Bhavin Turakhia

Bhavin Turakhia (born December 21, 1979) is a serial tech entrepreneur, and the Co-Founder and CEO^[1] of Directi,^[2] Co-Founder of Media.net and Founder and CEO of Radix and Riva. Each of these in turn comprises various tech businesses including Ringo, Flock, BigRock, Radix, Reseller Club, LogicBoxes, Media.net, Skenzo and others. Bhavin is also the founder of CodeChef

He started his first tech venture - Directi - with his brother Divyank Turakhia - when he was 17.^[3] His businesses today comprise 1400+ employees across 8 global offices with millions of customers in 200+ countries and a combined networth of over $400 million.^[4] Every business he has been involved in has been bootstrapped and organically grown, without any external investment or debt.

Early life

Bhavin was born in Mumbai, the older son of Mahendra Turakhia and Priya Turakhia. His father is a self-employed Chartered accountant and his mother is a home maker. His father inculcated in him, a passion for reading, at an early age, saw potential in him.

Bhavin spent most of his school years in Arya Vidya Mandir, which is also where he had an early introduction to computers. The school built out a computer lab when he was in the 6th grade, and almost immediately, Bhavin began spending all his time - breaks, free classes, and several hours after school in the computer lab, writing code on GW-BASIC and MS-DOS, and learning advanced programming on his own through the dozens of books his father kept buying. Apart from computer science his other favorite subjects were math and Physics.

During school, he also decided that he would start an enterprise of his own, an idea that no doubt was firmly implanted in his mind due to the countless biographies of various successful tech companies he passionately devoured in that time.

He subsequently joined DG Ruparel college for 2 years and then transferred to Sydenham College of commerce and economics for his Bachelors. During these years he started various business ventures with modest success, until eventually co-founding Directi with his brother Divyank Turakhia^[5]

Career

Starting up

During his years in Ruparel College, Bhavin continued to enhance his tech skills - and was engaged in several side enterprises involving consulting and software sales earning trivial sums of money while studying. Soon after he launched 2 businesses - Bits & PCs - a computer hardware business, followed by The Web Spinners - a web consulting firm - both of which enabled him to gain considerable experience in running his own business, even though they were barely successful.

In 1996-97, he then set out to automate the recruitment industry, through an online web application, which turned out to be way ahead of its time in India, given that the Internet had just made an appearance and there were less than a hundred thousand internet users across the country.

Eventually, with a $500 loan from his father, Bhavin started Directi's web presence business, a one-man company, engaged in providing web hosting and domain name registration services, from the kitchen of an apartment owned by his dad. His brother and co-founder joined up shortly after and together they began growing the business and diversifying in later years.

Web presence

The Web presence businesses started by Bhavin comprises 4 business units formed between 1998 to 2010 viz Resellerclub,^[6] Logicboxes,^[7] Bigrock^[8] and Webhosting.info.^[9] Combined, these businesses comprise 500+ employees, across 6 offices, with millions of customers.^[10] Directi is amongst the top 5 in the web presence space worldwide.

In February 2014, these web presence businesses were acquired by NASDAQ listed Endurance group for a part cash and part stock transaction valued at over $110 million.^[11] Bhavin continues in a management capacity in these businesses.

Online advertising

Bhavin owns several online advertising businesses including Media.net^[12] and Skenzo.^[13] These are managed mostly by his brother Divyank Turakhia who oversees the 600+ people team. Media.net is a leading player in the contextual advertising market and boasts customers like Forbes, Yahoo^[14] and others.

Radix

In 2011, Bhavin founded Radix, a leading player in the Domain Registry space. Radix is the largest applicant under the ICANN new gTLD program from Asia. Radix won the license to operate several TLD extensions^[15] including .website, .space, .tech,.^[16] press.^[17] host, .store, .online and .site.^[18]

Riva

In 2012, Bhavin founded Riva, a communications play. Riva has since launched two businesses - Ringo^[19] and Flock.^[20] Ringo is a mobile app that provides low cost international calling without using the Internet. Flock is a messaging app for teams and workplaces, available on ios, android, windows phone, mac and PC.

Awards and recognition

An early internet technocrat, Bhavin is respected in the Web 2.0 landscape,^[21] and is a frequent speaker at various seminars, tech conferences and colleges around the country.^[22] He has won several awards, including the Entrepreneur of the year award in 2005 and was former chairman for the Global ICANN Accredited Registrars Constituency for two consecutive terms.

Bhavin has also authored several technology patents and is also responsible for Directi's community evangelism efforts such as CodeChef.^[23]

References