.

• Founders – Mr. VSS Mani
• Years – 1996

Sahil Barua, Delhivery

In Indian ecommerce, it’s often said that delivery guys make the most money, while online retailers burn a lot.  This is true for Sahil Barua’s ecommerce.

The startup got its first client, UrbanTouch, a fashion retailer, in 2011. Although UrbanTouch closed down, Gurgaon-based Delhivery is thriving with More than 15,000 employees and 2,000 clients. Within four years, they expanded their services in more than 350 cities.

• Founders – Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Bhavesh Manglani, Suraj Saharan, and Kapil Bharati.
• Years – 2011

Suchi Mukherjee, LimeRoad

Suchi Mukherjee runs LimeRoad, which is a boutique fashion marketplace for women situated in gurgaon. A former  senior executive at eBay UK, Suchi has successfully secured US$50 million for her startup from some top investors.

• Founders – Suchi Mukherjee, Manish Saksena and Ankush Mehra
• Years – 2012

Shashank ND, Practo

Practo was founded in 2010 when co-founder Shashank ND struggled to get a second opinion on his father’s health. Today it is India’s biggest appointment booking system with more than 200,000  doctors listed. 

• Founders – Abhinav Lal and Shashank
• Year – 2008

Rahul Yadav, Housing

Rahul, a dropout from IIT-Bombay, started the real estate classifieds portal Housing in 2012 with the help of his friends. The company raised US$100 million from major investors, the largest funding ever in this space worldwide.However, things took a turn for Rahul when he spent large amounts of money on a marketing campaign in  just a few weeks. He also faced Backlash for questioning the intellect of his board members. 

• Founder – Rahul Yadav 
• Year- 2012

Kunal Shah, FreeCharge

Kunal Shah made news headlines in 2015 when he sold his startup, Freecharge, to Snapdeal for around US$400 million.

In 2010, Kunal co-founded FreeCharge. Since most people use prepaid credit for their phones, he started offering cashbacks and coupons with each top-up. Initially many retailers laughed at the idea, thinking it would never work. But he believes in his idea and the idea worked and it became the popular way to top-up prepaid mobile phones in India.

• Founder – Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon
• Year – 2010

Sanjay Sethi, ShopClues

ShopClues was founded by Sanjay Sethi, a former global product head at eBay, along with former Wall Street analyst Sandeep Aggarwal. The idea came out in California when the two friends decided to move back to India with their families and start an ecommerce business.

• Year – 2011
• Founder : Sandeep Aggarwal, Sanjay Sethi, Radhika Aggarwal

Conclusion – Startup Founders

Their remarkable achievement, not only helps their personal growth but also helps to grow the Indian ecosystem. The struggling stories of these entrepreneurs also shows how much the Indian startup has grown. From starting a low start-up to become a major player in the Indian ecosystem. Today there are lots of startups which became major parts of our life such as flipkart, zomato etc.

FAQs – Startup Founders