Puneet Dalmia recounts experience of starting a job portal and not merging with Sanjeev Bikhchandani's Naukri.com

Puneet Dalmia at a panel discussion during IFBA 2022.

In a quest to gain the trust and prove his credibility to his father Yadu Hari Dalmia, the Dalmia Bharat Group Managing Director Puneet Dalmia, in 1999 temporarily left the Dalmia group family business.

"I asked my father to invest Rs 500 crore to expand our business in 1999 and he asked me who will lead the expansion, to which I said I will, but my father said I lacked credibility and he could not invest the money," Puneet Dalmia said.

He added that instead, his father gave him Rs 2 crore to prove his credibility. Puneet Dalmia used the money to start jobsahead.com, an employment website, along with his friend from engineering school, Alok Mittal.

"We started a small company, going up against Sanjeev's (Naukri.com). Sanjeev was the big daddy in the business and continues to be," Puneet said while speaking at Moneycontrol’s Indian Family Business Awards 2022 on August 19.

Puneet added running jobsahead.com helped him gain a lot of experience at a time of internet volatility and boom.

He added that they sold jobsahead.com to US jobs portal monster.com in 2004 for six times the earnings, but added that seeing Naukri.com list for 100 times its earnings three years later had him wondering.

"After Naukri.com got listed I felt like it would have been better to merge with Sanjeev's company, which was an option at that time," Puneet said.

He added that his company wrongly wanted equity, but this experience left him with lots of experience and helped him garner his father's trust and credibility.

Jobs portal jobsahead.com was sold to monster.com for Rs 40 crore.

Jobsahead.com was started in 1999 when the world was in the grips of Internet mania. Puneet and Alok, then in their mid-20s, too decided that it was time to jump on the bandwagon. Both came from different backgrounds.

The two met while studying at IIT Delhi. After graduating in 1994, Puneet went to IIM Bangalore where he bagged the gold medal, while Alok winged his way to the University of California, Berkeley, for a course in computer science and management of technology.

In 2002-03, jobsahead broke even. In 2003-04, it reported a profit of Rs 3 crore on a turnover of Rs 40 crore.

Puneet also said that after graduating from IIM Bangalore he had plans to join Mckinsey and Co but was convinced by a consultant working there to join his family's business.

"I didn't join McKinsey after a consultant told me that if I want some free time and opportunity to make a difference I should join my family business," Puneet Dalmia said.

The Indian Family Business Awards ceremony, which brought together a power-packed list of India's illustrious leaders of family-owned businesses, celebrated the persevering spirit of enterprises which are contributing significantly toward positioning the nation on the $5 trillion economy map globally.

The prestigious event brought into the limelight the role of India's leading family businesses that have been playing a key role in nation building and wealth creation. Aspiring family business, spread across 17 categories, were lauded and acknowledged for their excellence.