We got it right.com

Name: Sanjeev Bikhchandani & Hitesh Oberoi
Profile: Founders, Naukri.com
Guiding Principle: Stay away from people who are self promoters, who speak before they listen and those who don’t share credit with their teams 

In the annals of entrepreneurship, the late 90s will go down as a time of irrational exuberance. Greenhorn venture capital kids flush with other people’s money walked up and down five-star hotel lounges. But soon, the card houses collapsed. In that spectre of dotcom chaos, the story of Sanjeev Bikhchandani and Hitesh Oberoi is an exception.

The two men, along with their chief financial officer (CFO) Ambarish Raghuvanshi, went on to build a dotcom enterprise named Info Edge that today employs 1,500 people, clocked revenues of Rs. 273 crore in 2008 and has an enviable market cap touching Rs. 2,100 crore as we go to press. Info Edge’s leading platforms include Naukri.com, Jeevansaathi.com, Brijj.com, 99acres.com and Shiksha.com.

“My parents came from Pakistan after partition,” Bikhchandani says. “I went to study at St. Columbus [Delhi]. I qualified for the IIT. It was what you were expected to do. When the medical tests were conducted, the counsellor told me that I was partially colour blind and in any case I did not have a great rank — so did I really need to be an engineer? I stepped back. No, I wanted to be an entrepreneur; that was more fundamental. I opted out and went to St. Stephens. After graduating, I joined Lintas and then [joined] IIM.  When I started on my own, it turned out to be a struggle every step of the way; raising a Rs. 30,000 bank limit in 1991 was a huge issue. Naukri was small. I needed to get like-minded people and a business model that would be fundamentally different. That is when Hitesh came in.”

He looks at his partner Hitesh Oberoi. 

“My parents were bankers — I also studied in St. Columbus and then I went on to do engineering,” says Oberoi. “After that, I went to IIM, Bangalore. I joined Unilever as a management trainee for a year. Then I was the planning manager for Quality Wall’s ice creams. That is when I realised that I was cut out for something very different. I met [Microland’s] Pradeep Kar who said he was starting a new venture. I told him about my ideas based on the Internet. He asked me to come back to him with a plan and then he actually made me an offer. At that stage, I went to Sanjeev and asked him for his advice. He asked me if I had to quit Unilever, and really join a start-up, why not Naukri? Well, now that made me think. I ended up joining him and my office was Sanjeev’s home. I asked Sanjeev if I could run marketing. Sanjeev said do whatever you want to do.”

“So, what did you do?” I ask.

“With the commercial knowledge I had picked up at Unilever, I went ahead and hired a couple of sales guys. I told them to go out and sell an annual subscription of Rs. 6,000. We paid them a salary of Rs. 10,000; in addition we told them we would pick up their phone bill. We got one person from Xerox and another from Thomas Cook. We realised that if we invested about Rs. 20,000 in each sales guy, including the cost of office space, he could easily get us Rs. 50,000 of revenue. People don’t respond to direct mailers but a sales guy could pound the streets and pick up the cheques as well. So, we decided to keep on adding sales guys. We started making money on each guy. Today, we believe one in three lateral hires of corporate India is placed through Naukri.com.”

But how did they rope in Ambarish Raghuvanshi — the third pillar of the structure — who runs the fiscal operations so well that the stock market is taking note?

“I had met Ambarish through a common friend,” says Bikhchandani. “At that time, Ambarish had just taken voluntary retirement from Bank of America. He was wondering what to do next. He was about 38 years old. He told me that he got an offer from one of the head hunters to join. I [asked] him if he was interested in head hunting, why he didn’t join our head hunting division. So, I persisted and he finally came. He headed the financial services practice of the head hunting division. One day, I asked Ambarish if he would be the CFO as well.”

I know that too many start-ups fail in the first year of their existence because founders part ways. I want to know how did Sanjeev pick his partners correctly?

“Well, I was not the only one ‘picking’; they were picking me as well.”

“But how do you do it right? How did you know in the case of Hitesh?” I ask.

“When I picked Hitesh it was because he seemed bright, had high energy and was achievement oriented. The chemistry seemed right and most importantly, he wanted to quit the comfort of a big company and join a start-up. That is a rare quality — he was an entrepreneur by choice. He reminded me a little bit of myself when I was 10 years younger.

“Today we look at the right values, ability to work with peers, competence for the role, the willingness to put team before self and most importantly an entrepreneurial desire and ability. But we have learnt from experience to stay away from people who are self promoters, who speak before they listen and those who don’t share credit with their teams.”

For a team of dotcom harvesters, the men look and feel very real. No doubt, they are succeeding!