Anupam Mittal is an Indian entrepreneur, angel investor, and the founder and CEO of Shaadi.com, a website for matchmaking in India. He started the company in 1997 when he was 24 years old. At that time, there were only a few websites in India, and most of them were focused on providing information rather than connecting people. Mittal recognized the potential of the Internet to bring people together and started Shaadi.com to help people find their perfect match.
The company has been very successful, and Shaadi.com is now one of the largest matchmaking websites in the world, with over 35 million members across the globe.
Early Life & Education
Born on December 23, 1971, in a Marwadi family, Anupam comes from a very humble family background. After completing his early education in India, he moved to the United States to pursue MBA from Boston College. After completing his master’s, he joined a business intelligence software company, Micro Strategy, as a Product Manager.
While working in the US, Anupam came to India only once a year to spend quality time with his family. To kill his boredom while in India, he took up web development projects for other companies while sitting in his father’s office during the mid-90s. At that time, he encountered one such traditional matchmaker who would do anything to get you hitched and earn a good commission on that.
Interestingly, that matchmaker tried to set Anupam with a few of his clients. Although this made Anupam irritated, this whole thing gave birth to a revolutionary idea that changed Anupam’s life for good!
How Was Shaddi.com Founded?
The matchmakers unknowingly gave an idea to Anupam Mittal of starting an online portal where people could find their life partners without any middlemen or matchmakers. He thought of creating a portal where all the data can be stored, which these matchmakers usually have.
People who want to get married and have difficulty finding a perfect life partner can find their better halves through this online portal. With this thought, in 1997, to give it a start, Anupam Mittal started Sagai.com, which was more of an experiment than a business. As the Internet was accessible to a small number of people, Anupam’s primary focus was still on his full-time job.
In 2000 when the dot-com bubble burst happened, many companies went out of business, and many people lost their jobs. The company where Anupam was working also suffered a considerable loss, and there were high chances of Anupam losing his job. So, he thought of transforming his experiment into a business. He then left his job in the US and returned to India, to put his focus, time, and hard work into his matrimonial website; and changed the name from Sagai.com to Shaadi.com.
For initial business, the target users for his website were NRIs who were living in different parts of the world but wanted to get married in their community. He focused on the needs of these NRIs, and after some time, his website started getting target visitors. And soon, through his website, people started getting married to their desired life partners, and thus his business got an early success from there Anupam never looked back and climbed a new height of success with each passing day.
People Group
People Group, the brand name under which Anupam Mittal created many popular businesses like Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, Mauj Mobile, etc., was officially started in 2004. Mittal, the Founder & CEO of People Group, launched this company to explore different opportunities in the Internet & Mobile space.
With over 1197 people employed, the People Group has 12 regional and three global offices. They mainly work around consumer internet, and mobile value-added services sectors and are divided into People Interactive, People Pictures, and People Infocom.
Challenges Faced
With the launch of his company, Anupam Mittal faced many challenges in running his business and making it profitable. The very first challenge was brand awareness. Until 2005-2006, people hardly knew the business and what problem it was solving. Plus, since the company was in its initial stage, hiring the right set of employees was very important for Anupam Mittal, who can work efficiently in a team and share the vision of Anupam in making his business successful. And finding suitable candidates for his company was not easy for him. Plus, the cultural barriers also played a significant part in making his entrepreneurial journey not so easy.
Shark Tank India
Anupam was one of the thoughtful investors who came on the top-rated startup reality show Shark Tank India – Season 1. His understanding of business, his patience for listening, and then forming his opinion about the business is something which we all loved.
His hard work and dedication made him what he is today, and young entrepreneurs can learn a lot from this fantastic businessman and investor.
Read: Namita Thapar: Story of One of India’s Most Successful Women Entrepreneurs