It all started when Sanjeev Bikhchandani quit his corporate job at Hindustan Milkfood Manufacturers (now Glaxo Smithkline) and founded two companies- Info Edge and Indmark. Info Edge offered salary reports to various categories of college graduates such as engineering and MBAs. Salary reports were sold to companies, somewhere between 5000 to 10,000 INR. Sanjeev and his business partners at Info Edge operated from servants’ quarter located in Sanjeev’s home.
In 1991, The Department of Telecom (DoT) advertised for videotext services. Info Edge submitted the business plan to DoT and it was shortlisted. Reasons undisclosed, the department cancelled the pilot project. This was a setback and Sanjeev and his business partner parted ways. His partner took Indmark and he was left in charge of Info Edge.
During a visit to an IT fair at Delhi’s fair ground (Pragati Maidan), he was drawn to a stall written WWW Curious, Sanjeev found more about how the Internet worked. Internet was new in India in the 90s. He took help from his brother Sushil who was residing in the US to hire a server. The server was hired at a monthly rent of $25 and Sanjeev gave 5 per cent share in his company to his brother.
This is how Info Edge India, which was then a holding company of Naukri.com was started. In May 1, 1995, it became Info Edge (India) Private Limited.
In 1996, recession hit and the company suffered loss. It was then Sanjeev took help from his friend Anil Lall and shared the thought of creating the website. Anil Lall was offered 7 percent share in the company. Another friend, VN Saroja took care of the operations. She was made 9 percent shareholder in the company.
Naukri.com was launched on April 2, 1997 and the first version of the website had 1000 jobs collected from 29 newspapers. Reviews of business magazines, newspaper and word-of-mouth followed. Jobseekers learnt job search on Naukri was free, and soon more people started logging in. Traffic on Naukri.com slowly and steadily increased.
In 2012, the company launched mobile apps for Blackberry, Android and iPhone devices and reportedly received 23% of its traffic from mobile users in 2013.
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