Business Success Story: India is the country with the world’s third largest set of startups that have gone on to achieve billion-dollar valuations and become unicorns. In the midst of the prospering startup ecosystem, India also got its first ‘unicorn couple’ in startup founders Ruchi Kalra and Asish Mohapatra. The husband-and-wife entrepreneurial duo has not one but two unicorn startups among them that have a combined value of $6 billion (over Rs 45,500 crore). Here’s their story.
Ruchi (38) and Asish (41) both gained education from the Indian Technology Institute (IIT), one of India’s most prestigious educational institutions. The two met each other while working for multinational management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. What started out was not just a relationship but the first steps of a phenomenal story of growth and success.
Both were itching to go out in the market and build something of worth. The result was OfBusiness, which the couple founded back in 2016 with fellow co-founders. OfBusiness, which is into the supply of raw materials like diesel, industrial chemicals, steel and food grains to SMBs, turned Unicorn in April 2021 with a $1 billion but then grew in valuation at an unparalleled rate to end the year with a valuation of $5 billion (over Rs 37,000 crore as per latest conversion rates), counting the likes of SoftBank as its investors.
In less than a year since OfBusiness went over the billion-dollar mark, the other startup Oxyzo Financial Services, also achieved the unicorn tag last month in March 2022, achieving a valuation of $1 billion with its funding debut where it raised $200 million from the likes of Tiger Global Management among others.
The two unicorns are run by the fast-emerging power couple. But while housed in the same place, the millennium city of Gurugram, the two are operated by different teams and have different offices.
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Now, the couple have set their sights on the IPO dream. While OfBusiness is expected to go public in the next six months to a year, Oxyzo is also IPO-bound and could be going public in around two years’ time.
