Indians for decades have been playing a pivotal role in the global technology landscape. Indian IT pros have been an important cog in the machinery running technology behemoths across the world. Startups in India, have been witnessing humongous success and giving tough competition to the well-established companies across the globe. Also Read – Rohit Chadda, The Turnaround CEO Carved Out Another Success Story in 2020
Here’s a list of 10 top tech CEOs in India who have scripted massive success stories for their companies by their leadership style. Also Read – Paytm Registers 2x Growth in Digital Gold; Over 75 Million Customers Have Transacted 5000 kg Till Now
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, PayTM:
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm which has today become a colossal organization, stands true to every word he wrote during the most difficult times of his life. Vijay Shekhar Sharma owns a company whose current value is over $ 8 billion in the market, a dream dreamt when he was struggling to make ends meet with Rs 10 in the pocket. The small boy from Aligarh went from rag to riches and owns the most trusted technology brand in India.
In 2000, Sharma launched one97 Communications, which was to later become the parent company of PayTM. It provided mobile content in India during an era where people were just getting the hang of using basic phones. It allowed users to share cricket scores, jokes, ringtones, exam scores; mobile entertainment, and information of the pre-smartphone era.
The company faced a setback after the 9/11 attacks because American investors were no longer interested in foreign companies. The business eventually picked up, with new investors pumping in Rs 8 lakh, and buying 40% of the company’s shares. Soon, One97 sold 10 million ringtones in a single month. According to the reports, in the year 2007-08, the company made an impressive turnover of 11 crores, and this multiplied by 20 over the next four years, pulling in a whopping 220 crores.
In 2010, PayTM was born, and since then there has been no looking back. The simple mobile app has grown and expanded rapidly over the past nine years, and today brings easy financial access and transactions to millions of people in India.
Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Snapdeal:
Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal are the founders of e-commerce platform Snapdeal, a daily deals website that features discount offers across lifestyle segments such as dining, health & beauty, entertainment and travel. Launched in the year 2010, the company in a short span of 10 years has managed to create a niche for itself, from a flash deal website to India’s leading online marketplace.
The moot reason behind the success of Snapdeal lies behind its pro-people strategy. Before these e-commerce shopping platforms made their foray, most of the businesses built by other companies were inspired by the western markets, where the customers were much more homogeneous, richer. However, GDP per capita in India is much lower, and a large number of Indians coming online do not have that (level) of income.
Snapdeal filled this gap by bringing online what users would otherwise purchase offline – products that are value-for-money, of a high-quality selection but not necessarily branded, and delivered in an engaging way.
In 2017, the Company tried to merge with rival e-commerce giant Flipkart, but the plan failed. However, Snapdeal managed to survive a year and effect a turnaround a little over a year after it rejected an acquisition bid by rival Flipkart. “We were going to fall off a cliff if a call was not taken immediately to continue to build the business,” Kunal Bahl wrote in a blogpost on LinkedIn titled, “So, how are things now at Snapdeal?”. He said that the uncertainty was costing them money, morale and momentum.
The Japanese investment firm SoftBank—which held stakes in Flipkart and Snapdeal—wanted the competitors to merge and create a larger company that could take on Amazon.com Inc. The U.S. retail giant Walmart Inc. eventually acquired Flipkart for around $16 billion in 2018.
Bahl wrote that their best bet was to go forward as an independent company—with a clear business plan. This led to Snapdeal 2.0, a pure play marketplace, the work on which started many months ago, he said.
Rohit Chadda, Zee Digital
Rohit Chadda, CEO Digital Publishing, is largely credited for driving the exponential growth of online properties at Zee Media. Recognized for his user-first approach, Chadda’s leadership quality brings a fresh exuberance of youth. Known for his never-say-die approach, Chadda threw caution to the wind and energised different functions to work with renewed vigour. Clearly, things started to move upwards despite the challenges brought by the pandemic.
Through impeccable managerial skills and transparent data-driven approach, Rohit Chadda scripted success stories at the businesses he handled. When online food ordering was still at its nascent stage and needed a change in consumer behaviour, Rohit took over the charge of Foodpanda and made it one of the fastest-growing businesses in India. After Foodpanda, Chadda acquired dine-in payments app Ruplee when its growth had plateaued and it was facing tough times. It was Rohit who pivoted Ruplee & launched PayLo – a B2B omnichannel payments solution in the wake of demonetization.
Rohit Chadda is currently working as the CEO for digital publishing business of Zee Group. Under his stoic leadership, Zee’s digital business was scaled to 200+ million monthly active users, making it the 2nd largest media group in India. Achieved lifetime high in both traffic and financial metrics. Zee Digital launched 8 new brand websites and 3 new languages under his leadership to expand the product portfolio to 20 brands and 12 languages.
Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini, Swiggy:
Started in the year 2014, Swiggy was then seen as a late entrant to a market that was already dominated by the likes of Foodpanda and Zomato. But within a short span of time, Swiggy became the fastest growing startup. Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini, founders of Swiggy, adopted every right thing in the market but the driving force behind its success was its excellent logistics operations.
When other companies avoided focusing on building a cool app rather than taking up the arduous task of building a supply chain, Swiggy was convinced that the only way to crack the food delivery market was to build an extensive logistics network.
According to a Mint report, Majety and Reddy, the two BITS-Pilani graduates, had come together in mid-2013 to work on an idea that would fully capitalise on the Indian e-commerce boom. The duo built a technology product called Bundl that aimed to address a massive pain point in Indian e-commerce—shipping goods across the country.
With Bundl, Majety and Reddy were looking to connect courier companies across India and help them coordinate with each other while delivering goods for small and medium businesses. The two soon realized there was an even bigger opportunity. After brainstorming sessions, they took the call to shelve Bundl and, instead, attempted to crack the food-delivery space, which in their eyes was ripe for disruption
Byju Raveendran, Byju’s:
Byju Raveendran, a teacher by profession, launched BYJU’s – The Learning App, his flagship product in 2011 for school students. The focus of this learning App was to provide online coaching to fourth to 12th class students. Today, the app has more than 3.50 lakhs annual subscriptions with an average of 40 minutes a day and more than 6 million downloads.
BYJU’S Learning App is the largest education company in India that offers highly effective, engaging and adaptive learning programs for students from classes 4-12. The educational app also offers competitive exams like CAT, IAS, JEE, NEET, GRE, and GMAT.
Ritesh Agarwal, OYO:
OYO Rooms has been one of the most successful start-ups in India. The company has over 23,000 hotels, 8,50,000 rooms and 46,000 vacation homes across the globe. Many experts believe that the main reason behind the success of OYO rooms is that it has managed to solve the issue of affordability, cleanliness as well as the availability of budget hotels across all Tier-I and Tier-II cities in the country. In the Oyo model, hotels are not owned, instead, Oyo ties up with certain hotels and acquires a few rooms to be given to people who want to avail the services of OYO.
Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of OYO, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in India today. The 26-year-old entrepreneur had gained enough success by understanding business needs and building something that people want. OYO Rooms was nothing but an idea to create India’s largest chain of efficient, young, standardized rooms with an intention to build the coolest chain of no add-on rooms which might not have Spa, Gym etc like the star hotels but will live up to the basic standards & high expectations for prices like never before.
Bhavish Aggarwal, OLA:
Bhavish Aggarwal, the 35-year-old IIT–B Graduate, is the founder & CEO of India’s most popular Cab Aggregator OlaCabs. Popularly known as Ola, the OlaCabs was first started as an online cab aggregator in Mumbai, now resides in Bangalore, and is also known to be one of the fastest-growing businesses in India, beating its competitors Uber & Meru.
In 2010, Bhavish founded “OLA CABS” in Bengaluru with Ankit Bhati and was officially owned by ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd which was a re-branding of his previous venture. According to Bhavish, “Anyone can build their own business and anyone can have a good business plan, but they need to have the best strategic planning and the right type of execution. Always a zero inventory will be a good startup if people can execute it the right way.”
Hari Menon, Bigbasket:
Bigbasket is one of the largest online food and grocery stores owned and operated by Innovative Retail Concepts Private Limited. Under Bigbasket there are over 1000 brands and more than 20,000 products. Hari Memon, the CEO and founder of Bigbasket, completed his graduation from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani and also holds an MBA (Master of Business Administration) degree from Carnegie Mellon University.
Hari Menon had a vast domain of ideas and business when compared to other such start-ups. Today, the online grocery store has happy customers because they did not hurry to expand it horizontally. It offers an extensive range of food and grocery products including fresh Fruits and Vegetables, Spices and Seasonings to Packaged products, Rice and Dals, Personal care products, and Beverages at the lowest price.
Naveen Tewari, InMobi:
Naveen Tewari, a very well-known name amongst the business community, is the Founder of InMobi. With over 100 billion discovery sessions on mobile, more than 1 Billion monthly active users spread across 160+ Countries, and 138 Billion monthly ad impressions, InMobi holds the largest and the most dependable ad network in the world.
The company can be counted as one of the very rare India-based platforms that are defining the mobile-first customer engagement through its list of products ranging from app distribution & monetization to brand advertisements. Yamaha Motor Co, Microsoft, Adidas, Lancome, are some of InMobi’s clients.
Amit Jain and Anurag Jain, CarDekho:
Owned by Amit Jain and Anurag Jain from Jaipur, CarDekho, is in the simplest terms a web portal that has almost anything and everything about an automobile. The portal not only lists vehicles for trade but also provides multiple services such as insights about the automobile world, fresh updates like recently shot car images and videos, car features, prices or other car specifications in the most subtle language for everyone to understand. Under a thinking leadership, CarDekho has aggressively worked towards becoming the largest personal mobility ecosystem in the country.
Amit and Anurag both were both IIT-Delhi grads and had spent roughly 8 years in the corporate world with TCS & Trilogy. CarDekho has their own e-store for automobile accessories such as stickers, floor mats, scratch removers, polish, mobile chargers, shampoo, navigators, seat covers, tyres, alloy wheels, car stereos, car perfumes, sun films, etc. CarDekho group owns and operates CarDekho.com, Gaadi.com, ZigWheels.com, Powerdrift.com, BikeDekho.com, OTO.com in Indonesia and Carmudi.com.ph in Philippines.
