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Anupam Mittal

Anupam Mittal – The Indian Entrepreneur Behind The Success Of Shaadi.com And Many Other Endeavors.

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Anupam Mittal is one of the most powerful people in India, especially in the startup ecosystem. He is known as the founder of Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, Mauj Mobile, and People Pictures (under the People Group). Apart from being a successful entrepreneur, Mittal is also an investor who has invested in more than 200 companies till now. Currently, he is also a part of the reality show called Shark Tank (a show for aspiring entrepreneurs). Mittal was featured in The Week magazine as one of the top 25 people to watch out for.

Early Life

Born in December 1971, Anupam Mittal hailed from an entrepreneurial background as his father, Gopal Krishna Mittal was a businessman. Mittal went to Boston College, Massachusetts and he studied Operations and Strategic Management for three years. After he graduated, he started working for MicroStrategy in 1998 as a product manager. While he was working for the company he visited India and an encounter with an Indian priest (pandit) gave him the idea to build Shaadi.com.

Mittal had an encounter with a pandit because the latter came with a lot of biodata of women for finding a life partner for Mittal. After having a conversation with the pandit, Mittal realized that finding a life partner in that way of collecting and passing biodata physically limits the choice. So, he wanted to harness the power of the internet to help anyone find a life partner by overcoming geographical and spatial limitations. So, he founded Sagaai.com which was rebranded as Shaadi.com later. He was the CEO of the company until 2015 when he stepped down to explore other areas.

Anupam Mittal
Image source: indianexpress.com

Founding Shaadi.com

Shaadi.com was the breakthrough for Mittal and made him a very famous and successful entrepreneur. It is one of the most used matrimonial sites not only among Indians but also among Asians. Shaadi.com’s core market is India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh but it is available across the world from UAE to the US. Since Mittal made Shaadi.com a global enterprise, he clearly understood how the business growth in India was different from that in the west. According to Mittal, the US population adopted the internet very fast but in India internet became available to normal people only after Jio started offering data plans at a reasonable rate. And as more Indian people started getting access to the internet, the number of users of Shaadi.com also increased. Currently, Shaadi.com has more than 35 million users across the world.

Success Stories

After Shaadi.com became a huge success, Anupam Mittal founded Makaan.com in 2007 to bridge the gap between sellers and buyers. Mittal’s entrepreneurial mindset was based on the potential of the internet and how it digitized every aspect of our life. Makaan.com was built so that buyers can search for real estate properties based on their price range and other factors. In 2015, the business was taken over by Proptiger.com, an online real estate advisor.

Mittal founded Mauj, a global online media company in 2006 and it was incorporated in 2007. The company mainly deals with mobile content and applications including games, wallpapers, matrimonials, etc. Apart from Mittal’s entrepreneurial career, Mittal is also an investor who has invested in several start-ups and other companies (through Shark Tank). Currently, his total worth is $25 million.

Investing

As an angel investor, Mittal has heavily invested in several startups because he appreciates the entrepreneurial mind. The Indian startup culture has massively developed in the last two decades and it is mainly fueled by people who are in their 20s. Some of the startup companies in which Mittal invested are Druva, Sapiens Analytics, Cafe Zoe, Fab Hotels, BigBasket, Ketto, and many more. He also started investing in several other companies after joining Shark Tank India. They are Cocofit, Bamboo India, The Yarn Bazaar, Hair Originals, etc. For his entrepreneurial and investing journey, Mittal was awarded the “Hall of Fame” 2020 awards by The Indus Entrepreneurs.

Seagate Technology

Seagate Technology – The Biggest Contributor to the Growth of Computer Storage Industry.

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Computer storage is an essential part of computer hardware and software. Over time, computer storage has gone through a tremendous change, and we have seen these devices grow in technology and size. Today a small chip can hold data over 500 GB or more. And this has happened due to some innovative companies running behind the technology and working towards innovation. Seagate Technology is one such example of companies, working in the field of computer storage that has been actively providing innovative products to the industry.

Seagate Technology Holdings initially founded as Shugart Technology is an American data storage company manufacturing and distributing computer storage devices. It was founded about 40 years ago and has been working in the field of computer storage as a leader. The company is credited for ‘sparking the personal computer revolution’ with its 5.25-inch hard drive for the PCs.

 About Seagate Technology

Seagate is a result of a prediction of upcoming growth in the economic industry as microcomputers were becoming popular in the late 70s. The company, today, stands as the biggest supplier of the HDD market and competes with companies like Western Digital. Seagate has also added to its growth with some of its major acquisitions, including Conner Peripherals, Maxtor and Samsung’s HDD business.

Seagate has established its operational headquarters in California, US, and the legal domicile is in Dublin, Ireland. The company has seen rapid growth in its sales in the past twenty years. As per the 2020 records, the company made revenues worth US$10.51 billion, and over 42,000 people are working for it in the US and overseas.

Seagate Technology
Image Source: www.seagate.com

Founding Seagate Technology

Finis Conner and Alan Shugart founded Seagate Technology on 1 November 1979 as Shugart Technology. It was Conner who thought of the idea to start a hard disk drive manufacturing company to take advantage of the upcoming economic boom.  Later, Tom Mitchell, Doug Mahon and Syed Iftikar joined in to become the partners in the company. There was a company already existing with the name Shugart, so the founders had to change the name to Seagate Technology.

Seagate started as the manufacturers of hard disk drives for computers. In 1980, the company developed its first product, the 5-megabyte ST-506, the first 5.25-inch hard disk drive (HDD). Later, due to the huge popularity of the ST-506, Seagate also brought the 10-megabyte version of the same hard disk. Soon Seagate became the major supplier of the hard disk drives for microcomputers and bagged a contract for OEM for the IBM XT from IBM. IBM XT was the first personal computer that had a hard disk.

The Growth

By the early 80s, Seagate had got a hold on the 45% of the single-user hard drive market. At the beginning of the 90s, Seagate shifted its focus from external drives to mainframe drives, and it limited the outsourcing of components from other companies. Instead, it started to manufacture most of the components in its manufacturing units. During the same time, Seagate also introduced the industry’s first hard disk with a 7200-RPM spindle speed. The company was already trading on Nasdaq but moved to New York Stock Exchange in 1995.

In 1996, Seagate merged with Conner Peripheral, standing as the largest independent hard-drive manufacturer in the world. The same year, the company came with the first hard disk with a 10,000-RPM spindle speed in the industry, named Cheetah 4LP. Between 1997 and 2004, Seagate increased its production, supplying about 20 million drives per quarter.

In the year 2000, the company became a private company, but after a lot of restricting and relocation to the Cayman Islands, it became public in 2002. In 2003, Seagate started to manufacture hard disks for notebook computers as well as for the first iPods, smartphones and cameras. Seagate introduced the concept of hybrid drive in 2007, and the next year, it sold 1 billion HDDs.

In 2010, another restructuring for the company took place, and the company headquarter was moved to Cupertino, California. The company also changed the country of its incorporation to Ireland, with a name change to Seagate Technology plc. The same year, it brought the world’s first 3 TB hard drive. By 2012, the company value had raised to $14 billion and produced the first 1 TB/square inch density hard drive. The next year, Seagate was shipping the shingled magnetic recording drives, and in 2016, it demonstrated the 60 TB SSD, ‘largest ever.’

In 2020, the company’s operational headquarters was moved to Fremont, California. In May 2020, Seagate Technology Holdings plc became the parent company of Seagate, replacing Seagate Technology plc.

The Founder

Finis Conner is the founder of Seagate Technolgy. He was born on 28 July 1943 in Gadsden, Alabama. Because of his poor financial condition, Conner started to work at the age of 19 at IBM, and with time managed to get a degree in industrial management from San Jose State College in 1969. With his experience at IBM, Conner thought of the idea to build a company named Shugart Associates with Alan Shugart to manufacture floppy disks, becoming the pioneer in the industry. Later with Shugart, he founded Seagate Technology. Apart from that, Conner also founded Conner Peripherals, which later became a part of Seagate Technology.

MOZ

The Wizards of Moz: Success Story of Moz

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Moz began as an SEO service in 2004, but over time, grew to become one of the world’s leading SaaS companies. So much so, that they even launched their own Pro app! Started by a mother-son duo, Moz sells marketing analytics and SEO management software to their subscribers. So how did this mother and son, revolutionise the world of SEO marketing? Here’s a look at how the idea for Moz took shape, and the impact it made.

The Idea Hits

Rand Fishkin was an entrepreneur with a penchant for web design. In 2001, Fishkin realised the importance of organic search and web traffic. He learned about a variety of search engines like MSN Search, Yahoo!, and Google. This helped him develop SEO strategies and digital marketing analysis for clients. Eventually, as the demand for SEO specialists rose, so did Fishkin’s thirst for knowledge regarding the same.

After a while, he became not just proficient, but an authority on SEO. So. In 2004, he began SEOmoz as a way of helping people figure out the secretive world of SEO. The SEOmoz blog helped bring in a constant stream of clients. Since then, the once-struggling blog has become an SEO empire, bringing forth and introducing a slew of products. Read on to see how Moz grew from being a small experiment to one of the biggest SaaS companies in the world.

Humble Beginnings

Founded by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004, Moz functions as a consulting firm which later became a software developer. The company now boasts of a massively successful online service, with a community of over 1 million digital marketers. The company started as SEOmoz in 2004, and three years later had their SEO-Pro app. In 2007, Moz launched a set of SEO-based tools and resources. This helped generate half their total revenue by the end of the year.

Towards the end of 2007, Ignition Partners and Curious Office, chipped in $1.1mm to help Moz grow. With a conversion rate of over 56%, Moz grew tremendously in the following years, and their subscribers grew with them. A year later, in 2008, they launched Mozscape which served as a scalable online crawl. The company was also able to grow its traffic at 54% during that same period.

Change of Hands

They even invented the TAGFEE code, and soon hit 5000 subscribers. In 2010, Moz became an Inc. 500 list website. In August of the same year, they launched their web app and followed it up in 2012 by acquiring Followewonk. The company received its first funding in 2007 and tried twice again in 2009 and 2011 to raise capital. The Foundry Group and Ignition partners helped them raise $18 million in 2012. Following this, Foundry employee Brad Feld Moz’s COO, Sarah Bird joined the board. This came as a result of Gillian Muessig stepping down from the helm the same year. Between 2008 and 2011, Moz grew from being a $1.5 million company to generating $11.4 million in revenue.

A Family Deal

Muessig co-founded Moz along with her eldest son, Rand Fishkin in Seattle 15 years ago. Since leaving the company in 2012, she worked as an advisor for various companies. She also sits on multiple boards, including Soro and Brettapproved. She is also the CEO of the venture capitalist firm Outlines Venture Group and co-founder of the Sybilla Masters Fund along with Microsoft veteran Alka Badshah and Anne Kennedy. In the early days of the company, Muessig’s youngest son would come to the office after work and did small duties for her. Her daughter too was huge support for her, being her cheerleader, always reassuring and comforting.

New Tools and Prolonged Success

The company rechristened itself Moz in 2013 and began to get more involved in inbound marketing. Later that year, they launched Moz Analytics, which used inbound marketing strategies to improve brand marketing. They followed this up, by launching Moz Local in 2014, which served as a platform to manage listings online. The company celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2014 by crossing 15,000 subscribers.

Their SEO Toolbox offers a variety of tools such as the Term Extractor, Trust factor and mozRank, which works like the Google Page Rank. An SEO audit tool, named YOUmoz, helps users learn about new trends in SEO. In 2014, Rand stepped won as CEO but continued to work at Moz in various other roles till 2018. With almost 85% of their users finding them through social media and organic search, Moz is a true social media sensation.

Moz currently has over 36,000 customers and 160 employees. Annual revenues are in the high 40’s with the company bringing in over $42 million in 2017. This was a steep rise from the $38 million they made the year before. Over the years, Moz has evolved to become a one-stop solution for all SEO and marketing needs, and the future looks brighter than ever before for the SaaS giant.

cognizant

Transforming India’s Digital Landscape- Success Story of Cognizant

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A while back Cognizant went ahead of Infosys to become the second-largest IT company in India. It was an iconic milestone wherein a pioneer gave to a young contender, the baton for the future. The man steering this rise of Cognizant was a boyish-looking, exuberant 44-year-old by the name Francisco D’Souza. Here’s a look at how the mild-mannered D’Souza has energized and uplifted the technology company to even greater heights.

About the Disruptor

Francisco D’Souza was born in 1968 in Kenya to Placido D’Souza, an IFS officer and Sushila. Most of his childhood was spent shuttling between countries and D’Souza has lived in over 11 countries. He graduated from the University of East Asia Macau with a degree in Business Administration. He followed this up with an MBA from Carnegie Mellon.

After graduating, D’Souza joined Dun & Bradstreet in 1992, as a management associate. Cognizant started as an experiment two years later within Dun & Bradstreet. Francisco led this experiment, which later turned into a full-on, in-house project. From 1996, D’Souza held various positions in Cognizant and joined the Board of Directors in 2007. Six years later, Francisco joined General Electric, becoming the youngest member on their board. In 2018, he became the Vice-Chairman of the Board at Cognizant.

Founding Cognizant

Cognizant began as an in-house unit of Dun & Bradstreet in 1994. The company started catering to the needs of external clients in 1996 and went public two years later. Cognizant was one of the fastest-growing companies in the early 2000s and became a Fortune 500 member in 2011.

Initially, it was set-up to help Dun & Bradstreet manage large-scale IT projects. Two years after its creation, Dun & Bradstreet merged Erisco, IMS International, Nielsen Media Research, Strategic Technologies and DBSS, to form Cognizant Corporation. The same year, the company changed its name to Cognizant Technology Solutions. In 1997, Dun & Bradstreet acquired 24% shares of DBSS for $3.4 million. A year later, the company moved its headquarters with Kumar Mahadeva serving as the CEO.

Early Days

The same year Cognizant Corporation, split into IMS Health and Nielsen Media Research, with the technology wing becoming a part of IMS Health. In June the same year, IMS Health went public with Cognizant stock raising $34 million. Kumar Mahadeva focused on applications management, and the company grew under his leadership.

In 2002, Cognizant brought in over $229 million, with zero debt. In 2003, IMS Health sold their 56% stakes to prevent hostile takeovers and Lakshmi Narayanan replaced Kumar Mahadeva as CEO. Gradually, the company expanded and ventured into the fields of business process outsourcing and consulting. Finally, in 2006, D’Souza took over CEO from Lakshmi Narayanan. The company then grew exponentially, becoming a part of Fortune’s 100 Fastest-Growing Companies list from 2003 to 2012.

Growth and Success

In 2014, Cognizant acquired TriZetto which specialises in healthcare IT services for $2.7 billion. Owing to this stellar buy, the shares of Cognizant rose by over 3% on that day. A year later, they signed up with Escorts Group in India to help them transform their business segments. The same year, they partnered with NTUC FairPrice to help them revolutionise their business.

Currently, Cognizant employs over 280,900 people globally, with more than 150,000 based in India. The company has centres in main cities such as in Bangalore, Chennai, Noida, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mangalore and Mumbai. Globally, they have centres in Spain, China, Canada, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. Under D’Souza their revenue increased from $1.42 billion in 2006 to $16.1 billion in 2018. It will be interesting to see how Cognizant utilises its presence to further change the digital landscape in India.

hoverboard

The Future is Here- the success story of the hoverboard

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How many of us have watched the movie Back to the Future and dreamt of owning a hoverboard? Most kids dreamt of owning this uber-cool device which is both modern and efficient. Well, they turned from a figment of our imagination to reality a few years ago, thanks to one man. Here’s a look at his story and everything it took to develop the hoverboard.

About the Founder

Shane Chen was born in Beijing, in 1956. He has a degree in agricultural meteorology from the Beijing Agricultural University. Since communism in China made it difficult to start and grow a business, Chen immigrated to the US. He founded his first company, CID, Inc in 1988. The company which now goes by the name CID Bio-Science made scientific instruments for agricultural research. Some of their products include a photosynthesis meter, a canopy analyser and a leaf scanner. Later, Chen sold the company in 2009 to become an inventor of consumer products.

Fun Inventions

Way back in 2003, Chen founded Inventist, Inc., which he used to develop products for mainstream consumers. He entered the retail space in 2003 with the AquaSkipper, which was a hydrofoil water craft. The invention won several awards and helped Chen gain some media attention. The History Channel’s show Modern Marvels also featured the product due to its creative and innovative approach. In 2006, Chen patented a three-wheeled scooter and sold it to RazorUSA. His notable products include the Orbitwheel Skates, Lunicycle and Solowheel.

Creating the Hovertrax

He filed for a patent for the hoverboard in 2012, following which he started making the product. The Hovertrax hit the markets in 2013 and was the first self-balancing scooter or hoverboard. A hoverboard works as a personal transporter and has two wheels connected to pads the user plants their feet on. By leaning forward and backwards, users can adjust the speed of the device. Furthermore, twisting the pads help in changing the direction of travel. Chen launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 to fund his idea.


However, the device brought along with its complex patent disputes. Though mass volume manufacture began in 2014 in China, safety issues plagued the device. An overheating battery made early units prone to catching fire leading to product recalls in 2016.

Phenomenal Success and Battles

The device became increasing popularity in the West, due to usage by celebrities like Justin Bieber, Chris Brown and Wiz Khalifa. PhunkeeTree noticed the device at the Hong Kong Electronics Show and started distributing it soon after. By June 2015, several manufacturers were making the board in Shenzhen and Chen decided to pursue litigation. Chen has voiced his frustrations on the lack of clarity regarding patent rights in China. Within a year the U.S. Trade Commission served notices to UP TECH, FreeGo China, Robstep, and Tech in the City for patent infringement.

Also, faulty wiring and bad batteries resulted in units catching fire in various countries around the world. Soon after, many airlines banned taking these boards or transporting them via a flight. The US Product Safety Commission launched an investigation in 2015, and in 2016 ordered over 500,000 units to be recalled. The Swagway model X1 suffered the largest as the company recalled 267,000 units. However, these issues were quickly resolved and the design took off, selling like hotcakes.

IOTAtrax

Chen has since moved on and is now working on a new device, called the IOTAtrax. This one seeks to combine the Solowheel and the hoverboard, making it a hybrid like no other. The success of the hoverboard is a testament to how the future is closer now than ever before. Inventions we deemed impossible just a few years back are turning into realities, right before our eyes. Also, with people like Chen leading the way, it is safe to say that the Future is here for the taking.

Also, faulty wiring and bad batteries resulted in units catching fire in various countries around the world. Soon after, many airlines banned taking these boards or transporting them via a flight. The US Product Safety Commission launched an investigation in 2015, and in 2016 ordered over 500,000 units to be recalled. The Swagway model X1 suffered the largest as the company recalled 267,000 units. However, these issues were quickly resolved and the design took off, selling like hotcakes.

Chen has since moved on and is now working on a new device, called the IOTAtrax. This one seeks to combine the Solowheel and the hoverboard, making it a hybrid like no other. The success of the hoverboard is a testament to how the future is closer now than ever before. Inventions we deemed impossible just a few years back are turning into realities, right before our eyes. Also, with people like Chen leading the way, it is safe to say that the Future is here for the taking.

jugnoo

Story of Jugnoo : The Desi Uber for Autos

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Over 5 million auto-rickshaws ply in India, and only 30% of them are properly utilized. This leads to a loss not just for the rickshaw drivers, but also for people looking for some affordable means of transportation. Jugnoo was established as a means to solve this problem by helping customers make use of affordable services for their daily needs all on a single platform. Beginning as an auto-rickshaw aggregator, the company revolutionised the way rickshaw service worked in India, and have now branched out into other fields and sectors by launching services such as Meals, Jugnoo Fresh, Menus and even Jugnoo Delivery. Here’s a look at how Jugnoo grew from being a small idea that two IITian’s had to a thriving business.

The Founders

Jugnoo was founded in November 2014 by two IIT-Delhi alumni, Samar Singla and Chinmay Agarwal. Samar always dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur and had already invested in other companies before founding Jugnoo as he hails from a business family. He tried his hand at entrepreneurship with his first venture Prodigy foods and then sold it to start Click Labs. His second outing, which he founded in 2011, with Chinmay as a partner was a profitable marketing automation software that used SaaS technology. While Samar is a physicist by his education, it is business that excites him, and that is why this serial entrepreneur decided to take a risk again with Jugnoo.

Chinmay Agarwal who serves as the Chief Operations Officer at Jugnoo has a BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi. Following his graduation, he won the Erasmus Mundus scholarship, and so went on to do his Joint Masters in Advanced Robotics from Ecole, France and the University of Genoa in Italy. He later switched to business, embarking on his first venture, Click Labs with Samar, where he held the position of Chief Technical Officer. At Jugnoo, he wears multiple hats, helping Samar with both the operations and product side of things.

Founding Jugnoo

Jugnoo founders
Image Source: homebusinessmag.com

In 2014, while at Chandigarh, the duo launched Jugnoo at PECFEST and gave people free rides as a part of their marketing strategy. The idea caught on, and soon the pair realised that there was untapped potential in this sector. Samar and Chinmay then began connecting drivers and customers, and soon enough Jugnoo took shape.

One of the toughest challenges they faced initially was getting the rickshaw drivers familiar with the technology they employed. This introduction wasn’t always smooth, as the drivers came from an environment wherein technology wasn’t so well integrated. Hence, it took a lot of time, effort and dedication to explain the process to them, how the layout works, and how it would help them. Convincing the drivers that such a platform would be beneficial to them wasn’t an easy task, because these weren’t people who liked the idea of change. But, the duo persisted, and soon enough, people started seeing the application as a boon that would help improve their accessibility, and that was when the company started taking off.

Leading the Way

Soon enough, Jugnoo started earning a name for itself, and the first big investment came in the form of seed funding, when the company raised USD 1 million through investors such as Junglee Flywheel, BCG Group, Rapportive, and Kirloskar Bros. It followed this up with a Series A funding and was able to raise another USD 5 million. Furthermore, recently they embarked on a Series B funding round which raked in an additional USD 10 million with their main investors being big players such as Paytm and Snow Leopard ventures.

Within the first seven months, Jugnoo had amassed over 80,000 users and was completing over 1,500 transactions a day. They earned 80% of their total revenue from auto-rickshaw deliveries and bookings and was making more than $1,500 a day.

By 2016, Jugnoo had evolved and had branched into various verticals, growing into an end-to-end solution for their customers. The app has continued to grow at over 20% a month and boasts over 5 million registered users and an auto-rickshaw fleet that is 12,000 drivers strong. Jugnoo recently added the facility of UPI payment on their app as a means to promote a cashless economy that the government is pushing. They have also launched products in the B2B market, including the likes of Tookan and Juggernaut.

Unlike other start-ups that rush towards the metros once established, Jugnoo prefers to stay in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, because 80% of India’s population resides in such cities. Today, the company is rapidly growing and employs over 1000 people, across 35 cities and successfully completes more than 50,000 transactions a day. Jugnoo does more than making money for its founders. Rather, it has a social side to it as well, as it helps people get access to affordable transportation, while also uplifting the lives of millions who depend on menial jobs for their survival.