In the history of the Indian commercial internet, Sanjeev Bikhchandani is universally regarded as the founding patriarch. In 1990, working from the servant quarters of his father's government bungalow with a broken desk and ₹2,000 in savings, Sanjeev walked away from a lucrative corporate marketing career at GlaxoSmithKline to pursue a dream of self-reliance. He went on to build Info Edge into an ₹70,000+ Crore publicly traded titan, launched Naukri.com, and became the visionary early backer who bankrolled Zomato and PolicyBazaar.
Act I: St. Stephen’s, IIM Ahmedabad, and The GSK Resignation
Educated in Economics at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and earning his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad in 1989, Sanjeev followed the standard track into FMCG brand management at GlaxoSmithKline. Yet, Sanjeev felt an intense restlessness. Observing colleagues secretly flipping open the back pages of business magazines to look at job openings and gossip about open recruitment mandates, Sanjeev had his foundational insight: information arbitrage in employment was massive, and whoever organized job listings would own the future of corporate hiring.
Act II: The Servant Quarters and The 1997 Launch of Naukri.com
In 1997, partnering with technical co-founder Anil Lall, Sanjeev launched Naukri.com with 1,000 job listings curated from newspaper clippings. At the time, India had no domestic servers, so Sanjeev rented server space in the United States for $25 a month. Naukri revolutionized recruitment: instead of companies spending tens of thousands on small newspaper classifieds that vanished in 24 hours, Naukri offered searchable, 30-day digital job postings at a fraction of the cost, while allowing jobseekers to post their resumes completely free.
Act III: The Historic 2006 IPO: First Dot-Com on the BSE
Surviving the 2001 dot-com crash through extreme frugality and positive operating cash flows, Info Edge achieved a watershed milestone in November 2006: it became the first pure-play Indian internet company to list on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The IPO was oversubscribed 55 times, demonstrating to global investors that Indian tech companies could generate real profits and reward public market shareholders.
Act IV: The Multi-Category Empire: 99acres & Jeevansathi
Sanjeev expanded Info Edge beyond employment into foundational consumer life stages:
• 99acres.com: Launched in 2005, it became India's premier real estate classifieds portal connecting builders, brokers, and home-buyers.
• Jeevansathi.com: Acquired in 2004, it was transformed into a dominant matrimonial matchmaker across North and Central India.
• Shiksha.com: Providing university reviews, entrance exam schedules, and career counseling to millions of students.
Act V: The Golden Eye: Backing Zomato and PolicyBazaar
Beyond operating Info Edge, Sanjeev’s greatest contribution to modern India has been his prescient venture capital stewardship. In 2010, when Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah were scanning restaurant menus in a tiny flat, Sanjeev wrote a ₹4.7 Crore seed check to fund Zomato. In 2008, he backed Yashish Dahiya to build PolicyBazaar. Decades later, both companies listed as multi-billion-dollar public titans, returning thousands of crores of profit to Info Edge shareholders.
Act VI: Philanthropy & Ashoka University
Believing that India desperately needed world-class multidisciplinary liberal education, Sanjeev joined hands with fellow business leaders to co-found Ashoka University in Sonipat, Haryana. Modeled on Ivy League institutions and funded through collective philanthropy without personal naming rights, Ashoka has emerged as one of Asia's finest centers for higher learning, economics, and scientific research.
Act VII: Industry Transformation & Strategic Legacy
- The Father of Indian Internet: Pioneered the organized online recruitment industry and led India's first successful internet IPO.
- Catalyst of Modern Unicorns: Backed Zomato and PolicyBazaar in their infancy, setting the gold standard for supportive institutional angel investing.
- Padma Shri Laureate: Conferred the Padma Shri by the President of India in 2020 for extraordinary national service in trade and industrial development.
