10 IIT Delhi Alumni who made it big as Entrepreneurs

IIT Delhi has been notorious for churning out brilliant alums who are pioneers and mavericks in their fields. In this article, we have a look at a few successful entrepreneurs from IIT Delhi alumni list.

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (not-related):

Two IIT Delhi alumni, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, 13 years ago started the company, Flipkart. Flipkart is today one of the leading online shopping websites of India. Bansals had worked with Amazon previously and then commenced their business with an online bookstore and later expanded to other products and finally introducing a whole marketplace.

In September 2015, both the Bansals were named the 86th richest person in India with a net worth of $1.3 billion by Forbes India Rich List. Later, India Today ranked them 26th in India's 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list. Then in 2018, Binny Bansal assumed the role of chairman and continued as Group CEO of Walmart-Flipkart post the merger. His 5.5% stake in Flipkart was valued at $1 billion after the acquisition. Later, he resigned from Flipkart in November.

Similarly, Sachin Bansal resigned in 2018 as well and set out for his new ventures as VC and latest, head of Navi. Both Bansals benchmarked their entrepreneurship with Flipkart and even after resigning, they kept their entrepreneurship spirit up with their new ventures.

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (L to R)

Anurag Dikshit and Vikrant Bhargava

At age 26, Dikshit was asked by PartyGaming founder American Ruth Parasol to write the company's betting software. In 2000, Dikshit hired a friend from his alma mater, Vikrant Bhargava, to begin working at PartyGaming with him and others. Party Poker was launched in August 2001.

Bhargava joined PartyGaming (formerly iGlobalMedia) as marketing director in early 2000. In July 2001, he oversaw the marketing for the launch of PartyPoker and was the face of Partygaming when it went public in 2005, at the time the London Stock Exchange's largest IPO of an internet company, valued at over $8 Billion.

Bhargava's experience before joining the group included positions as a credit officer at Bank of America, where he was responsible for managing credit exposure and revenue for a portfolio of corporate clients, and a business analyst in the business development division of British Gas.

In May 2006, Bhargava announced he would leave the company's board of directors at the end of the year. He also stepped down from his executive role in the company. John Shepherd, director of PartyGaming corporate communications, credited Bhargava with transforming PartyGaming into a multi-billion pound company. At the time of leaving PartyGaming, Bhargava's fortune was estimated to be £850 million.

Vikrant Bhargava and Anurag Dikshit (L to R)

Sameer Gehlaut

Unlike other pioneers in this list, Gehlaut made his fortune through more conventional industries. The Chairman and Founder of India Bull, Gehlaut expanded his conglomerate with operations in Housing Finance, Real Estate and Consumer Finance.

Before India Bulls, Sameer Gehlaut worked at an American oil services company called ‘Halliburton’. After working with them for almost two years, he came back to India to join the family business. Around the year 1999, Gehlaut bought ‘Orbitech Pvt. Ltd.’ – a non-operational Delhi-based securities company with a membership in the National Stock Exchange.

From then on, Gehlaut with another IIT Delhi graduate set up an online trading platform and started India’s first Internet brokerage services. Gehlaut’s work has also earned him the moniker of “India’s youngest self-made billionaire” by Forbes.

Sameer Gehlaut

Mohit Aron

Aron has been attributed as the father of hyper-converged infrastructure. He has over 15 years of experience in building scalable, high-performance distribution systems. Aron founded Cohesity in 2013 and co-founded Nutanix in 2009. Before co-founding Nutanix, Aron was at Google as a lead developer on the Google File System engineering project.

Aron was recognized by CRN as The Top 25 Innovators Of 2012 during his time at Nutanix. In July 2016, CRN recognized Cohesity on the list of 10 Storage Emerging Vendors You Need To Know and listed as one of the Top 25 Disruptors of 2016 in August 2016.

Mohit Aron

Shashank Kumar

Shashank is the founder of Green Agrevolution and FarmsnFarmers as well as a proponent of better agro-practices and infrastructure.  Starting with FarmsnFarmers, Shashank delved into innate problems in the agricultural value chain and the dependency on several manufacturing channels for their various agricultural requirements. Post that, the venture served as a solid catapult for the launch of Green Agrevolution and its further scaling.

The venture which serves as a social enterprise aims to solve the institutional troubles faced in the procurement of agricultural production while maximizing a farmer’s profits – making the entire practice more sustainable. In addition to Green Agrevolution, Shashank also developed DeHaat, a model to facilitate last-mile delivery of farming services and the management of 360-degree agro-services.

For his work, Shashank has been awarded Tata Social Enterprise Competition at IIM Calcutta in 2014, Vodafone Foundation “Mobile for Good” in 2015, Eureka at IIT Bombay in 2013, Action for India in 2015.

Shashank Kumar co-founded FarmsnFarmers with Manish Kumar, an IIT KGP Alumnus.

Shashank Kumar and Manish Kumar (L to R)

Pramod Maheshwari

Pramod Maheshwari is an Indian educator and entrepreneur and currently Founder Chairman, CEO and MD of Career Point Ltd. It is in Kota, an education institute that runs Cram school for various examinations. An IIT Delhi alumnus and physics teacher, Pramod founded Career Point in 1993 as a professional tutoring company from a small garage and 50 students as a very humble beginning. His company now coaches more than 25,000 students every year. He has also set-up four private universities, two engineering colleges and numerous schools across India.

Pramod Maheshwari was honoured with Star CEO Award during the 3rd BT–YES Bank SME Awards held in 2012 in New Delhi.

Pramod Maheshwari

Jyoti Bansal

Jyoti is the founder and erstwhile CEO of AppDynamics, applications and business performance monitoring software company. The company was acquired by Cisco in 2017 for $3.7 billion, a day before AppDynamics was due for an initial public offering. Currently, he is the CEO and founder of BIG Labs, a startup studio, CEO and co-founder of Harness, a continuous delivery startup, and co-founder of venture capital firm Unusual Ventures.

When asked about his future, Jyoti said, “I’m not done creating companies. I want to keep creating companies and solving problems for the rest of my life," as quoted by Forbes. In his career, Bansal has received more than 30 patents related to complex software systems.

Jyoti Bansal

Yogesh Chander Deveshwar

Yogesh Chander Deveshwar was the one who turned tobacco major ITC Ltd into a conglomerate with a sprawl of businesses ranging from fast-moving consumer goods and hotels to foods and paper. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2019.

He was the chairman of ITC Limited and the longest-serving CEO of any Indian company. He was a director on the central board of the Reserve Bank of India, a member of the National Foundation for Corporate Governance, and a member of the governing body of the National Council of Applied Economic Research. In 2013, he was listed as the best performing CEO in India by Harvard Business Review and seventh in the world. In 2011, Deveshwar received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award.

Yogesh Chander Deveshwar