Top 6 most successful & inspiring entrepreneurs in India

By: Ankit Sharma

India's economy has been booming for the past few decades now. A big credit for this can be given to the visionary entrepreneurs who transformed their vision and ideas into successful business plans. Their strong determination and hard work have not only boosted the economy, but also inspired other budding entrepreneurs to follow in their footsteps. Here is the list of 6 most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs in India:

Sanjiv Bajaj

Chairman and Managing Director of Bajaj Finserv, Sanjiv Bajaj is a well-known name in the high-stride world of financial services. He is the son of Indian industrialist, Rahul Bajaj, and was schooled at a Catholic convent school. He pursued a degree in mechanical engineering and began his professional career in 1994 with Bajaj Auto, where he oversaw finance, costing, investment, IT, legal, and IT-related functions. He looked after the international business of Bajaj Auto and took the challenge to make Bajaj a financial services powerhouse with his leadership skills. In 2007, he took charge as the Managing Director of Bajaj Finserv. His business soon expanded and diversified, and in the year 2012, Sanjiv Bajaj took additional roles such as the Chairman of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance and Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance. He also worked as the Managing Director of Bajaj Holdings and Investment Limited and as Vice Chairman of Bajaj Finance. He was reckoned as one of the top financial business leaders in India.

Ritesh Agarwal

Ritesh Agarwal, 27, is an Indian entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of OYO Rooms, the world's most affordable hotel chain. He is known as the second youngest billionaire in 2021 in India. Ritesh Agarwal was a technology enthusiast from a very young age and had a passion for travelling around the world. He combined these passions to create something efficacious and started his journey in entrepreneurship with Oravel Stays. He noticed that the stumbling block in the hospitality sector is unpredictability and non-standard services, so he ventured to solve these problems with his business model, which everyone now knows as OYO Hotels.

Bhavish Aggarwal

Born on 28th August 1985, Bhavish Aggarwal is among the most famous entrepreneurs in the Indian start-up ecosystem. He is the co-founder of Ola Cabs, the country's most popular cab aggregator, ridesharing, and taxi services company at present. In the year 2008, he graduated from IIT Bombay with a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering and started blogging about Indian start-ups. He worked in Microsoft for two years and then quit his stable job to build an online cab service, OLA, which today is one of the fastest-growing businesses in India.

Deep Kalra 

Born in Hyderabad, Deep Kalra did his bachelor's degree from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, in 1990 and MBA from IIM Ahmedabad in 1992. After working in a few companies like ABN AMRO Bank and GE Capital, he decided to become an entrepreneur. He started his entrepreneurial journey with an online travel company, MakeMyTrip. He is the Founder and Group CEO of MakeMyTrip, one of the largest Indian online travel companies, and has been ranked on top of the list of most powerful digital influencers in India by KPMG in 2011.

Byju Raveendran 

The success story of Byju Raveendran is truly inspiring. Born in 1981, in Azhikode, a coastal village situated in Kannur district of Kerala, south India, Byju Raveendran grew up in a joint family and both his parents were teachers. After completing his mechanical engineering from Calicut University, he got a job in a multinational shipping firm as a service engineer. Byju was helping his friends appear for MBA exams and attempted the exam along with them for no good reason. To everyone's surprise, he got a score of 100 percentile and it was then that his friends advised him to start coaching classes and teach aspiring students for competitive exams. He left a lucrative job at the time, and this was what can be called the start of his entrepreneurial journey. From a terrace to a classroom and then an auditorium, he started Byju's classes, and the name has become a brand today.

Shiv Nadar

Shiv Nadar, 75, founder of HCL Technologies, started his career at Walchand Group's College of Engineering, Pune, in 1967 but soon gave it up to start his own venture. He founded HCL Infosystems in 1976 with an investment of just a few thousand dollars. Soon he expanded to Singapore as well as the Far East and generated over 1 million rupees in sales. Shiv Nadar's business continued to grow to make him a billionaire worth over US$23.8 billion. The well-known entrepreneur was awarded the third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan, in 2008, for his contribution to the IT Industry.

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