Rishi Raj: Our guest today needs no introduction – Mr. Sanjeev Bikchandani. All of you must be knowing him. He is the CEO-Founder of naukri.com and now diversified into several others. Sanjeev is an ideal example of a professional who has turned into an entrepreneur. He studied in St. Stephen’s, did his MBA from IIM; he started out with Lintas and then he went on his own. Today he has diversified, other than naukri.com, into several other niche portals – Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com etc. He has also worked with Pioneer earlier.

He has come at a right time when you all know how the market is. He would be telling us all about how his business is doing which is basically about the job market largely.

I was a journalist for a while. For about two years in THE PIONEER I was consulting Editor of the career supplement avenues and before that of the marketing supplement USP. Actually, that was a great learning experience for me, being in a newspaper organization, actively writing. But before that, I have been an entrepreneur since 1990. Prior to that I worked for two years in marketing in a company that is now called GlaxoSmithkline. Before that I worked in advertising for three years. I did my MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad.

SANJEEV BIKCHANDANI: All along it has been a dream of mine to found a company and be independent, do my own thing which I did in 1990. For the first seven years, we did a lot of small stuff. We were operating out of my house -- a servant quarter/garage. I was using a second-hand computer, second-hand furniture -- everything. In 1997 we launched naukri as a brand with the company. The company is called Info Edge. At that time, there were only 14,000 Internet accounts in the country. We had no idea that it would become big or that the Internet would be a great thing. But we happened to be in the right place at the right time. We worked hard, we worked smart but we also got lucky.

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