Here are some of the top websites of India along with their founders:
1. Rediff.com
Rediff was founded by Ajit Balakrishnan, an IIM Kolkata graduate. He founded rediff in the year 1996 at the age of 42 years. Having invested a considerable amount of Rs. 2 crores, Ajit ran the website for three years without any profit.
Rediff has an estimated earning of $40 million per year and is the only Indian website to have featured in the top 100 websites of the world.
2. Flipkart.com
Flipkart.com was started by two IIT graduates, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in the year 2007 with a small investment of Rs. 4 lakhs. Sachin and Binny both worked for amazon.com before founding Flipkart. Flipkart started off as a book selling online store that has now expanded to include electronic goods and a variety of other products. As of today, it is one of the top 30 Indian websites as per the alexa ranking. Flipkart’s gross revenue from last year’s sales was close to $15 million which is expected to cross the $100 million mark this year.
3. Snapdeal.com
Snapdeal.com was founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal in 2010. Kunal is a Wharton graduate while Rohit is an alumnus of IIT Delhi. Snapdeal is largely a daily deals website that offers discounts to its registered members across various segments such as dining, beauty products, mobiles, watches, perfumes, travel and entertainment among a host of others. Its estimated revenue is close to $16 million per year.
4. Naukri.com
Naukri.com was founded by Sanjeev Bikhchandani, an IIT-IIM graduate. He had to toil relentlessly for 13 years before the website became a huge hit, so much so that at times, he had to survive on his wife’s salary.
Naukri.com has an estimated earning of $6 million per year and is now part of Sanjeev’s company Info Edge that also includes Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com and policybazaar.com. Naukri.com, Info Edge’s first venture revolutionized the concept of e- recruitment in India. Today it is India’s No.1 job site and amongst the top 15 job sites as per Alexa rankings. It services 6000 organizations and is almost a one-stop clearing house for jobs and careers for Indians.
5. Shaadi.com
Anupam Mittal founded Shaadi.com in 1996, all because of a matchmaker pandit who came to his house with a marriage proposal. Whether that proposal materialized into wedding or not is tough to say, but it did bestow Anupam with this excellent idea of providing matchmaking help online which eventually led to shaadi.com, and rest, as they say, is history.
Shaadi.com’s annual revenue is currently pegged at $5 million per year and it has more than 10 million members. With these figures, it is, undoubtedly, the number one matchmaking website in India. Shaadi.com group now also has another website, makaan.com.
6. OneIndia.in
Oneindia.in and click.in were founded by B.G. Mahesh who has a M.S. from University of Alabama in Birmingham. Oneindia covers everything from jobs to wallpapers while click.in is a classified site that is ranked 4th in top classified websites in India. His estimated revenue is pegged to be around $3-4 million/year.
7. JustDial.com
JustDial was founded by VSS Mani, a CA dropout with dream in his eyes. He had to face a lot of financial problems during the start up as nobody was willing to invest in his idea. He somehow managed to arrange Rs. 50,000 and started JustDial. From such humble beginnings, he has taken JustDail to new heights and today, it is worth roughly around 500 crores. The company nets in a revenue of $3 million per year.
8. Sulekha.com
Sulekha was started by Satya Prabhakar, an NIT, Tiruchirapally alumni. Sulekha is the largest classifieds and yellow pages website in India that has also made its presence felt in other countries such as US and Canada. It’s estimated earning is $3.5million per year.
9. Way2SMS.com
Way2SMS was started by V.V. Raju after completing his MCA from Nagarjuna University. He built this site around the whole idea of earning through Ads on his site while providing his visitors a medium to send free SMS to any mobile in the country. The site has gained a lot of popularity off late and is earning an impressive revenue of $1.1 million/year.
10. Ibibo.com
Ibibo was launched by Ashish Kashyap who had previously worked for organizations such as MTV and Google. Ibibo struggled a lot in its initial days but has been doing quite well off late. Ashish now has some other websites to his kitty as well like bixee.com and tradus.in. Ibibo’s revenue is estimated to be around $1 million/year.
