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Nawal

Entrepreneur | Build... • 1m

One more inspirational start up story 🔥 From a one-room office to India's fastest growing travel startup worth ₹6000 Crores. Aloke had an easygoing professional life in France, but he didn't enjoy that. He knew that the future belonged to India. So in 2006, Aloke Bajpai and his colleague Rajnish Kumar resigned from their high-paying jobs and returned to India. After a year of working on zero salary, ixigo was finally launched! The first shocker came when they started looking to raise funds. VCs didn't have confidence in them. For them, this space was already too crowded. But that didn't stop them. In the same year, they reached 100,000 users per month with ZERO marketing spend. The second shocker came after the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse. They had a $5 Million investment promised, however, after the 2008 incident, this round never happened. Instead of laying off the workforce, Ixigo's team decided to take pay cuts but continue to work to build the best product. The third shocker came during COVID-19. Ixigo had just become profitable in December 2019, but the world came to a standstill in February 2020. Ixigo and many other companies were leading to a zero-revenue trap. While all its competitors laid off employees, Ixigo addressed the pain points of its customers. They refunded those customers who had booked before the pandemic hit. And recently, they made a stellar debut on BSE! Ixigo is one of those cockroach startups that has survived the worst times. But the best part is that their frugal approach revolves around customers and culture. By building products with fewer resources, zero-dollar marketing, and product innovation, not by laying off employees. They are the inspiration for so many youths who dream of building in India!

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