1. Deepinder Goyal (Zomato)
Deepinder Goyal, the co-founder and CEO of Zomato, has an inspiring story that highlights his entrepreneurial spirit and determination.
The idea for Zomato was born out of a simple observation while Goyal was working as a management consultant at Bain & Company. He noticed that his colleagues often struggled with accessing restaurant menus, which were kept in a centralized office folder. This sparked the idea of digitizing menus and making them easily accessible online. In 2008, Deepinder, along with Pankaj Chaddah, launched Foodiebay, a website that hosted scanned menus of restaurants in Delhi NCR. The platform quickly gained popularity, and they rebranded it as Zomato in 2010 to make it more relatable globally.
2. Bhavish Aggarwal (Ola)
Pursuing Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, Aggarwal joined Microsoft Research in Bangalore, where he worked for two years.
The idea for Ola was born in 2010 when Aggarwal faced a frustrating experience with intercity cab services. He realized that the transportation sector in India was ripe for disruption, with a massive gap in service quality and accessibility. Along with his co-founder Ankit Bhati, Aggarwal launched Ola Cabs in 2010. Initially, Ola operated as an aggregator platform, connecting customers with cab drivers. Over time, it evolved into one of the largest ride-hailing platforms in India, offering services ranging from bike rides and auto-rickshaws to electric vehicles and luxury cars.
3. Vineeta Singh (SUGAR)
Singh excelled academically, earning a degree in Electrical Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. She turned down a lucrative job offer of Rs 1 crore per year to follow her entrepreneurial dreams. In 2015, she co-founded SUGAR Cosmetics with Kaushik Mukherjee. The idea was to create a makeup brand tailored for Indian skin tones and preferences, offering high-quality products at competitive prices.
From selling online to expanding into physical retail stores across the country, SUGAR has become synonymous with accessible luxury.
4. Nikhil and Nitin Kamath (Zerodha)
Nithin Kamath began trading at the age of 17, using his savings to invest in the stock market and Nikhil Kamath, who showed an aptitude for numbers, dropped out of formal education to focus on trading and entrepreneurship.
The idea for Zerodha emerged from the brothers’ personal experiences with stock trading. They realized that high brokerage fees and a lack of transparency were significant barriers for retail investors in India. In 2010, they founded Zerodha (a combination of "Zero" and "Rodha," a Sanskrit word meaning barriers) with a mission to democratize stock trading, introducing Zero brokerage for equity investments and low-cost trading for other segments and an AI user-friendly platform tailored for retail investors. With this, Zerodha quickly became India’s largest stockbroker by the number of active clients.