Amit Jain- CarDekho Co-Founder Success Story

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” The Famous quote said by Albert Einstein is reflecting in the Success Journey of Mr. Amit Jain who is the co-founder of CarDekho which is today one of the largest online car-buying platforms in India because he has not only achieved success but people value him today because of his vision and out of the box thinking. Let us understand his success story in detail.

Who is Mr. Amit Jain?

• Amit Jain is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Girnar Soft, an IT externalizing company that launched CarDekho in 2008. He was born on 12^th November 1976 in Jaipur. He completed his academics in Jaipur and Delhi. His mother Nilma Jain is a homemaker and his father Late Mr. Prashant Jain was an Ex RBI officer and also a gemstone businessman. Amit has a younger brother, Anurag Jain who is the co-founder and COO of CarDekho Group.

Education and Family Background

• Amit Jain, CarDekho’s CEO did his schooling at Saint Xavier’s School, Jaipur. He completed his graduation from IIT Delhi in 1999. His wife name is Pihu Jain and he has two twin sons.

Career

• In the year 1999–2000, Amit worked as a Software Engineer at Tata Consultancy Services. After that, he worked as a Senior Associate, Delivery Manager and Product Manager at Trilogyfor about 6 years and 11 months. In 2007, Amit co-founded GirnarSoft, the IT firm, along with his brother Anurag Jain, with the dream of starting a business from their hometown. Later, in 2008, Amit and Anurag both co-founded CarDekho.com, the flagship portal of GirnarSoft.

Amit Jain and CarDekho

• Amit and his brother started with a small garage at their home. They dreamed of establishing an IT outsourcing firm, and soon a team of 20 people started working for them. The first year of the company proved to be profitable, and eventually, they could buy a place for an office. But in 2009, the company went bankrupt when the stock market crashed. At that time, the company had about 70–80 employees, and they didn’t even have money to pay their salaries. Amit didn’t know how he would manage the office expenses, salaries, etc. Without losing hope, he learnt that it is very important to use corporate money with sanctity.
• With a pre-established company, both the brothers started thinking of an online venture CarDekho. However, they were still in a dilemma of paying employees of their team. Still, they made CarDekho live in just two weeks. The idea of launching CarDekho came when they attended the Auto-Expo in Delhi. After doing the necessary calculations, they got to know that they can recover their loss through this online venture. The turning point came when they took CarDekho as an official flagship project.
• Very few people think of initiating their business from their home town. Also, there are a few examples of people who have really started their ventures from their home town and accomplished them gradually. Amit Jain is undoubtedly among those examples, who has not only established his firm rather brought huge success and fame to his name and home town.
• Not a single penny was spent on marketing CarDekho, still, it achieved huge popularity than any other application software launched by GirnarSoft. It has now become India’s number one Autotech portal and Rajasthan’s first unicorn startup. The company boasts having more than 35 million monthly unique users, 6000+ monthly used car sales, and 3000+ new cars sold monthly.
• In 2013, the company got weighty funding from an American-based company, Sequoia Capital. It significantly attracted many companies for advertising because of the spectacular online presence of CarDekho. Later, it also acquired Gaddi.com in 2014 and Zigwheels in 2015. Without any doubt, CarDekho played a vital role in lifting the name of the parent company GirnarSoft. CarDekho became a unicorn startup in India after raising $250 million in its Series E funding round in October 2021, bringing its valuation to $1.2 billion.
• After completing 11 terrific years of CarDekho, Amit Jain CarDekho owner disclosed the new Logo in February 2019. The snazzy new logo manifests the automated settings of the app. Like, whenever a new car comes on the market, an old and new comparison tool is designed to clear things up. Both the brothers acceded for a Logo especially designed on the pockets of their white shirts, be it old or new.
• The basic aim of CarDekho was to provide data on different cars so that people may understand the features offered in a car. Comparison, reviews, and feedback are something that makes a product reliable and gives satisfaction to the customer.

GirnarSoft and Beyond

• GirnarSoft is a Company providing business value-based IT solutions and services. The ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 Certified Company, set up in 2007, works on offshore products as well as outsourced software development. GirnarSoft has grown with the trust of esteemed investors like Sequoia, Google Capital, Tybourne, HDFC, and the iconic Mr. Ratan Tata himself.
• The team of GirnarSoft comprises of experienced professionals trained from the premier institutes of India under the leadership of IIT, IBS alumnus. Apart from acquiring the position of the fastest growing young IT Company of India, GirnarSoft has also received the ‘Top Developer’ for mobile app developments from Google. GirnarSoft is the name behind India’s top automotive market, Cardekho.com, as well as other portals, too, like PriceDekho.com, BikeDekho.com, and various other portals around the world.

Net worth of Amit Jain

• CarDekho company is worth 1200 million dollars. Amit Jain’s approximate net worth is estimated at US $365 Million. He has more wealth than the total wealth of the other five judges, so Amit Jain is the richest among the five sharks in Shark Tank India Show.

Amit Jain in Shark Tank India

Amit Jain, co-founder and CEO of CarDekho, is one of the judges on Shark Tank India Season 3. As a seasoned investor and entrepreneur, his eagerness to nurture young talent and innovators, along with propagating an entrepreneurial mindset across India, has always been paramount. Recognizing that entrepreneurship has permeated every corner of the country, with nearly 50% of startups originating from Tier II & III cities, he viewed the Shark Tank opportunity as a chance to guide aspiring entrepreneurs and catalyze the development of a new Bharat while discovering promising businesses.

Success Lessons We can Learn from Amit Jain

• What he did different that made him what he is today! But we should also know that the graph of success is not linear and Amit Jain too was not exception to it. He also faced many hurdles along the way which somehow contributed to his building of the India’s leading car search venture Cardekho.com (a platform for buying and selling new and used cars).His entrepreneurial background started when he was not getting any intellectual stimulus by carrying forward his father’s business and wanted to do something new.
• Amit Jain is a person who make continuous efforts and that is even seen in how he runs his company. Amit Jain says persistence and perseverance is the mantra to achieve anything in life. He started his company by a bunch of young enthusiastic team members and today that fresher group have become seniors in the company and that is why Amit Jain wonderfully quotes, “Years of experience does not matter, what matters most is experience per year”. Being a coder for 15 years, even coding for his CarDekho, he totally have come a long way. That is why Amit Jain keeps on repeatedly saying, “IF I CAN THEN OBVIOUSLY YOU CAN.”