5 Indian entrepreneurs who just started with Rs. 20,000 or less to launch multibillion-dollar businesses
Despite having little money, they had big dreams. And their desire to succeed was even stronger. Here are their motivational stories.
Lalita Singh 
India's aspiring entrepreneurs are never short on ideas, but they frequently lack the capital needed to launch their own enterprises. One of the biggest obstacles to entrepreneurship in India is access to finance.
Only 4% of small businesses and entrepreneurs have access to a formal source of financing, according to research by D&B India. The amount of bank credit given to business owners has also been dropping.
To start their business, first-time entrepreneurs must rely on their own savings or loans from family and friends. The founders frequently struggle to raise more than Rs 20,000. Despite having little money, entrepreneurs have big dreams. Additionally, they have a stronger desire to succeed.
Despite having little money, entrepreneurs have big dreams. Additionally, they have a stronger desire to succeed.
Here are five motivating stories of entrepreneurs who launched their ventures with an investment of Rs. 20,000 or less and went on to create multibillion-dollar corporations:
Rahul Jain was raised in Jaipur, Rajasthan, and has always been fascinated by handicrafts. But Rahul was astounded by how expensive the Rajasthani handicrafts were when he entered a mall in Mumbai.
Rahul was inspired by the experience to launch his own e-commerce business in order to work with artisans and craftsmen and sell low-cost goods by eliminating middlemen. With just Rs 20,000 in bootstrapped capital, Rahul, Ankit Agarwal, and Pawan Goyal founded eCraftIndia.com in 2014.
A wooden elephant showpiece that cost Rs 250 was the company's first sale as a small online handicraft shop. Over time, it grew and began to include artists from Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. Additionally, eCraftIndia.com established a manufacturing facility.
With a current inventory of more than 9,000 SKUs and an annual revenue of Rs 12 crore, Rahul's business is one of India's biggest online handicraft retailers.
RS Shanbhag was an engineer from a small village before he started his own business. In 1991, he used the Rs 10,000 he had in his pocket to launch a modest systems integration business.
In order to prevent rural residents from having to move or travel in search of greener pastures, Shanbhag founded the company, Valuepoint Systems, to provide employment for them.
Although he began in Bengaluru, he soon expanded into rural areas, hiring graduates and instructing them in various technologies and services. Valuepoint would establish a facility in a village and hire staff, who would then complete specific projects.
But as soon as the business began to ride the IT wave, it started providing the IT infrastructure that big businesses needed. Valuepoint currently provides IT infrastructure services to 73 Fortune 500 companies and is a market leader in South Asia (from a recent listing). This year, the company anticipates revenue of Rs 600 crore.
Puneet Kansal, then 18 years old, founded Rolls Mania in Pune. He borrowed 20,000 rupees from a friend to start his kathi roll business, which he did with very little capital. He employed just one chef and operated a table-sized stand outside a restaurant in the city of Magarpatta.
One day, Gagan Sial and Sukhpreet Sial, two restaurant business owners, struck up a friendship with Puneet. They joined forces with Puneet to establish Rolls Mania and open the second location in 2010 after seeing potential in Puneet's company.
The three of them began gradually scaling up, and on occasions when delivery partners and employees failed to show up, they made food deliveries themselves. Within a short period of time, Rolls Mania became a national phenomenon, and it was time to expand its success.
Puneet expanded the business into 30 cities and opened the door for franchise models. Today, Puneet's business has more than 100 locations throughout the nation, sells about 12,000 rolls daily, and generates a revenue of Rs 35 crore.
When they made the decision to work together and launch their own business, Nitin and Amit Kapoor were each employed by a private bank and eBay, respectively. They became aware of the sizeable amounts of waste produced by the clothing sector. They also observed how the industry squandered water and other scarce resources.
This motivated them to put down a $10,000 investment and launch a business using the "Just in Time" (JIT) inventory management strategy. Indian Beautiful Art, the company they worked for, made sure that clothing was only produced after a customer placed an order.
Nitin made sure that the order was handled within 48 hours, from printing to shipping the product, and that no natural resources were wasted in the process.
For export to other nations, such as the US and the UK, they sourced goods from manufacturers in Khambat, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Meerut, Kolkata, Khurja, Moradabad, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Mumbai, New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Lucknow.
Indian Beautiful Art is currently one of the biggest international online sellers of Indian goods. It reports a 30 crore rupee annual turnover.
In Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, in 2014, electrical engineer Zubair Rahman worked as a CCTV operator. The 21-year-old wanted to launch his own company, though. He received a request one day to install CCTVs in an e-commerce company's office.
In his conversation with the manager, he learned how the business obtained and resold goods online to generate revenue. Zubair was drawn to e-commerce because it required him to make minimal manufacturing investments.
This gave him inspiration, and with just Rs. 10,000 he launched The Fashion Factory, an online retailer, from his house. He started listing combo packs on Flipkart and Amazon after obtaining textiles from Tirupur.
Individual clothing items were less expensive when sold in combo packs than when purchased separately. Zubair made less money on each sale, but because of the attention his low unit costs garnered, his number of orders quickly increased. Due to Zubair's successful strategy, The Fashion Factory now receives 200–300 orders daily.
Along with that, he agreed to sell only to Amazon. The Fashion Factory generates 6.5 crore rupees in revenue annually and plans to reach 12 crore.
