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Former actor Asin tied the knot with Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma in 2016, after Akshay Kumar played Cupid between the two of them. Akshay was also a part of their wedding festivities, and said that getting them together took several years. Two years before they tied the knot, Rahul was witnessing incredible, unprecedented success as an entrepreneur. His mobile phone company was challenging the biggest players in the Indian market, and beating them. However, things turned around when Chinese brands entered the picture.
Appearing on Nikhil Kamath’s podcast, Rahul said that he turned down $800 million in funding from Alibaba in 2014, which, in hindsight, could’ve been the wrong decision. “When Meizu was raising a round with Alibaba, we were deep down with them at that time. This was in 2014. We were raising around $800 million (Rs 6,700 crore by 2025 conversion rates). The business was throwing so much of cash, we said, ‘We don’t need money’. We didn’t take that money, we were like, ‘We’re doing quite well, and we already have so much of…'”
Asked if this was a ‘bad decision in hindsight’, Rahul explained that they didn’t anticipate what would happen when Chinese players entered the market. Not only did those brands undercut his prices, but suppliers stopped providing them with latest components. “We thought that if we’d taken care of the Finnish and the Koreans at that time, we could take care of the Chinese too… That was a different game, because when the Chinese came, they came with so much gunpowder.”
They took a hit the same year when Rahul and Asin tied the knot, and three years later, they decided to pivot. “If we keep burning at this pace, we’ll get completely finished, we won’t have any capital left. We said, ‘Let’s stop burning money and wait for a U-turn’… If you ask me, in hindsight, yes (we should’ve taken it). Because that time we never new you had to create a war chest. With $800 million, you sit on the casino table and say, ‘Now play’.”
In an earlier interview with Raj Shamani, Rahul recalled how Akshay set him up with Asin at a cricket match between India and Pakistan in 2012. “Akshay said she’s a girl who’s very, very simple, down-to-earth, similar to you. She just comes, does her work, and goes back, very professional. Her mother is a doctor, father is into services, so fantastic. Then he gave her number to me and my number to her. He just felt there’s so much common in us. We come from the same values and backgrounds,” he recalled.
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