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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. 🙏