How Turakhia Brothers were in India’s top 100 richest persons despite not having any degree
Introduction:
Turakhia Brothers (Bhavin Turakhia & Divyank Turakhia) have built about a dozen of companies within two years of their career. After selling five companies, these brothers listed in India’s richest persons list in 2016 despite not having a college degree. Both brothers became Millionaire by 18 & Billionaire by 34. This article will provide a snapshot of their background and factors which have led to their success.
Early Schooling & Stage Before Starting Business:
Both brothers were very much interested in coding from their early ages. Bhavin Turakhia being elder one, learnt coding at the age of 11 by reading various books and has taught his younger brother who was 9 years old then. Their father was in business of collection of books. Their personal library was bigger than their school’s library. Divyank started developing games at the age of 9 and started developing softwares at the age of 13.
They couldn’t afford to buy a computer. So, they used to learn coding with computers of their friends / relatives and school computers. In their early age itself, they have started converting their passion of coding into money by doing coding homework of rich students. After school, they used to teach advanced concepts of GW-Basic (which was then a basic programming language) to teachers & students.
Business Life:
Their first source of money was a business of assembling computer hardware & repairing them which they started in 1996 and later discontinued it. When they were 15 years old, they used to help NASSCOM in various internet related issues. They started providing consulting services to various companies in doing business over internet. This helped them to create a client base even before starting of their business.
Both the brothers have started Web Hosting Packages business by borrowing Rs 25,000 from their father in 1998. This has started generating profits right from their first year since they had a reasonable client base who were their consultants before starting business.
They later started Mail, Web Hosting & Selling Web Domains since Internet was just started in India and everyone who wants to make use of it for their business will be in need of web domains and related services.
Later they have developed a software which helps in automated recruitment but it was failed at that time there was only 50,000 active internet users but they need at least 5 Lakh resumes for that and their idea was ahead of the time.
In 2002, they were receiving dues from their customers in both forms i.e., cash or cheque. This has involved in various issues like requirement of personnel for collection of cash / cheques from customers and delay in transit and risk of dishonor of cheques and transit risks. To overcome this, after coming to know about credit cards, they started India’s first payment gateway system named Transecute. This solution has not only solved their problems but also became their new product line.
They started various other businesses like Cloud Infrastructure, Voice & Messaging Service & Digital Payment, Ad Tech Company. They have tied up with Yahoo & Microsoft’s Bing for expansion of Media.NET, an Ad monetization company and gave stiff competetion to Google’s AdSense.
Business Exits – Key Step in becoming Billionaires:
In 2014, Turakhia Brothers have sold their web hosting business to Endurance Group for 140 Million Dollars. After a couple of years, they have sold Media.Net to a Chinese group for 900 Million Dollars in 2016 which made them billionaires. In the month of November 2018, their networth was as high as 1.6 Billion Dollars.
Reasons for Success & Huge Valuation of their businesses:
* Turakhia Brothers have started their operations at initial stages of internet in India which provided them a great opportunity in India right from their initial stages
* They were always into a kind of business which will provide them synergy benefits to either existing / newly added business
* Turakhia Brothers had a decent client base even before starting their business which provided them good profits right from initial stages of business
* Sometimes, solutions to their problems became their business line (payment gateway as discussed above is an example of this)
* Expansion of business was always by way of bootstrap (i.e., from operating profits of the company or through personal finances) which will have following advantages:
– Wise spending of money
– Low / no impact on profitability of existing business
– Focus on profitability
– No dilution of equity and hence better decision making
* Being futuristic – Following instances will support this statement:
– They have started Automated Invoice System in late 90s itself
– Even though having a small client base, they have incorporated Automated Support Systems for handling network traffic and helping users in 2001
Principles of Turakhia Brothers:
– Focus on creating value for customers, not valuation for business. Valuation is just a side effect of that
– Do a thing on which you are passionate about (i.e., a thing which you will do even if no money is being offered for that). Money is secondary
Key Takeaways:
* After reading title, we may think that they are good examples to prove that education / degrees may not be required for getting successful. But that is wrong since they got expertise by reading all books related to coding which is their passion
* Their journey has proved that education is required for finding area on which you are passionate about
* While following your passion, sometimes you may fail but continuous efforts is what brings you success.
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