Lt. Col. (retd.) Ajay Bhattacharya, conference co-director, in conversation with serial entrepreneur Sanjeev Bikhchandani, who is the founder and vice-chairman of job portal Naukri.com and the founding trustee of Ashoka University. Naukri.com also runs other internet ventures such as Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com, and Shiksha.com

Sanjeev Bikhchandani took the audience through his entrepreneurial journey which was driven by the motivation of social good. Be it Naukri. com or Ashoka University, the idea behind the venture was to give Indians access to a service that was not yet available in the country. “By the time I was 13 years old, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. After one year of working with a company, I was convinced I wanted to be one,” he recalled.

Choosing St Stephen’s College in Delhi over the Indian Institute of Technology was one of the early steps he took that was a break from the norm.

The serial entrepreneur who has set up several internet businesses remembered discovering the internet for the first time at a trade fair. He recalled the fascination of his first tryst with the world wide web. This triggered an idea which made Bikhchandani one of the leading digital entrepreneurs of India. “We knew that jobs were of high value search. What we needed was a platform through which people could search for jobs; that would be a hit,” he recalled.

In the late ’90s when he started, it was with borrowed money and operating from his father’s servant quarters. However, the journey to make Naukri.com profitable took its time. Bikhchandani spoke about how an idea to offer it as a public service eventually became a profitable business. The success of Naukri.com led him to work on other digital platforms. He said the digital economy presents huge opportunities to budding entrepreneurs.

Bikhchandani also gave a glimpse into how he envisaged Ashoka University, the seed of which was sown during a conversation with a classmate he had met after a decade or so. He dreamed of providing high quality education with worldclass faculty and a curriculum that is attuned to today’s needs. That was how the idea of Ashoka University was conceived.