Bankbazaar proves that a great idea and hard work allow a start-up to survive its first year In 2007,husband-wife duo Arjun Shetty and Rati Rajkumar,then working in the US,wanted to invest in a house in Chennai. Arjun and Rati went home loan-shopping for the best offers,grappling with fixed-versus-floating interest rates,daily-versus-monthly reducing balance. It was enough to put anyone off. Arjun,a Masters in operations research from Georgia Institute of Technology,who was working at amazon.coms credit card division in Seattle,decided to do something about it. He talked to his brother Adhil,an engineer and a Masters in International Relations from Columbia University who was working as a consultant with Deloitte,New York. After due diligence,the entrepreneurial trio commenced their venture in early 2008,pooling their savings. Their first challenge: talent acquisition. When we started,there was not much we could give in terms of pay. We could only offer an opportunity to work in an exciting venture and do something never done before in India, says Arjun,who handles operations. Three of Arjuns colleagues from Amazon,talented engineers,soon joined. Iype Isac,working for Microsoft in the US came to Chennai on a holiday,and never went back. The crack team was ready for the company christened Loandukaan. We wanted it to be a platform for the best loan deals,like makemytrip.com is for airline tickets. With just a click of the mouse,a customer should know everything about the loan products available and get the best deal at the lowest rates available. We wanted to interface with banks and enable them to approve an application online,quickening the process, says Rati,chief product officer. That was not going to be easy,as 2008 witnessed one of the worst financial crises. How did these young entrepreneurs,the eldest of whom is in the early 30s,go about convincing grey-haired bankers? Bankers are,by nature,conservative. Our strength was in our process technology. It was developed entirely by the engineering team. We have even patented it, says Adhil,the CEO. Within three months,Loandukaan got its first customer,HDFC Bank. But Loandukaan soon realised that Chennai,their base,wasnt too familiar with dukaan. They needed something that could cross linguistic boundaries and the name Bankbazaar.com was decided on for its recall value. The next step,more funds. Adhils professor at Columbia,Arvind Panagariya,introduced them to venture capitalists in India. Walden International was impressed and pumped in resources. We had to get the site running on August 1,2008, says Arjun. For several weeks,our engineers slept in the office. One engineer hadnt been home for many days. On the day of the launch,his uncle walked into our office suspecting that his nephew might have been kidnapped. Its first online customer from Bangalore was approved a home loan of Rs 2.5 lakh. In the first month of our launch,we facilitated the disbursal of Rs 2 crore. In July 2011 alone,we disbursed Rs 165 crore, says Adhil. It usually takes a week to choose a loan and two weeks for approval. Bankbazaar cuts the shopping time to just two minutes and it takes five-days for approval,if all the documents are in place.The firm had around 10 employees at inception,today they have 70. By next year,they will venture into insurance and education loans. These are new crests they have to ride,with Adhils surfing skills and Arjuns passion for rock climbing. That should hold them in good stead,for they need the audacity to plunge and the ingenuity to hold on.
