These Successful Startups In India Proved That You Can Do Better Even If You Don’t Get Into IIT or IIM

There are many successful startups with no IIT or IIM founders in the panel and are doing far greater than the ones which are established by IITians or IIMians.

BookMyShow

The most familiar name that comes to mind when movie plans are made. BookMyShow is a customer obsessed business founded by Ashish HemRajani in the year 2007. BookMyShow gets roughly 500 million page views per month in addition to that in the year 2014, BookMyShow entered the 1000 Cr+ valuation club. Needless to say, BMS made its mark with no IIT or IIM founder.

CarTrade

CarTrade is an online auto classifieds platform working as a marketplace for users attracted to buying and selling new and used vehicles. Founded by Vinay Sanghi in the year 2009, this website joins customers and dealers where both the categories cherish win-win situations. CarTrade has 300+ employees. So definitely a win-win situation for the platform as well. With over 4 million monthly visitors, CarTrade seems to flash and flash hard.

Directi

Bhavin Turakhia (L) with his brother Divyank Turakhia (R)

Yes, it was a startup. People, especially students know Directi because of Codechef- a familiar name in the universe of competitive programming. Directi is a global web products company with over a thousand employees working. Bhavin Turakhia, the founder, and CEO of Directi has done a laudable job making a company whose sticking value stands; is estimated to be $350 million.

Pinstorm

With headquarters in Mumbai, Pinstorm is a digital advertising firm founded by Mahesh Murthy with several local offices in Indian cities of New Delhi and Bangalore.

Freecharge

Founded back in 2010, FreeCharge is still a leading Digital Payments platform in India. Founder Kunal Shah says endurance may help you, but entrepreneurs need more than endurance. As by news reports, he sold it to Snapdeal for a whopping $400 million, one of the most massive deals to date in India’s purchaser internet space. Enough said.

PayTm

With unquestionably no link with the IITs or IIMs, founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma made his way to the top with PayTm reaching everyone in the digital world. The journey from one97 to PayTm whose current value is a little over $3 billion in the market in 2016. He recently became India’s Youngest Billionaire!

Oyo

Oyo has a dream success journey with the young, passionate and enthusiastic founder Ritesh Agarwal. Since starting, they are making a profit on every room sold. Currently, the average booking rates of the hotel rooms range from Rs 999 to 1,500+. Ritesh Agarwal says that their team has delivered a 15x YoY increase in growth with 2.3 million booked room-night transactions in the first quarter of 2016.

Freshdesk

“When I started the company I told my wife that I am not starting a company for me to buy a BMW, I am starting a company so that all my employees can buy BMWs.” – Girish Mathrubootham, Freshdesk.

Games2win

An online gaming portal company based out of Mumbai, Games2win is one of the top 20 online gaming firms in the world according to ComScore. Games2win has had three successful financing round in addition to a secondary sale of its shares to new investors in last years. This is what making a startup and building it means. Despite no IIT or IIM tag, it actually gets funds, that too huge ones.