Back

Aditya Arora

 • 

Faad Network • 11m

Meet the man who sold his company to Microsoft for 1600 CR in 18 months. 1.Born in Chandigarh (Punjab) to a banker mom and an army officer dad, Sabeer Bhatia always wanted to become an army officer. But then he was introduced to the World of science and pursued it. After appearing for the IIT exam, Sabeer had a heartbreak. 💔 2. He missed IIT By a few ranks and joined BITS Pilani instead as an electrical engineering student. After that, he received a scholarship from the California Institute of Technology, being the only international student in 1988 to receive it. He landed in the USA with just Rs 3500 in his hand. 💵 3. Sabeer started working at FirePower Systems, where people could share photos and phone numbers on a web database service. Since the services were limited, he used a firewall to send emails through ISP services. He thought he had it, but there was a problem. 👇 4. The firewall restricted people connected to different servers from accessing their personal email accounts. He wanted to solve this with a web-based solution, allowing anyone to access their email from anywhere in the World using the Internet. He again thought he had it, but there was a problem. 🤔 5. Nobody believed this could be a thing. Twenty VCs had rejected investment in his idea, but Sabeer kept trying. Finally, he raised 1 CR from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and started a company on web language (HTML). On July 4, 1996, HoTMaiL was born. 🚀 6. Unlike people's beliefs, HotMail spread like wildfire as the World's first 100% remote email provider. It grew from zero to 300,000 users in the first three months. And most of it came from word of mouth at an acquisition cost of just Rs 30. But Sabeer needed faster growth. 📉 7. He started prompting users to try their free email service in the footer of every Hotmail email and offered free trials to journalists in exchange for their writing on Hotmail and 2 GB of free storage. Hotmail went from adding 1000 users daily to 10,000 users. It raised 680 CR, and more magic happened. 🪄 8. By 1995, it had grown to a whopping 5 million users. It was so popular that 30% of Sweden's population used it, and it controlled a 25% market share. Even the World's largest email provider, America Online (AOL), had just 2 million users ahead of them. And then there was a twist. 🤔 9. Hotmail didn't want to be just an email provider but a full-stack, and Microsoft was building the same with their newly launched suite - MSN. On December 31 1997, Microsoft acquired Hotmail for 1600 CR in an all-stock deal, making it their biggest acquisition of the time. 💪 10. Today, Hotmail, popularly known as Microsoft Outlook, has over 400 million users. With a 13.1% market share, it is the World's third most-used email service. 🙌 ➡️ Sabeer Bhatia sold his company to a giant like Microsft in 18 months. He is a poster boy for Indians' ability to build and sell technology, even to the US. 🙏

6 Replies
17
43
Replies (6)

More like this

Recommendations from Medial

Image Description
Image Description

Havish Gupta

Figuring Out • 1y

Imagine selling your one-year-old company for $400 million! Well, that's exactly what happened with Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, the founders of Hotmail. Launched in 1996, Hotmail was one of the first online email services, introduced even before

See More
12 Replies
3
15
Image Description
Image Description

Harsh Dwivedi

 • 

Medial • 7m

Sabeer Bhatia, Founder Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft) is building Netagram. Which is Instagram for Politics. Will something like this work?

28 Replies
12
42
Image Description
Image Description

Vishu Bheda

 • 

Medial • 10m

In 2014, Microsoft was imploding. Their $7.2B Nokia purchase was a disaster. Windows 8 was failing. Their culture was toxic. Until they hired ONE man who would transform Microsoft into a $3 TRILLION empire... Here's the full story: 2013: Microsof

See More
8 Replies
18
47
Image Description

Account Deleted

Hey I am on Medial • 10m

In 2014, Microsoft was imploding. Their $7.2B Nokia purchase was a disaster. Windows 8 was failing. Their culture was toxic. Until they hired ONE man who would transform Microsoft into a $3 TRILLION empire... He is Satya Nadella

1 Reply
7
Image Description
Image Description

Amar

 • 

YouTube • 1m

In November 2023, OpenAI fired its CEO Sam Altman out of nowhere. No warning. No leaks. Just gone. 4 days later? He was back. Microsoft stepped in. Employees revolted. It was the craziest 96 hours in Silicon Valley history. On November 17, OpenAI’s

See More
3 Replies
4
22
1

Muttu Havalagi

🎥-🎵-🏏-⚽ "Finding ... • 1y

Google to spend more: Hassabis on Microsoft's $100-bn Al supercomputer plan. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, when asked about Microsoft and OpenAl's potential plan for a $100-billion Al supercomputer named 'Stargate', said, "I think we're invest

See More
Reply
3
Image Description

Anmol Narang

Engineer, Entreprene... • 1y

Many engineers wrongly blamed Microsoft for the outage. In reality, it was due to a buggy update from Crowdstrike for Windows. This update ran in Kernel mode, trying to access an invalid memory location, causing a Blue Screen of Death. The problemati

See More
2 Replies
4
Image Description

Priyank

 • 

Money • 2m

A founder I worked with raised ₹75L - without a pitch deck. He had no deck. No fancy metrics. Just a strong story, sharp clarity, and 1 powerful narrative email. Here’s what worked: 1. He knew his “why” cold - personal, specific, relevant 2. His M

See More
1 Reply
2
4

Download the medial app to read full posts, comements and news.