Indian Entrepreneurs – India has produced a number of entrepreneurs as well with the growing Indian Economy. In this blog, we shall talk about the great personalities of India who have emerged as the top 7 Indian entrepreneurs in India and their success stories.
India holds the second largest native population after China. In many years, India has produced a number of scholars, artists, scientists, and intellectuals. And so, it is not surprising that India has many successful entrepreneurs as well who are making India proud and at the same time, also contributing significantly in the country’s economy.
Let’s take a look at top 7 Indian entrepreneurs of 2018 and talk about the success stories of Indian entrepreneurs.
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Ritesh Agarwal – Oyo Rooms
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Founder of Oyo Rooms, Ritesh Agarwal became a millionaire at the age of 22. He founded the mobile aggregator company in 2013. Today, Oyo Rooms has a network of over 2,200 hotels in 154 cities across India, approximately. Oyo Rooms has a total of 1,600 employees and a monthly revenue of $3.5 million. He is one of the young Indian Entrepreneurs to reach this height.
Ritesh Agarwal is a college dropout. He was in Kota, Rajasthan preparing for IIT entrance exams when he started selling sim cards. He belongs to a well-to-do family but feared that they would summon him back knowing his struggles. So, he never took financial help from them for his business dream.
Ritesh traveled for months and stayed in budget hotels learning about the working of the hotels and expectations of the guests from hotels. He even attended customer calls every day which helped him a lot. He started Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd. in 2012. However, he later named it to Oyo Rooms realizing that this name would help the customers in getting familiar with the services offered.
Byju Raveendran – BYJU’s
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Byju Raveendran is the founder of BYJU’s, the learning App which is immensely popular among the students across India. His net worth is approximately 1,000 crores. Passed out from a government school in Azhikode, Byju has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He started his career as a Service Engineer in a Multi-National Shipping Firm.
Once he was on a vacation to Bangalore with his friends where he helped them with Maths as they were preparing for CAT. Byju himself appeared for the CAT exam just for fun. However, to his surprise, he cleared the exam and that too with a perfect 100 percentile. His friends too cleared the exams.
With the help of positive word of mouth from his friends, his journey as a teacher for MBA aspirants started. He initially started giving classes on his friend’s terrace. Later he moved to a classroom and then to an auditorium. Upon realizing he likes teaching, he left his job and started giving his 100% to MBA classes.
Another twist came to his story when his few friends shared an idea with him about giving MBA classes in an all-new domain. With their help, he founded a company, Think and Learn that aimed at creating easy content for school students. In August 2015, Byju launched the Android and iOS mobile App, BYJU’s. The mobile App today has an annual subscription of more than 2,50,000 and 0ver 5.5 million downloads.
Falguni Nayar – Nykaa
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Falguni Nayar founder Nykaa, a multi-brand beauty retailer that sells cosmetic and wellness products, in April 2012. She started the business with the vision of making the best beauty and wellness products easily available across all the cities and the country. Falguni Nayar currently has a team of over 500 people and Nykaa has both online as well as offline presence.
Falguni is an IIM, Ahmedabad graduate and she was working as the Managing Director in Kotak Mahindra Capital Company when she left her job for 19 years to pursue her entrepreneurial dream. Falguni felt that apart from buying beauty products, women also want unbiased advice about which product is right for their skin. She observed that multi-brand retailers do not provide the advice whereas individual brand stores provide advice but it is biased.
Providing a solution to this, she launched Nykaa. The brand name, Nykaa, is derived from the Hindi word Nayika which means an actress – a beautiful person. Today, Nykaa has a total of 4 offline stores, one each in Bangalore and Delhi and two in Mumbai. Falguni Nayar plans to go PAN India with launching one store every month from next year.
Acharya Balkrishna – Patanjali Ayurved
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Acharya Balkrishna founded Divya Pharmacy in 1995 and Patanjali Ayurved in 2006 along with Ramdev, an Indian Yoga Guru. He started his journey on a personal loan and he never thought he would come this way to having a net worth of $ 450 crores.
Acharya was born in 1972 to a Nepali family living in India. His father, Jai Vallabh, was a security guard. Vallabh later returned to Nepal with family. However, at the age of 12 years, Acharya returned to India for studies and started living in an Ashram in Haridwar with Ramdev. He always had interest in dietary sides of Yoga and herbs. After coming to India, he went to Gangotri to study on herbs.
Later, Acharya Balkrishna started making medicines. However, he did not had enough funds for mass production of medicines. So, he borrowed money from Chhatrapati Swami Das of the Ashram. Significantly, his medicines began to become famous. Balkrishna, along with Ramdev, registered their pharmacy in 1995.
Today, Acharya Balkrishna owns 94% of the shares of Patanjali Ayurved.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma – Paytm
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Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder of Paytm, mobile payment company which was launched in 2010. He has a net worth of 210 crores USD.
Vijay was born in Aligarh and is a graduate from Delhi College of Engineering. Vijay’s proficiency in English came in his way to IIT entrance and other competitive exams. Also, when studying in DCE, he had to read two books simultaneously, one in Hindi and another in English, to comprehend the course material.
After his graduating, he set up XS Communications that created Content Management Systems. Later, he took a business loan of INR 8 Lakhs to setup One97 (which is the parent company of Paytm) at the interest rate of 24%. Nonetheless, got trapped into a debt trap and had to take petty jobs like setting up LAN connections, delivering guest lectures, etc. to make ends meet. In 2010, he launched Paytm and rest is history.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma says that there is no fun in doing what is told but in doing what people say you can’t.
Jayanti Chauhan – Bisleri International Pvt. Ltd.
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Jayanti Chauhan is the only child of Ramesh Chauhan, Parle Bisleri’s Founder. She is the owner and MD of Parle Bisleri.
Jayanti Chauhan has studied fashion, makeup, photography, and merchandising. She had a great interest in art, fashion, and photography. She holds masters in Arabic from School of Oriental and African Studies. Nonetheless, she joined her company in 2011 and pledged to take her father’s legacy forward.
Jayanti Chauhan looks forward to capturing 100% of the Indian market.
Rahul Sharma – Micromax
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Rahul Sharma is a co-founder of Micromax Informatics, a mobile company. Rahul’s father was a school teacher. He has done his Mechanical Engineering from Nagpur University and Bachelor’s in Commerce from the University of Saskatchewan. He has an experience of over 13 years in Marketing and Sales.
After graduating from the college, he started the company initially with the name of Micromax Software. It was an IT software company which later joined hands with Airtel and Nokia. In 2008, he focused on manufacturing and selling Micromax phones. He first manufactured 10,000 mobile phones with the name of ‘The-Extreme’ were sold within a few days.
Today, Rahul Sharma’s net worth is Rs. 668 crore.
These Indian Entrepreneur’s success stories are very motivational and a proof that dreams can be turned to reality with the help of determination and hard work. All these famous entrepreneurs of India started from nothing and today, are in the list of top 7 Indian entrepreneurs.
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