Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani
Vice Chairman

Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Executive Vice Chairman, Info Edge India, which runs the portals Naukri.com and 99acres.com, on his slip-ups on the path to success:

1. One of our first mistakes occurred when we raised money from ICICI Ventures in April 2000. In the business plan we submitted, we forecast that five years, we would have a turnover of Rs 12 crore. We ended up doing Rs 84 crore turnover in five years. We underestimated our turnover by seven times. It is very hard to predict the future, especially for an unlisted company. Therefore these things happen.

2. In the early days, we were under-invested in technology and engineering. We started off with a one-person engineering team, expanded it to two or three people later. Until 2003, we were substantially under-invested in engineering. We were largely a sales and marketing driven organisation. Of course, that has changed since then. Today, we have one of the best engineering teams among job sites around the world.

3. For the first five years, we didn't launch a resume database. It now accounts for 60 per cent of our revenues and has become our biggest product.

4. For the first three years, we didn't have a sales team. When we first put in a sales team, we realised how important a sales team is going to be to grow the company. Today, we have a large sales force across all our businesses.

5. At the time of the IPO, I was in a dilemma. We had no idea where the shares would end up after listing. I was told I was being aggressive in our pricing. We priced the IPO at Rs 320 apiece and the stock jumped to Rs 628 on the first day (of listing). Maybe we underpriced the IPO. On the other hand, when the meltdown happened and all the stocks tanked, our stock stayed above the IPO price. Maybe that was a good thing after all.