AGENTS OF CHANGE: SAMEER GEHLAUT

Indiabulls Financial Services Ltd and Indiabulls Real Estate Ltd together are valued at more than $5 billion (Rs.21,000 crore). Indiabulls Financial Services serves more than 450,000 customers with the help of about 4,000 relationship managers spread across more than 640 branches.

The foundation stone of today’s success story dates back to just eight years ago, when the founders Sameer Gehlaut, Rajiv Rattan and Saurabh Mittal – three batch mates of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India’s premier engineering institute in the national capital Delhi started an online brokerage firm operating from a tin-roofed office with two computers. The three young entrepreneurs had lucrative careers, but the ambition to build their own empire was more important to them.

Before starting Indiabulls, Sameer Gehlaut was successfully managing an earth moving equipment business, while Rajiv Rattan had left his job as operations manager at Schlumberger Limited, the world's largest oilfield services corporation and Saurabh Mittal who had joined the team little later was working with Citigroup Asset Management, the asset management arm of the world’s largest financial services firm, Citigroup Inc as an investment analyst in New York.

The trio struck the point, which was ignored by the biggies of the broking business that time. The established broking firms were not keen to entertain retail investors, as they feared that the return on the efforts per client won’t be sufficient. Indiabulls capitalised on this under-catered segment by paying special attention on retail investors and offering them a web-based trading platform.

Securing the initial funding from venture capital firm Infinity Technology Investments Pvt. Ltd, India’s leading IT & ITES sector focused venture capital fund and NRI billionaire L.N. Mittal was the major stepping stone for Indiabulls.

The investors of the company include the world’s largest steel company Arcelor Mittal’s Chairman L.N. Mittal; Fidelity Funds, the India focused fund, part of the U.S. based Fidelity Investments group; The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc, one of the world's largest global investment banks; Merrill Lynch & Co Inc, U.S.-based investment banking and advisory services firm; Morgan Stanley, a global financial services firm and Farallon Capital Management LLC that manages equity capital for institutions and high net worth individuals.