THERE'S LIFE ON THE EDGE

Twenty-five years on, Info Edge, one of India’s oldest Internet companies, has four solid businesses and the power of data to help it ride the waves of change in technology and innovation.

- ARNIKA THAKUR

FOR TWO-AND-A-HALF DECADES NOW, one company has participated in at least one of four big decisions in a person’s life: deciding on higher education, finding or changing a job, getting married, and buying a house. Founded by Sanjeev Bikhchandani in 1995, Info Edge (India) is the low-key parent of famous offspring such as job site Naukri, matrimonial portal Jeevansathi, education website Shiksha, and real estate listings portal 99acres.

One of India’s earliest Internet firms, Info Edge has come a long way from taking classifieds from newspapers and pasting them online in the late-’90s to make about ₹10 lakh-₹15 lakh a year. In fact, not even Bikhchandani had envisioned it would be valued at more than $4 billion one day. “I would love to say I had a vision, but it is completely untrue,” he tells Fortune India.

After all, the firm’s first site Naukri was only a job listing portal; it did not even have a résumé database till one of its competitors (JobsAhead, later acquired by Monster) launched a database product in 2002. Today, the résumé database accounts for more than 60% of Naukri’s revenue.

“We thought if we can get to a place where we have 1,000 companies every month paying us ₹500 each we will do ₹5 lakh a month and that will be ₹60 lakh sales in a year,” he recalls. Three years of that, and the company would have grown fivefold, he says. “And that would be success... it was a nifty, small idea.” The numbers were beyond expectations. “Right place, right time, work hard, and [we] got lucky.”