India's Top #7 Engineer-turned-entrepreneurs Who Never Went to the B-school These 'techies are turning out to be the real game-changers of India Inc with their innovative business ideas
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
After working in Amazon for a brief period, Sachin and Binny Bansal, the founders of Flipkart, embarked on their entrepreneurial journey to give India its first e-commerce website. Similarly, IIT-Bombay alumnus Bhavish Agrawal recognized his inclination towards entrepreneurship while working with Microsoft, and laid the foundation of the country's first taxi-aggregator app, Ola, when he was 24.
Indian engineers have definitely come a long way from following an old trend of getting a degree from a reputed college to bag a lucrative job in a foreign-based company. Today, the supposedly "nerdy' and "geeky' techies are turning out to be the real game-changers of India Inc with their innovative business ideas.
The start-up ecosystem is full of success stories of top entrepreneurs, who are graduates from IITs or BITS and other nationally recognized engineering institutes. On the occasion of World Engineers' Day, we have drawn up a list of those who have never been to a business school but have done very well, establishing wonderful companies with great teams.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Engineer-turned-entrepreneur Vijay Shekhar Sharma dreamt of becoming a billionaire when he was struggling to make his ends meet with INR 10 in pocket. He now, owns a company, whose current valuation is over $3-billion in the market. The man behind India's famous e-payment and e-commerce brand did his graduation apparently only to make his mother happy.
Bhavish Aggrawal
To solve commuting problems that Indian office goers have to face every day, computer science graduates from IIT-Bombay Bhavish Aggrawal and Ankit Bhati launched Ola Cabs in India in 2007. Born in Ludhiana, Aggarwal began his career at Microsoft Research. In two years, he realized that the "9 to 5' job was not his cup of tea and went on to create a technology platform to solve a problem that vexes most of urban Indians. The company has been funded by Japanese major Soft Bank and its current market valuation is above $5 billion.
Phanindra Sharma
Phanindra Sama is the Founder and CEO of redBus, India's first online bus ticket booking service. Set up in 2005, today it is the largest company of its kind in India with a vast network of bus operators. It offers services in 4,500 routes across Indian.
Customers can book tickets as per their convenience – be it over phone, by visiting outlets or even via SMS. This start-up is changing the entire concept of booking bus tickets. In just a few years, Sama and his team took the company to a new height, registering a revenue growth of $12million.
Sama did his Electrical Engineering from BITS Pilani and postgraduation from Indian Institute of Science. Prior to redBus, he worked at ST Electronics and Texas Instruments. He hails from Nizamabad, Andhra Pradesh.
Mukesh Bansal
India's largest on-demand, personalized brand for products, gifts and cool merchandise Myntra.com was founded by Mukesh Bansal in 2007. The portal enables individuals and even other companies to upload their own products by adding content of their choice. Mukesh is an IIT alumnus and has worked at Deloitte for two years. He has also worked for four different start-ups in California before starting Myntra.
Sachin Bansal
Often regarded as the poster boy of Indian e-commerce, Sachin Bansal is the co-founder of India's first e-commerce website Flipkart.com. He started from a small Bengaluru-based company along with his brother Binny Bansal that has grown in leaps and bounds in the past 10 years. Flipkart is known for its fast delivery and wide range of products. The current valuation of company exceeds the $5-billion mark. Sachin Bansal is a computer engineer graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and used to worked at Amazon before starting Flipkart.
Deepinder Goyal
Deepinder Goyal co-founded Zomato.com along with his brother Pankaj. It is all about food and where you can find the best of it. From the nukkad wala dhaba to the swankiest restaurants in your town, they have information about all of them and will provide you with everything you need — menu, photograph, map, reviews, ratings and contacts. Deepinder holds an Integrated Masters degree in Mathematics and Computing from IIT Delhi
Harishankaran K
Co-founder Vivek Ravisankar, along with his brother Harishankaran K, set up HackerRank, a technical recruiting platform and the first Indian company to be selected by YCombinator in 2012. He had a full-time job with Amazon India and worked on the start-up along with Harishankaran in their free time.
