As soon as the most controversial shark of Shark Tank India Season 1, Ashneer Grover has been replaced, Amit Jain has become the talk of the town. Now, it doesn’t really matters what you know and what you don’t know about him but the fact that you are here which means you want to know. So here I am trying to cover everything you need to know about Amit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Car dekho.com in 2023.
In the books of entrepreneurship, Amit Jain’s name will always be written in golden words. And we will know all about how he and his brother though coming from a humble household of Jaipur, breaks all the barriers and makes the $1.2 billion valuation unicorn company.
| Born | 12th November 1976 |
| Birth place | Jaipur, India |
| Citizenship | Indian |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Title | Co-Founder & CEO, CarDekho |
| Net Worth | $360 million |
| Company | CarDekho.com |
Early life of Amit Jain
Amit Jain is born and brought up in a small town of Jaipur. Both his grandfather and father had government jobs but later his father took a sabbatical and started a gemstone’s business and even ice-cream parlor business. It would have been much easier for him to continue on his father’s legacy but he decided to take the unconventional path.
It was in 2006, when his father passed away due to cancer so he and his brother had to carry forward their father’s enterprise. But due to lack of interest, and enthusiasm for starting something new, they both collectively decided to pull out from the legacy and strived to make an IT outsourcing company ‘Girnar Soft’.. At that time,he had no idea that it is the start of a journey to attend different milestones in his life.
Personal life of Amit Jain
Amit Jain is a son of former RBI officer Late Mr.Prashant Jain and homemaker Neelma Jain. He also have a younger brother, Anurag Jain, who is also the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Cardekho and just like his brother, he went to St. Xavier’s School, Jaipur and IIT Delhi. He also went ahead to work in the US.He and Amit Jain were always the co-founders from the first company they started ‘Girnar Soft’ to the most successful company ‘Cardekho’.
Amit Jain is married to Pihu Jain who works as a Vice-President of online marketing at Girnar Soft. They are the parents of two sons who are twins, Aayan Jain and Aahil Jain. Amit Jain still lives in Jaipur with his big joint family and says that he feels comfortable and that’s where his happiness lies.
Educational and Professional background
Amit Jain started his academics from his own city, Jaipur. He went to St. Xavier’s school and later moved to Delhi and pursued his graduation from IIT Delhi. After his graduation, his professional life started where first he worked as a software engineer in TATA Consultancy Services. In the year 2000, he went to Texas, where he worked in the company ‘Trilogy’ as a Senior Associate, slowly and steadily achieving his own success of becoming Delivery manager in 2004 and in 2005 as a Product manager of the company . But life had different plans for him, that is why when his father was diagnosed with cancer, he had to move back to India and after his father’s demise, he had to move ahead in the field of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurial background: what he did different!
What he did different that made him what he is today! I am sure we all have that question in our mind. But we should also know that the graph of success is not linear and Amit Jain too was not exception to it. He also faced many hurdles along the way which somehow contributed to his building of the India’s leading car search venture Cardekho.com (a platform for buying and selling new and used cars).
His entrepreneurial background started when he was not getting any intellectual stimulus by carrying forward his father’s business and wanted to do something new.
In 2007, he started his company Grinar Soft from a garage with a team of 20 people who were fresher, he trained them and that’s how his startup made a start. He made profits and soon owned his very first office. But in 2009, the life again took a turn and they had to face a crisis in their company where they even came to a point where they had no money to pay even their employees.
During that time, he visited an auto expo in Delhi and got a confirm idea of launching the venture Cardekho.com. Even though things were going downhill, he along with his brother didn’t lose hope and continued courageously to take challenges and strive forward though being in that difficult situation.
Amit Jain is a person who make continuous efforts and that is even seen in how he runs his company.
His company, Cardekho became India’s leading car search venture for a number of reasons and few are listed below:-
1) Easy and convenient – Cardekho made convenient for the buyers to trust and have faith in it as their website, app and even YouTube channel is filled with automotive contents such as car features , recent launches , price comparisons etc . As Amit Jain’s team knows that according to study 75% of car buyers research online first when they think of buying a car.
2) Right Marketing – The tagline of Cardekho says, “Bharosa kar ke Dekho” which itself shows that company was solely based on the trust of people. Because they knew that in a country like India where buying a car is a part of a citizen’s dream and the most important thing while purchasing their dream is Bharosa (trust).
3) Sustainability through innovation – They keep on launching innovative features to ensure that users get an immerse experience of the car model before visiting a dealer showroom.
4) Features – Cardekho provides a rich array of tech- enabled tool to manufacturers and dealers like call tracker solution, digital marketing support, cloud solutions, live chat solution, online booking etc.
Amit Jain’s entrepreneurial style is very appealing and intriguing. He is a CEO who never shies away from taking chances, failing and learning. He started Cardekho in the face of adversity but still managed so beautifully to make the billion dollar company it is today.
Some Unknown Facts:
1) Amit Jain net worth is now 2980 crore rupees due to this company.
2) He has been featured as one of the judges of the show Shark Tank India season 2.
3) Cardekho has expanded to Southeast Asia with the launch of Zigwheels.ph, Zigwheels.my and Oto.com. It also has a presence in the UAE with Zigwheels.ae.
4) Along with Cardekho, Amit Jain also owns insurance dekho, bike dekho, College dekho.
5) Cardekho investors include Google Capital, Tybourne capital, Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital, HDFC Bank, Ratan Tata and Times Internet.
Controversies
1) Amit Jain became the shark of Shark Tank India Season 2 by replacing Ashneer Grover. Due to this, he already had to face a lot of backlash from the audience.
2) In the show, Shark Tank, Amit Jain got into a heated argument with the fellow shark Anupam Mittal over a pitch which also led to point where Amit Jain taunted by saying “He made four companies.” To which Anupam Mittal replied “Those people who are not known much have to claim in this way about their achievements”.
3) Ankit Uttam, a LinkedIn user who is also an Amazon bestseller author recently revealed that along with other sharks of the show, Amit Jain’s Cardekho has lost 250 crores in FY22.
4) Amit Jain makes the biggest offer on shark tank India while being ready to give Rs 5 crore for 10 %equity of the company.
Personal Lessons from Amit Jain
Amit Jain says persistence and perseverance is the mantra to achieve anything in life. He started his company by a bunch of young enthusiastic team members and today that fresher group have become seniors in the company and that is why Amit Jain wonderfully quotes, “Years of experience does not matter, what matters most is experience per year”. Being a coder for 15 years, even coding for his Cardekho, he totally have come a long way. That is why Amit Jain keeps on repeatedly saying, “IF I CAN THEN OBVIOUSLY YOU CAN.”
