Indian Entrepreneurs Success Stories – Who Started With Nothing

indian Entrepreneurs Success Stories – Who Started With Nothing

With the help of this post, we are sharing you the success stories of  Indian entrepreneurs who successfully started with almost nothing. Success Stories of Entrepreneurs which will inspire you.

These stories hopefully will inspire you through your startup journey and will keep you motivated.   (these are not in any specific order or based on specific criteria)

Below Mentioned are Indian Entrepreneurs who started with almost nothing in hand and yet were able to make multi-million companies.

SRIDHAR VEMBU

CEO of Zoho Corp. (formerly AdventNet Inc.), the company behind the Zoho suite of online applications. He co-founded AdventNet in 1996, and has been CEO since 2000. AdventNet has transformed itself from a modest beginning as a software company serving network equipment vendors to a be an innovative online applications provider.

It has maintained growth and profitability, without needing outside capital. Prior to AdventNet, Sridhar worked as a wireless systems engineer at Qualcomm, Inc. where he was fortunate to work with some of the leading minds in wireless communications.

Sridhar Vembu’s Zoho competes successfully around the world with some core products of Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.com. Vembu shuns outside capital, but if Zoho were to be valued, it might be well over $1 billion.

He grew up in a very modest middle-class family in Chennai. His father was a stenographer in the High Court. Neither his father nor his mother went to college.

He went to a Tamil-medium, government-aided school till Std 10, and then he did 11th and 12th in an English-medium government school.

He did well at school and he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.

A Story of How Two Childhood Friends from Village has built their startup from Zero to million dollar without any investors.

We ( George and Suresh ) founders of MacAppStudio, BlueInnovations are two childhood friends from Trichy, a small town in India after working in MNC’s we started creating apps together and got to win many app developer challenges.

We went on to get the most prestigious award called Intel BlackBelts for app development and we are the first in India to get this award. We also got world’s most valuable developer award from Intel and won three intel developer app challenges and other developer challenges where the cash prizes together were more than 100K USD.

We quit our high paying jobs and H1 offers to start our company to follow our passion and heart for creating awesome apps to touch people lives.

People around us said we are crazy stupid and idiots. Everyone moved off from our circle in the toughest times including parents, brothers and relations expect our wives and couple of close friends.

When we quit our companies, my wife was expecting the second baby and George just had his first son. It’s been toughest phases in our lives. We created awesome Mac and iOS products. We thought having enough cash for a year as a runway would save us ( the runway to take off ) but the story was different.

We thought creating an awesome app would change our lives upside down, it’s not the case, the app went to hit top charts in MacAppStore yet the finances are not as we expected. We were very strong that we should focus on creating a great product rather than searching for an investor or doing social networking.

We had passion and persistence of working hard and doing what we love, we created some of the wonderful apps that made us cry when we receive life changing experience emails from the customers.

We create products from the problems that we face.

We have seen highs of a mountain and then the rock bottom of it the next few days. We have been trashed with lots of situations where we were not even able to pay our loans or pay doctor fees of 5 USD but nevertheless, we never ever had a thought to give up anything we just kept focusing and kept building the apps that we loved.

God’s Grace with all the hard work and many sleepless nights, we kept doing what we loved, that is creating apps we are now a million dollar company without any investments all bootstrapped.

THROW BACK

We started as two without even the office. After working for 6 months we got a small office. We didn’t even had a fan, we had money to buy one but we didn’t. We wanted to buy it from the income that we generate in that office. It was hot in Chennai and sweating like a hell. More the heat more the fire we had.

We got our first fan in a month. Next Invertor in 3 months as there was power cut for long hours. First Ac in the 5th month. We were just two till 2 years. It’s been crazy two years we don’t want to risk any other till two years we did all products designed and developed working day and night. It’s been crazy schedule.

It’s not a joke not even one day we felt why we quit our high paying jobs. It’s all two friends who happily meet have a coffee, design and code what we love for long hours, completing something for the day gives us the kick.

We have created some of the awesome products in very low internet speed which is 1 Mbps and with poor voltage fluctuation. God’s grace now we have 100 Mbps

We developed products that we loved, we created those for our customers and not just for money or for any investor.

George is a hardcore developer, I am a Creative Product Designer and I take care of business. It is like Right Left Brain Combination. Since we both are childhood friends we know each other, we know how we think and act.

I am very aggressive and George is conventional we balance in the middle and we take the best decision in the interest of the customer and we operate on values and principles.

THE MINIMUM INVESTMENT

We had two top ends MacBook Pro brought in the loan which is our only investment along with Time and Energy.

We never spent any money apart from having a domain and a server in a cloud which is very cheap. We never incorporated the company be it as private LTD or LLC or Inc. We never spent money on any fancy office interior. We even registered as a partnership only when a huge MNC asked us to do so to raise an invoice to pay us :).

It’s all about being passionate and working hard. There will be lots of failures and days where we would see the top of the mountain and then the rock bottom of it. You will be trashed before you see the success.

Success will test you whether you are the right person to travel along, it will toast you to the ground and then will give the hand and the smile.

You Name it to be it angry birds, twitter, OMGPop, Some of the great apps are born out of pressure, just before you got broke , it’s like in our movies you will never be saved till the last second you are about to die.

We can take the best lesson from the Mothers, they had to wait 9 months, be calm, passionate, loving the kid and during the labour pain they go through the most painful experience.

The maximum patience, pressure and pain indicate you are about to have an awesome baby the person who can withhold the pressure and pain get to see the baby.

You can’t see a beautiful baby until you go through this path. You can’t see a success until you go through the toughest path, the ones who cross this see it, ones who quit never have a chance to see it.

We believe in God, work hard be crazy. Put your heads down and do what you love and which makes you happy daily.

We were two till our 3rd year and in next one year we grew to 40+, we have built a culture where hardcore values and hard work is recognised and immediate rewards are awarded irrespective of the time frame they joined.

Everyone gets an opportunity here, we give them an old laptop and upon successfully completing a project in that they get an iMac immediately. Few have got double promotions just in 3 weeks of joining.

We have mentored and trained them personally. One day we were about to have our breakfast and asked a guy whether they had any food, their answer was no. Immediately we arranged the food for everyone in the office for the whole day, we have also given them free accommodation and everything to make them comfortable.

Now they have only one thing to focus which is work rest are taken care and they enjoy what they are doing. An App designed and developed with love can be felt across miles.

Most of them are from small villages and town who could not even communicate well in English but they code like hell and we have shipped products to Silicon Valley Startups to Biggest Giants Like Intel.

Success and Money come to you automatically after testing whether you are the right person and whether we deserve that success.

More than the money we have touched millions of customers and have built 40+ team members (brothers). We are one family and one Team with one vision. God is Great.

Now we moved on to the new office as our old office could not hold more than 20 people. Still we have our old office as part of our value and sentiment.

A Journey of thousand miles starts with a single step, coming from a non-business family we are happy and humble that we have bootstrapped this far and this is the first step of success and still a long way to go, we are now coming with some of the great products.

STAY HUNGRY . STAY FOOLISH.

Coolie’s Son Set Up 100 Crore Company With Just 25,000

This is the story of a 42-year-old man from a remote village in Wayanad, Kerala. His father was a coolie. His mother never went to school. 

This is the story of a man who failed in Class 6, but went on to join the Regional Engineering College (now the National Institute of Technology), Calicut and the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore.

This is the story of a man who decided to become an entrepreneur and employ people from rural India.

Today, fresh idli and dosa batter made by P C Mustafa’s company ID Fresh reaches homes in Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mangaluru and even Dubai.

Childhood in Wayanad

I grew up in a small village called Chennalode near Kalpatta in Wayanad.

The village was so remote that we had only a primary school. It had no roads or electricity. We had to walk at least four kilometres to go to high school so most of the kids dropped out after primary school.

My father Ahmed stopped studying after Class 4 and worked as a coolie on a coffee plantation. My mother Fathima never went to school.

I am the eldest and I have three younger sisters.

Failing in Class 6

I was not interested in studies. After school every day, and on weekends, I preferred helping my father, a daily wage worker, instead of doing homework or studying.

There was no question of opening the books at night as there was no electricity at home, only kerosene lamps.

Though I was below average in all other subjects, I was good at mathematics. After I failed in Class 6 I lost interest in going to school.

A school master steps in

My father asked me to join him as a daily wage worker. My maths teacher, Mathew Sir, didn’t like my dropping out of school one bit. He spoke to my father who agreed to give me one more chance.

Mathew Sir asked me a question, ‘Do you want to be a coolie or a teacher?’ I looked at him and could see the difference between my father and my teacher. ‘Sir,’ I answered, ‘I want to be a teacher like you.’

When I went back to school, I had to sit with my juniors. All my friends were in a higher class. I felt so humiliated that I became attentive in class.

I was very weak in both English and Hindi. Seeing me struggle, Mathew Sir helped me after school.

From a failure to a topper

Sir’s help worked. I came first in the Class 7, surprising all the teachers. There was no looking back after that.

I stood first in the school in Class 10.

In those days, I had only one ambition: I wanted to be a maths teacher like Mathew Sir. He was my role model.

From a village to a city

Till I completed Class 10, I had not stepped out of Wayanad. For college (junior college was known as pre-degree those days), I had to go to Kozhikode (Calicut). My father didn’t have a problem but didn’t have any money to fund my education.

I got admission at the Farooq College in Kozhikode where my father’s friend, who had suggested I study further, arranged for a free meal scheme in the college charity hostel. I was one of the 15 students who were offered free stay and food, as we could not afford to pay.

There were four hostels in the college and we had to go to different hostels for breakfast, lunch and dinner as we were on charity.

Naturally, other students looked at us with disdain. That upset me. It was like we were eating somebody else’s food. Some students made fun of us. It was not a pleasant experience, but I had to swallow the humiliation for the sake of my education.

Looking back, I feel the college management did a great job by taking care of poor students like us.

Coming from a village, I was very weak in English. It was a big handicap in college where all the lectures were in English. A good friend of mine used to translate everything for my benefit. I also worked extremely hard and felt even more motivated when I scored good marks.

Engineering at REC, Calicut

I wrote the engineering entrance exam after my college and was ranked No 63 in the state. I got admission at the Regional Engineering College (now the National Institute of Technology).

When I look back, I feel three factors helped me.

I had the potential as I was good in Maths. I was a hard worker. And the third and most important reason was that God was with me.

I was very lucky to have secured such a good rank. I got the opportunity to study what I really liked — computer science. There was no one to guide me in those days except God Almighty.

Life was not that bad at REC. I got a scholarship and also took a student’s loan. I didn’t have to pay any tuition fees and only had to take care of the hostel fees. That was a big relief. Unlike other students, I had to be very careful about spending money, but that was okay.

I had no dreams to be an entrepreneur then. I wanted to be a well-known engineer. I worked hard and did well in studies. When I graduated in 1995, I got placed at Manhattan Associates, an Indian start-up in the US.

First flight

After a few days of working at the start-up in Bangalore, I got an offer from Motorola. It was a dream offer for a person from a remote village in Wayanad. After working for a short period in Bangalore, I was sent to Ireland.

As a young boy, I stepped out of Wayanad for the first time to study in a college. Now, for the first time in my life, I boarded a flight and went out of the country.

The flight took off at 6.30 pm. I looked down and saw Bangalore. I will never be able to forget the image: The aerial view of Bangalore.

Missing India

Though I loved Ireland and the Irish people, I missed my people and country a lot. I also missed Indian food, as there were no Indian restaurants there. I was used to praying five times a day, which I found difficult to do there.

After three months, I got a very good offer from CitiBank. I jumped at it and moved to Dubai. In 1996, a salary in lakhs was quite something. The first thing I did after I paid off my loan was to send Rs 1 lakh in cash to my father through a friend. I was told he cried seeing so much cash in a bag sent by his son.

He paid off his debts and started planning my sister’s wedding. One of my sisters had dropped out after school, but the others went to college. In 2000, I also got married.

A home for his parents

Soon, I built a house for my parents in our village. The people in my village, who had seen me as a small child, could not believe the change in my life. Many kids in my village now look up to me. They also dream of achieving something big in life.

From Dubai to India

In 2003, after having lived in Dubai for so long, I decided to return to India. There were three reasons for the decision.

I wanted to come back and spend time with my parents.

I wanted to study further. Though I had a very good GATE score, I couldn’t study after my engineering due to financial constraints. After working for a few years, I decided to study business administration.

The third reason was that I wanted to give something back to society.

There are so many smart youngsters in our villages who are not getting a good break in life. I wanted to give them that opportunity so that they too could come up in life. And the best way to help them, I thought, was by providing them with jobs. In order to do that, I had to be an entrepreneur.

Quitting a well paying job

It was one of the toughest decision I have ever made.

My father was horrified. So was my wife’s family. But one person supported me wholeheartedly, my cousin Nasser. As did my wife.

I am very close to my maternal cousins. We grew up together. They also came from very poor families. Unlike me, they didn’t go for higher studies.

Nasser ran away from home to Bangalore where he started a small kirana store. He gave me the courage to listen to my heart. He said, ‘If it does not work out, you can go back to work anytime. Quitting the job was the end of the world. But you shouldn’t feel that you didn’t try to do what you wanted to.’

The funny thing was I knew I wanted to do something but had no idea what it would be. I came to back to India with a savings of Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million).

Idlis and dosas

I met with my first objective by going to my village every weekend to be with my parents.

Instead of studying technology, I decided to do an MBA as I found management more interesting. I gave the CAT exam and got admission at IIM-Bangalore.

Even while studying at IIM-B, I would constantly discuss business plans with my cousins.

Shamsuddin, one of my cousins, had seen dosa batter being sold in plastic bags tied with a rubber band in nearby stores and suggested we make and supply dosa batter. That was an Aha! moment. I decided to invest Rs 25,000 and start a company immediately.

Five of us cousins — Nasser, Shamsu, Jaffer, Naushad and me — decided to join hands. The partnership was such that I had 50 per cent share in the company and the other 50 per cent was with the four of them.

We found a small place of around 550 square feet and started with two grinders, a mixer and a sealing machine.

ID is identity, not idli dosa

We were discussing names when a cousin suggested ID for idli dosa. We named the venture ID Fresh as we planned to supply fresh dosa and idli batter.

Our initial target were 20 stores in the neighbouring area. If we were able to sell 100 packets a day in six months, I would invest more and buy more machines.

We didn’t employ anyone; my cousin was in charge. We started very small with just 10 packets a day. Initially, the shopkeepers were not willing to keep a new brand. So we gave them a special offer — cash after sales.

When the customers asked for ID repeatedly, other stores also wanted to stock our product. But we stuck to the first 20 stores and waited to touch the 100 packet figure. By the ninth month, we were selling an average of 100 packets a day.

Making profits from day one

The best part of our venture was that we were making profits from day one. None of us took any salary initially. After paying the rent of Rs 500 and crossing off the expenditure of buying rice, dal, etc, our profit was Rs 400 in the first month.

Once we reached the target of 100 packets, I decided to invest Rs 6 lakh (Rs 600,000) and move to a bigger kitchen of 800 sq ft with 2,000 kg capacity, which is 2,000 packets with 15 wet grinders.

Nasser was handling the kitchen alone so we employed five people, all of whom were our relatives.

Joining as the CEO

In 2007, I got my MBA and officially joined as the CEO in charge of marketing and finance. Till then, I was only remotely participating in the operation along with my cousins.

In two years, we increased the capacity to 3,500 kg a day. The number of stores we partnered with increased to 300, 400. We now had 30 employees working for us. We were operating our kitchen in a residential area till then.

As the demand increased, we decided to have a proper manufacturing plant in an industrial area. We were making a decent 10 to 12 per cent profit every month.

In 2008, I invested another Rs 40 lakh (Rs 4 million) and bought a 2,500 sq ft shed in the Hoskote Industrial Area. We imported five large wet grinders from America and customised them to fit our requirements.

In 2008, we added parathas to our list of products. We will soon introduce vada batter and also rava idli batter.

At ID Fresh, we only deal with natural fresh food. We do not add any preservatives to any of our products.

Expanding operations

In 2012, we expanded to other cities like Chennai, Mangaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. My friends and relatives joined me to take ID Fresh to the next level. We follow a partnership model in other cities, with a local manufacturing plant in each city. Each partner becomes a shareholder in the parent company.

In 2013, we started our operations in Dubai. We see the maximum demand for dosa batter in Dubai and are not able to match the demand.

Our experience in Bangalore helped us. We use the same raw materials, the same manufacturing process and the same business model everywhere. Expanding to other cities was a bit tough though, since we are not locally present there.

We are not looking at any other international market right now. India is such a huge market and we have so much to explore.

Rs 100 crore company

Today, we produce around 50,000 kg in our plant. The total investment must be around Rs 4 crore (Rs 40 million) and our revenue is Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion).

When we became a Rs 100 crore company in October 2015, we celebrated in grand scale. We have grown from producing 10 packets a day in 2005, with just my cousin managing the kitchen, to 50,000 packets a day with 1,100 employees in 10 years.

Employs only youngsters from rural areas

When I recruit someone, I ensure he is from a rural area. He has to be smart, honest and committed. Those who work in the plant make around Rs 40,000 a month.

Biggest challenge

The biggest challenge any start-up faces is getting the right people, the right team. I was lucky to have my cousins with me.

But balancing work and personal life is by far the toughest challenge.

Future plans

My aim is to make ID the most popular and trusted brand in the fresh food segment and make it Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) company in the next five to six years.

By then, I am sure we will be able to employ at least 5,000 people.

Advice to aspiring entrepreneurs

If you have the passion to start something, do it immediately. Don’t wait for tomorrow. I had the passion to be an entrepreneur, but it took me a few years make that decision. I still regret the delay. I wish I had started five years earlier.

My words may sound like management jargon, but it is very important to maintain the quality of the product to be successful.

The three things that worked for us were that we were in the right city with the right product at the right time.

             DHIRU BHAI AMBANI

India’s largest private sector company. Created an equity cult in the Indian capital market. Reliance is the first Indian company to feature in Forbes 500 list
Dhirubhai Ambani was the most enterprising Indian entrepreneur. His life journey is reminiscent of the rags to riches story. He is remembered as the one who rewrote Indian corporate history and built a truly global corporate group.

Dhirubhai Ambani alias Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani was born on December 28, 1932, at Chorwad, Gujarat, into a Modh family. His father was a school teacher. Dhirubhai Ambani started his entrepreneurial career by selling “bhajias” to pilgrims in Mount Girnar over the weekends.

After doing his matriculation at the age of 16, Dhirubhai moved to Aden, Yemen. He worked there as a gas-station attendant, and as a clerk in an oil company. He returned to India in 1958 with Rs 50,000 and set up a textile trading company.

In 1992, Reliance became the first Indian company to raise money in global markets, its high credit-taking in international markets limited only by India’s sovereign rating. Reliance also became the first Indian company to feature in Forbes 500 list.

Dhirubhai Ambani was named the Indian Entrepreneur of the 20th Century by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). A poll conducted by The Times of India in 2000 voted him “greatest creator of wealth in the century”.

Dhirubhai Ambani died on July 6, 2002, at Mumbai.

KARSANBHAI PATEL – MAN BEHIND NIRMA

The ‘Nirma’ success story of how an Indian Entrepreneur took on the big MNCs and rewrote the rules of business :

It was in 1969 that Dr. Karsanbhai Patel started Nirma and went on to create a whole new segment in the Indian domestic detergent market.

During that time the domestic detergent market only had the premium segment and there were very few companies , mainly the MNCs, which were into this business.

Karsanbhai Patel used to make detergent powder in the backyard of his house in Ahmedabad and then carry out door to door selling of his hand made product.

He gave a money back guarantee with every pack that was sold. Karsanbhai Patel managed to offer his detergent powder for Rs. 3 per kg when the cheapest detergent at that time was Rs.13 per kg and so he was able to successfully target the middle and lower middle income segment.

Sabki Pasand Nirma!

Nirma became a huge success and all this was a result of Karsanbhai Patel’s entrepreneurial skills.

The best case of – Give your consumer what he wants, when he wants, where he wants and at the price he wants, selling will be done quite automatically. This is the marketing ‘mantra’ of Nirma.

The company that was started in 1969 with just one man who used to deliver his product from one house to the other,today employs around 14 thousand people and has a turnover of more than $ 500 million.

In 2004 Nirma’s annual sales were as high as 800000 tonnes.According to Forbes in 2005 Karsanbhai Patel’s net worth was $640 million and it’s going to touch the $1000 million mark soon.

                                                                               -By Rohit Singh