Background

Despite being born in a small Rajasthani town to a middle-class family, Pranay Chulet was able to get into in one of the most prestigious Indian institutes, IIT-Delhi. After graduating, he worked for a few years in management consulting. Chulet decided to pursue an MBA from IIM-Calcutta, and after earning his degree he managed to get a job in the US as a consultant. After a few years in the business and switching firms, Pranay decided to pursue entrepreneurship. His first venture was Reference Check, a platform that connected service providers with customers. After it merged with incubator Walker Digital, Chulet founded another company, Excellere, which developed web-based educational products in 2007. Unfortunately, it failed to take off and was abandoned within a year.

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The Spark

At the time, Pranay Chulet was into film-making, and decided to make an interactive action film. He used Craigslist to find actors, and it was then that Pranay had the breakthrough idea. Pranay realised that in India, there were barely any solutions for individuals to get a just price for anything they wanted, whether it was a used phone, furniture or a flat. He wanted to solve this problem for the masses. Additionally, this was a business model that had proved its success across the world. Though print classifieds still had a stronger hold in the Indian market, online classifieds had the potential to take over. In July 2008, Pranay Chulet launched the site Kijiji.in, which enabled buyers and sellers to connect online and continue the purchase offline.

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The Rise

Soon they rebranded as Quikr, for the sake of a more relevant name and brand image. Quikr stood out in the market because it offered more listings, more responses to listings, and a cleaner, simpler experience. Their business model too was robust, where the company would make money from three verticals - premium listings, lead generation, and advertising. In the next few years, Quickr expanded to more states across India, focusing heavily on each state's abundantly available products. By 2012, they had grown to a monthly user base of more than 22 million spread across 65 Indian cities, becoming India’s largest horizontal classifieds company.