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Ikrant Kumar Bhatia

Ikrant Kumar Bhatia is a Digital Marketing Enthusiast and is passionate about becoming an Entrepreneur. He is currently working as an Internet Marketer and planning to come up with his own Startup.

Rahul Sharma: Raising Micromax to 10th largest mobile company of the world

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“It’s an Indian product, why don’t you look for a similar one from a renowned company like Samsung or HTC…”

A quote that could be easily heard in mobile stores whenever someone tried to buy a mobile phone of Indian brand few years back until Micromax made its debut in the mobile market. Since the entry of Micromax in the world of mobile phones, the perception of Indian products have changed globally.

Micromax  an Indian mobile manufacturing company is world’s 10th largest company and India’s no. 2 mobile company after Samsung. Micromax was started by Rahul Sharma along with his friends. When smartphones emerged in India, the market was dominated by Samsung and few lesser known Chinese phones. Micromax has changed that to large extent. Today people proudly flaunt their Micromax smartphone.

The Beginning
Micromax Informatics was started by Rahul Sharma and his three friends, but the main driving force behind the success of company can be attributed to the dynamic nature of Rahul. Rahul Sharma is married to Indian Bollywood actress Asin. The company was started in 2000 as an eCommerce company. Since gadget industry was very lucrative at that time, Micromax pivoted to developing embedded systems. The company was providing best class products and services and hence got the attention of the world’s leading mobile company, Nokia. Micromax clinched a hardware deal with Nokia for their M2M (Machine-to-Machine) business which resulted in a huge success for the company.micromax

 The Unwavering Beliefs
But the road to success was not supposed to be easy. In 2013 their M2M business partner, Nokia sold their mobile business to Microsoft. Nokia, considering the excellent quality of products and services provided by Micromax Informatics,  offered them a new collaboration in Nokia Networks. But the Micromax team decided to decline the offer to collaborate with Nokia and walked away. Now being separated from Nokia they continued their existing business believing in their own products and capabilities.

Working independently in India, Micromax decided to manufacture their own hardware. With their services already being top notch, they soon collaborated with the Indian network provider giant, Bharti Airtel. Micromax’s first project with Airtel was to install payphones in the remote areas of Jammu and Kashmir. With their dedication and hard-work the project was completed successfully despite the rough geographical terrain.

Inspiration is just a different perception
Things were going smooth with company but it was not enough for the founders. Being chased by their passion and dreams to achieve new heights continuously they were always trying to grow their company. When such ideals are being followed, a small spark is enough to light a dazzling flame to blind the world.

When Rahul Sharma was on a trip to an interior region of West Bengal, he met a payphone operator, who was operating his business in an area with no electricity and very low network coverage. That network operator was using truck battery to supply power to the payphone. Rahul was amused by this innovative solution to the problem of power shortage but this encounter also made him think about the most common problem faced by the customers of mobile phones, fast draining batteries that required charging after few hours.

Rahul came up with the idea of entering the mobile phone market with mobile phones with battery lasting one month on a single charge. But his partners were reluctant to accept his idea as there was heavy competition in the mobile market. Not willing to give up, Rahul managed to convince them about the huge possibilities in the mobile market.

Expect the Unexpected
Though everyone agreed to the idea, it was decided to manufacture only 10,000 units initially and then observe the market’s reaction to their product. Hence, Micromax’s first ‘Stamina Battery’ phone was launched in 2008. In just 10 days, all phones got sold. The thing that astonished everyone was that their product went out of stock in such a short time without any serious advertising. It was publicized only through word-of-mouth.

Motivated with this huge positive feedback, company invested more money and resources in mobile phone market and soon launched more models. Considering the end users in India, Micromax’s all phones are designed keeping in mind the daily usage of common Indian customer. One of the main qualities of their products is their reasonable pricing.

While rising through the Indian mobile market and considering various options to help their customers in their everyday life, Micromax came up with the idea of dual-sim mobile phones. Providing this extremely useful feature to their customers this revolutionary idea had an ever changing effect on the mobile industry and created new niche in the mobile sector. Micromax’s popularity rocketed to new heights. To keep up with the extreme challenge being posed by Micromax many other top companies had to follow in the footsteps of Micromax and hence also introduced dual-sim mobile phones.

Soon after Micromax challenged all major mobile phone players globally  to became  world’s 10th largest phone manufacturing company. The company believed that if the end user are benefited from the product in one way or the other,  the product would definitely be a success. Which proved right for various devices that the company launched into the market worldwide.

Things fall but to rise up again
In 2014, Micromax was second largest mobile phone company in India, and was challenging the world’s top and the number 1 mobile phone maker in Indian market. Its founders decided to bring managers from outside to help the company go forward. In the fourth quarter of 2014, with full dedication towards the company’s betterment its executives and CEOs along with the innovative ideas outperformed, the Korean company, Samsung and took the No.1 spot in the Indian mobile market.

But soon after the appointment of new executives, problems arose. The creative and risk taking dynamic approach of Micromax founders like Rahul Sharma, was not easily comprehended by the new executives who used to rely more on the facts and figures. Thus, Alibaba (one of the huge investors of Micromax) left the client pool of Micromax and walked away from a $1.2 billion purchase of about 20% shares in Micromax.

Due to lack of funding some of the Micromax projects had to be shut down and by final quarter of 2015 its smartphone market fell to 13% from 22%. But with founders Rahul Sharma, Vikas Jain, Sumeet Arora and Rajesh Agarwal still controlling the about 80% of the company have kept the company in profit.

Facing tough competition now, Micromax plans to increase its production by 100% that is from about 1.5 million units every month to 3 million units per month. Micromax also plans to increase its business overseas. Already a top 10 brand in Russia, Micromax has been looking for a partner to help it expand outside India and to indulge more in the business of televisions and tablets.

The Battle Royale
With vendors from Dragon land  and other beasts like Samsung, Lenovo and Sony now taking the Indian market more seriously and introducing better products at cheap prices, the legendary Indian warrior Micromax has taken the fight head on and has been continuously rolling out products with performance at par with products from any other competitor, giving all competitors a run for their money around the globe. Today Micromax is a popular name in LED TV industry in addition to Smartphones.

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Travis Kalanick: A Billion Dollar Uber Ride

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Travis Kalanick, the man who today owns a $66 billion company, was once broke and faced a lawsuit of $250 billion which could have even landed him behind bars. It was his sheer determination and self-belief which gave him the power to rise up and shine on. He is the man behind the immensely successful company Uber. Uber, the taxi hailing app is a household name around the globe and has taken the transport industry by storm.

Travis Kalanick faced a lot of ups and downs in his life but despite the odds, with his skills and talent, he was able to start a worldwide ever-growing firm whose popularity stunned the world.

Travis Kalanick
Image Credit: Wikipedia

Kalanick was born on August 6, 1976 in Los Angeles. He lived with his family, father, a Civil Engineer and his mother, a newspaper ad saleswoman, in Northridge, California. He did his graduation from Granada Hills High School Los Angeles, California. He had good interest in programming at a young age and started programming around seventh grade. From his childhood, he had skills necessary for being an entrepreneur which he used to hone by selling small items door to door.

After completing high school, he got admission in University of California, Los Angeles where he decided to pursue computer engineering to get a good job later but for a person, with high enough natural caliber of an entrepreneur like him, it was not supposed to last.

Dropping out of college and first startup failure
In University, he realized his true talent and the opportunities through College were insufficient for him to exercise his capabilities to their potential. In 1998, he made a risky yet bold decision to drop out of college with his friends. Travis Kalanick along with his friends Vince Busam and Michael Todd  founded Scour Inc. and Scour Exchange which was a multimedia search engine and peer-to-peer file exchange service respectively. This was Kalanick’s debut into the corporate world.

The road to success is never easy and straightforward, so it was for Kalanick.  He had to go through a lot of hardships and tough decisions to get to the point where he is today. Emerging in the corporate world with stunning pace it took him no time to get noticed by the big players of the industry.

Scour, the media search engine got very popular as it allowed people search and download videos, movies for free. This rising success of Travis Kalanick and his company was also seen as a threat to business by many other company owners of same niche. Soon Motion Picture Association of America and National Music Publisher Association along with more than 30 companies brought a copyright infringement lawsuit against Scour and sued Scour for a gigantic amount of $250 billion pushing Kalanick and his team to a corner.

With this lawsuit, his company was set to shut down. But, along with it, it could have also landed Kalanick and his team behind bars. But Travis Kalanick with his great presence of mind after considering various possibilities for future decided to save something than nothing and filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and avoided the fine as well as going to jail along with his team. However, as a result he had to shut down the company.

Sun rises but to set Again
This shutdown came as a shock to Kalanick but his persistence didn’t allow him to stop thinking new ideas. In 2001, considering previous incidents carefully along with the Scour’s engineering team he founded a new company called Red Swoosh which was also a peer-to-peer file sharing company that allowed users to exchange large multimedia files.

The idea of Kalanick with this company was to take on all the 33 companies who had sued Scour and turn them into Red Swoosh’s customers which he eventually did.

But things never go the way we want them to be. Soon the bandwidth prices declined and company lost its investments and they had to fire all their employees. But fate had more of it coming against Kalanick.  IRS(Internal Revenue Service) ran a check on Red Swoosh and found that taxes were not being paid to the government completely, hence Kalanick’s company was asked to pay a fine of $110,000 or a jail term. Kalanick somehow managed to get the money as funding from Mark Cuban.

But this incident led to an internal dispute between Kalanick and Todd which eventually resulted in a falling out between the two and Travis took over the company. Thus, there was more pressure of work on him than he could handle, thinking about work all the time, he slowly lost all his friends and was left all alone in the end.

Later in 2007, things got completely out of hand and Travis had to sell the company to an American Corporation, Akamai Technologies, which bought Red Swoosh for $19 million.

“If someone can do it, then I can do it too”

With 2 such huge unsuccessful business startups at the age of 30, his life was in chaos, such circumstances could have broken down any human being but not Travis Kalanick. While trying his best to see through the current situation, he happened to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which is the work of a 70-year-old director. It instilled in him a thought process:

“If some old person can do something like that then I can still do much more than I have done yet”.

As a result, the diminished flame of perseverance to achieve the goal in his heart lit again and made him take another step in the corporate world. With his creativity and visionary thinking combined, he came up with a revolutionary idea of combining technology with everyday life.

Masterpiece: The Star-Lit Sky
In 2009, Travis regained the confidence of investors and managed to get a seed funding of $1.25 million and started Uber, which is a mobile application for hiring and ride-sharing vehicles. It works by connecting passengers and drivers of such available vehicles, and created a milestone in the history of both technology and corporate world by merging mobile technology with daily life in a creative yet very handy manner for common people.

Today, Uber is a well-known platform for hiring rides across the globe with just a tap. Just like many other products Uber has become a brand name for hiring rides. Being a convenient and easy to use application for mobile platform Uber was greeted by people with open hands. Since its launch in 2009, it has been able to increase its user base to more than 66 countries with the company’s net valuation to $66 billion, making Kalanick a Star Shining proudly in the Corporate World.

“The Lone Wolf”
Today being acknowledged as one of the world’s most renowned entrepreneurs, Kalanick is often invited to speak at various business events and conferences like LeWeb and Tech Cocktail to share his views on the present business matters being discussed worldwide.

It is Kalanick’s sheer determination and will power to reach greater heights with which he has gone against the tide from time to time to reach his goals. No matter how difficult a situation is, he always makes sure to work his way through it and see it to the end the way he wants.

Chasing his dreams with all he’s got did place him in Forbes’s List Of World Billionaires, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg compared to his achievements in life.

As Kalanick states:

“The entrepreneur community, there’s a certain kind of founder, they call them a ‘lone wolf.’ I probably fit in that category.”

He surely does.

Dinesh Agarwal-From A Worker In Railways To Creating $2 billion Company

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Everyone looks up to the owner of IndiaMART as the Ideal Businessman from India owning the biggest B2B Marketplace having a revenue of $2 billion (Rs. 225 Crore). Do you know that Dinesh Agarwal whose company Indiamart wrapped Delhi Metro with its banners once worked with Indian Railways to oversee the computerized reservations system of the New Delhi Railway Station.

There has been ups and down, dot-com bust, market crash, but with a clear Goal in his mind, hard work and dedication, he succeeded in executing things in the right manner.

Never Give Up

IndiaMART was founded in 1996, a time when internet did not have many users. Many in India didn’t even have an internet connection at that time, and Dinesh Agarwal made a B2B Market place, even before the world’s largest b2b Market place, Alibaba got registered. He has been risk taker and visionary, a must trait for any entrepreneur.

During his early days he himself used to write the names and addresses of small businesses from his apartment in East Delhi. He himself went to the Post Office to deposit huge bundles of envelopes in order to get the contact details of business firms across India to list them on IndiaMART. He sent letters to at least half a million businesses.

His website did not have much traffic initially since having a computer and internet connection was a luxury. He made efforts to convince businessmen to get registered on his portal during those days when internet used to be pretty slow, mostly dial up with 56 Kbps. He used to stand up in front of Pragati Maidan in New Delhi for getting forms filled by everyone who came there and created their web pages on IndiaMart.

Dinesh Agarwal IndiaMART

He believed that internet was going to be the primary source of communication in the future and would connect the whole world and make life easy. He was in US when he first used the internet and was fascinated, as finding anything got easy with Internet. It is then he planned  about doing something related to software and internet in India.

He came from a traditional business family and knew that small and medium enterprises have a significant market share in all terms from generating employment to manufacturing goods. Hence he thought of connecting them in an online business directory. IndiaMart started as a listing site and then evolved into a business supply store. During 1997-1998, he succeeded in getting 100 paying clients on board.

Surviving Market Downturn

His company was among one of the few survivors that survived market downturns. After the 9/11 attacks, the global market was going through a bad phase but Dinesh did not fire any employee, he instead took steps like cost cutting and delaying salary hikes till things back to normal.

Tolexo and ABCPaymemts

Dinesh Agarwal did not stop at IndiaMart; he started an online Payment Gateway named ABCPayments.com in 2004 and Tolexo.com, an eCommerce website for industry equipment in 2014.

His company IndiaMART is targeting a revenue of 20 billion by 2020. Today the company has more than 100,000 paying customers and 2.2 million suppliers on its platform with 55 offices and more than 2400 employees scattered across 100 cities.

All this would not have been possible if he hadn’t taken the first step, he implemented his ideas and never lost focus, believing that it will happen without worrying how it’s going to, since then he never looked back.