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
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.
