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Harjeet Tagger & Kulveer Tagger

 

Two UK NRI cousins sold online service- web site for 5 million dollars
‘World is becoming network-centric’


London, May 16, 2008
Surinder Singh

In these days, you’ll rarely find person who can’t use computer. Person can easily communicate with other one at anywhere in the world. Youngsters are found madly chatting in cafes. Chat applications, messengers the resources for this. Now on cell-phone is not device which can used to talk. So, world is connected via internet network. This is the best example is I am going to tell, how person made million by setting a website.

Three buyer approached them to get this site. It was a bidding war between threee companies. At last it was sold to Live current Media..

Two NRI cousins:

UK NRI Cousins Harjeet Tagger, 22 and Kulveer Tagger, 24, as undergraduates at the University of Oxford, have overnight become millionaires after a free online service, was sold for $5.0 million ( $2 million cash and $3 million in stock ) within months after its launch.

The site internet auction site 'boso.com' (Buy Or Sell Online) was started at Oxford University which was supported by Oxfords Sad Business School. In UK, the cousins lacked the necessary support for tech entrepreneurs to flourish, and relocated to Silicon Valley in the US to enhance their prospects of success.

March 2006- January 2007, as a Co-founded the largest marketplace for students in the UK he raised $350k angel investment, including from Y Combinator, before moving to the States to do Auctomatic.com.

The Auctomatic mission is making selling online easy. We think it should be simple to take your stuff and list it on marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and Overstock. But it shouldn't end there. Auctomatic does more than just let you list your items and manage your sales - it teaches how you can maximize your profits and to increase the success of your business. With Auctomatic you can be running your own successful online business in no time.

Users of our original product Boso.com, a student marketplace, said they liked our site precisely because it was so easy to use, so we thought we'd tackle that problem in eBay itself.

In making this pretty significant change, the setup provided by Y Combinator has been fantastic. Paul Graham, one of the partners, makes himself readily available for help. We met up with him early on in the trip, as we were unsure how to tackle the American market, and his advice was really useful - that's where the idea for Auctomatic was born. One thing I love about the Valley is the speed with which things happen.

Auctomatic is normally make 400 listings per day. One listing involves filling 5 pages, so all in all this amounts to 2000 page views. Auctomatic will be automating this process by allowing sellers to do everything on a single page and will also add certain other management features on top of this ease of use. Auctomatic is founded by Harjeet Taggar, Kulveer Taggar, Srini Panguluri and Thomas Schmidt. Harjeet was behind Boso and Srini is an important member of YouOS, two other YCombinator funded startups.

Kulveer has always made things happen. Whilst still in college at Oxford, he had already started investing in property. He then went on to be a founding member and President of the Oxford Entrepreneurs society, the largest student entrepreneurship society in the UK. His first internet venture, boso.com, quickly grew into the largest online student marketplace in the UK. He graduated with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics in 2005. Upon graduation he worked as an Investment Banker with Deutsche Bank. However after developing an allergy to tailored suits and cufflinks, he left to work on Auctomatic full time.

Silicon Valley is the model of a risk-taking environment. In London, graduates are much more likely to become consultants, bankers or lawyers and wear their jobs as badges of honour, than risk becoming an entrepreneur and doing something different to their peer group. In Silicon Valley this is the other way round - there is pride in taking a risk and trying to build something for yourself. The environment cultivates collaboration and co-operation. People are very willing to talk or generally help, and ‘networking’ isn't something that has to be organised or encouraged - it just happens. In my experience this friendly, optimistic and ambitious vibe rewards big thinking, which is sometimes frowned upon in London.

Harjeet is now a millionaire just a year-and-a-half after graduating with a Law degree. He enjoys the challenge of building things and gets involved in pretty much every aspect of Auctomatic. While studying law at Oxford, he finished as a Finalist in the National Graduate of the Year Competition and was also voted one of the Freshminds "50 Ones to Watch". He co-founded boso.com with Kulveer and secured national press coverage in all the major news publications. After working with several international law firms, he decided the time was right to move onto something new and build his own company. Harjeet generally maintains an all or nothing approach to life. One day you might find him going to the gym twice a day and surviving on cans of tuna and the next he'll be finishing off his second pizza.

“The approach came as a surprise. Any entrepreneur is inherently confident, but we never imagined we’d be so lucky that we’d sell our company within a year of launching,” said Kulveer, former president of Oxford Entrepreneurs.

After the event, though, Auctomatic became part of a bidding war between three companies before it was sold to Live Current Media.

Communicate.com, a public company in Vancouver, Canada, is announcing the acquisition of Y Combinator startup Auctomatic for $5 million in cash and stock. The company is also changing its name to Live Current Media, Inc. Communicate/Live Current is in the domain name business - their primary assets are 800 high value domains (perfume.com, cricket.com, etc.) that generate a variety of advertising and affiliate fee revenues. The company's market cap is just shy of $60 million. That stock price has increased by around 250% in the last year. Some of those domain names are quite valuable.

While at university, the cousins have shown keen interest in developing entrepreneurial ideas.

In his first year, Kulveer designed a Freshers guide for the London School of Economics which funded a trip to Canada to start a property investment project.

Kulveer now has property in the UK, Canada and India.

Kulveer said: "Oxford Entrepreneurs introduced me to successful entrepreneurs and gave me the confidence to think I could start my own company."

Harjeet added: "The Sad Business School has also been fantastic. Their annual 'Silicon Valley comes to Oxford' event gave us the opportunity to meet some of the biggest names in the Internet industry and gave us the belief we could move to Silicon Valley and become a success."

 


Updated

May 08, 2006

  • Harjeet Taggar was recently a finalist in a ‘Graduate of the Year' competition organised by Real World magazine, winning £1,000. Taggar was praised for his entrepreneurial skills. While reading for his law degree, he set up www.boso.co.uk, an online marketplace exclusively for students.
  • With more than 2,000 students signed up, Boso offers a bewildering array of goods for sale. Computers, books and bikes are popular, but The Snail was fascinated to find "old milk" on offer too.
  • So congratulations to Taggar, whose experience at encouraging people to sell stuff will surely come in handy when qualified.

UK NRI Harjeet Tagger, Oxford student, wins Runner-up £ 3,000

London, March 29, 2006
Surinder Singh

Runner-up, Oxford student, Harjeet Tagger is receiving £ 3,000. He studied law at Merton College. He has been admissions representative for Merton College student body, and held various posts at a variety of students societies, including Oxford Majlis and Oxford Entrepreneurs. Last year he started www.boso.co.uk , an online student marketplace similar to ebay, which has grown to 2000 members and has attracted more than £ 15,000 investment.

Kirill Makharinsky, who read Mathematics at St John's College, will be graduating this year. He won the top prize of £10,000 in acknowledgement of his contribution to University life, the local community and society at large during his time at Oxford.


What is Auctomatic?
Auctomatic is a tool for managing your eBay business. Use Auctomatic to track your inventory, pictures, and auction templates, and track the traffic on your auctions so you can optimize your listing strategy.

  • Auctomatic is rapidly evolving into the easiest and most effective way to sell on eBay

    Kulveer Taggar is the founder of Buy Or Sell Online (boso) and a Global Markets analyst at Deutsche Bank in London. He graduated in 2005 with a BA in PPE from St John's College.


Harjeet Taggar is now a millionaire just a year-and-a-half after graduating with a Law degree.