The first office of what became India's most valuable job site was, by several profiles, a servant's quarter behind his father's house, and the founder paid his own father Rs 800 a month to sit in it.
Sanjeev Bikhchandani was born in Delhi in 1963 to a Sindhi family. By one profile his father was a government hospital doctor and his mother a homemaker, and the family hoped for a doctor or an engineer. He took a different road: St. Columba's, then economics at St. Stephen's, then the MBA at IIM Ahmedabad in 1989. It was a respectable path. The job after it, marketing Horlicks for Hindustan Milkfood, was respectable too.
By one profile his father was a government hospital doctor and his mother a homemaker, and the family hoped for a doctor or an engineer.
He left in 1990. A partnership he then tried ended in 1993. He started Info Edge in 1995, selling things like salary surveys, small cheques, and a little pride. What almost nobody sees in the glossy version is who paid the bills. Several profiles say his wife Surbhi, an IIM-A batchmate with her own corporate job, carried the household for the first years. The details vary by telling, and I have kept them loose, but the shape is consistent: the founder was the one not earning.
The turn came in April 1997, when Naukri.com went live on an Indian server. In its first year it reportedly earned a little over Rs 2 lakh, not much by any standard. But employers were slowly learning that a website could reach more candidates than a Sunday classified. By 2005 it was reported as the country's largest job site. Jeevansathi had launched in 1998, 99acres in 2005, and the company listed in 2006.
The second act was less obvious. Info Edge put about Rs 86 crore into FoodieBay, which became Zomato, between 2010 and 2013, and held a controlling stake until 2015. By July 2021 it held 15.23% of Zomato. It also backed Policybazaar before the site opened, by one account.
The weakness is concentration: Naukri produced over 70% of revenue in 2018. Even so, FY25 revenue was Rs 2,654 crore with net income of Rs 977 crore, and Forbes put Bikhchandani and family at $4.25 billion in October 2024.
For a first-time founder the quiet lesson is about who carries you. The Rs 800 rent and the spouse's salary are small numbers beside Rs 2,654 crore, yet they are what made the first years survivable. Companies of this size usually begin as someone else's patience.