For long, the industry legends were the torch bearers of the entrepreneur world who put India on the global business map and created an ecosystem in the country for others to take the country on the higher pedestal. Passing on the torch to the next generation entrepreneurs wasn’t the wrong decision. We have seen many startups who have now unicorns, creating new niche each day whilst serving global clients from across the world.

We bring to you the story of three such new age entrepreneurs who are making India proud.
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Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder, Paytm


Worth around $240 crore, Vijay Shekhar Sharma today needs no introduction and neither his company Paytm does. Paytm emerged as one of the most important payment platforms during the times of demonetization. And today during the times of pandemic, Vijay has taken a bold decision to not draw his salary for two months to help his employees impacted by the pandemic. Making bold decisions and putting India on the global digital payment map is what Vijay is infamous for.

This small-town boy and son of a school teacher from Aligarh has many interesting tales. The man who got Warren Buffett to invest in his company was a brilliant student since childhood. He finished his plus two at the age of 14 itself, but had to wait for years to get into an engineering college. But since his schooling was in Hindi, he knew that to enter his dream engineering college, he had to crack the English entrance exam. Hence he trained himself to read in Hindi and English at a time and alas, he cracked the entrance for Delhi College of Engineering in 1994.

Inspired by Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son, Vijay’s first jackpot was when he sold his website indiasite.net for $1 million in 1999. Six years later, he started One97 Communications to offer mobile content like news, cricket scores, ringtones, and others. In 2010, he launched Paytm under One97 Communication, and as they say, the rest is history!
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Naveen Tewari, Founder & CEO, InMobi


Popularly known as ‘Boys with PowerPoint’, Naveen Tewari, Abhay Singhal, Amit Gupta and Mohit Saxena founded InMobi (erstwhile mKhoj, which was a SMS search engine) from a small apartment in Mumbai where they would roll up their mattress to double it as the office. Today, InMobi has offices in several countries and employ thousands of intellects and is one of the most valued unicorns from India. The man behind the wheel is Naveen Tewari.

Son of an IIT Kanpur professor and a graduate from IIT Kanpur, Naveen started his career from McKinsey and Company. Though he was reluctant to join the company at first, it was his father who persuaded him to take the offer to strengthen his research skills. This turned to be a game changer for Naveen as he got the chance to work on a Mukesh Ambani project. Working closely, he learnt how to build a business from scratch and thus, became one of the biggest reasons to start InMobi.

Later Naveen did MBA from Harvard and spent a year in Silicon Valley working with colleagues on business ideas that failed. Interesting that though Naveen got several offers post his MBA, but he chose to join a VC firm. However he developed cold feet just a week before joining. But as it is said that whatever happens, happens for good! Easy said than done, Naveen remained jobless for two years. Thanks to his supportive wife who stood beside him in such tough times. He contemplated going back to US but decided to wait for six more months. And this is what changed his life!

He started mKhoj, which later was rechristened to InMobi and changed the business from SMS-based search to mobile advertising. Since then, the growth of InMobi has been incredible and today Naveen worth’s approximately Rs.1,668 crore.
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Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Founder & CEO, CtrlS Datacenter


A man who always wanted to be an entrepreneur since his childhood was deeply inspired by his father who was a farsighted businessman. Seeing his father take bull by its horns taught this shy kid to learn the nitty gritties of the business world. Today this shy kid is the founder of Asia’s premier tier-IV datacenter – CtrlS.

However, Sridhar’s entrepreneurial journey wasn’t a moonwalk. From almost being bankrupt to now running many successful companies serving global clients, Sridhar has changed his destiny himself by taking tough but right decisions. The man doesn’t let anything worry him. He invests a lot into R&D thus ensuring that whatever he serves, serves with a purpose and aim to address clients’ exact requirements. This is what has kept Sridhar always on his toes. In his own words (as said to siliconindia), “At the end of the day, I have been proud of not just my financial success but the kind of work I have put in those days and creating a difference for people. This is my burning desire”.

Sridhar still believes in walking the talk and is investing heavily in creating solutions. He was recently announced as the TiE Hyderabad Chapter’s new President.
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Ritesh Agarwarl, Founder & CEO, Oyo Rooms


Coming from a naxalite-hit area of Odisha, Raigarh, did not stop this brilliant kid from becoming one of the youngest billionaire of India. What pushed him was his desire to bring a change in people’s life. Having learnt coding in his childhood itself, Ritesh even sold SIM cards and FMCG at the age of 13, which taught him the skills to sell things like an entrepreneur. A dropout from college, he was later selected for the Peter Thiel Fellowship in 2013.

While he used to come to Delhi for events, he found a striking gap between the demand and supply of hotels and its price. Hence much before others could even think of, Ritesh developed a hotel booking software that would assure anyone rooms at their favorite hotels at a very competitive price and thus OYO Rooms was born in 2013. In 2019, the company was valued at $10 billion after Ritesh purchased $2 billion in shares from VCs Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Today this young Turk is worth $1.1 billion (Hurun Global Rich List 2020).