Bhavin Turakhia, the CEO of Flock, a billionaire, and one of the richest men in India still wishes he could manage his cash better. At least that’s what he said when I told him I write about how entrepreneurs secure capital and manage their money. It was refreshing to hear.
Turakhia told me his story, and it sounded a little like Steve Jobs—the stories where Jobs worked his connections to get access to a computer after hours. Except in Turakhia’s story, he is ten years old, it’s 1989, and his teachers are leaving the keys for him to lock up the school in Mumbai because his parents can’t afford a computer at home.
His parents, an accountant and a homemaker, factored heavily into his success. They told him he could do anything he set his mind to and he believed them. He began consulting and writing software in high school.
"I started my first company at 17 and sold it for $160 Million."
Although Turakhia has started over 11 companies (maybe 12 by press time), his first venture was when he was 17. It was a hosting company that he built, and built, and built.
He developed his business skills, his network, and learned to grow managers the old-fashioned way—through hard work. He studied the luminaries, reading biographies of every great business person he could, and emulated their strengths.
Unlike some people I cover, he didn’t grow something and exit in 3 years.
He grew and built, nurtured and tweaked, launched ancillary companies that he co-founded with his brother Divyank Turakhia, and then finally, in 2014, they navigated their first exit. That year they sold BigRock, LogicBoxes, ResellerClub, and Webhosting.info for $160 Million.
‘Exiting is interesting, but let’s do it better.’
For some, the 2014 sale of a collection of portfolios for $160 Million would be the end of the story. But for Turakhia, a true serial entrepreneur who now had other firms in his portfolio, he was (and is) still building.
Turakhia founded another company, Media.net in 2010 with his brother, Divyank. They bootstrapped the business and diligently grew the firm. As Turakhia put it, with all his "spare time" following the 2014 exit, he and his brother positioned Media.net for acquisition. In 2016 they sold for $900 Million.
Welcome, Turakhia to the ‘Three Comma Club.’
Collaboration and continuous improvement create market opportunity
As Turakhia matured in business, including having locations in India and the U.S., he was always looking for ways to collaborate and manage a distributed team.
He is a self-professed productivity and efficiency nut, always seeking to do more with smaller teams and small amounts of capital. To help better manage his businesses with his customers, he developed his own tool that showed a 50% productivity increase with customers. He defines that kind of result as ‘massive impact’ which is the kind of impact he likes to have.
That team collaboration tool naturally became a company, which is now known as Flock. Turakhia sees Flock as a cheaper, better version of Slack. He said Slack launched a few years before they did, but Slack’s success is an affirmation of the market opportunity.
According to Turakhia, the last major enterprise innovation was email. The collaboration technology space is a tremendous opportunity to have massive impact on 100s of millions of people.
Is it better to build or buy?
Turakhia is a grower and prolific producer by nature. He tries to get 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night and spends most of his waking time working. He averages 12 to 14 hours of work on weekdays but kicks back by working only 10 hours a day on the weekend.
I asked him if he would continue building, rather than buying, particularly now that he has the capital to work with.
He admits he is moving more toward buy-side opportunities. Particularly as it relates to Zeta India, a fintech company he co-founded with Ramki Gaddipati in 2015.
The pace of his growth is increasing, and the availability of people, plant and capital are there. There is, of course, the caveat that growth through acquisition must also be as efficient as his approach to organic growth.
How do you find managers that have the same focus on efficiency?
Not surprisingly, Turakhia’s philosophy on talent matches his philosophy on business—he grows it.
Most of the leaders in his companies have started near the bottom and grown up over many years. At Flock, most of the leaders have worked with Turakhia for 8 to 10 years.
That works when he knows the market, but he hadn’t recruited in the U.S. before and is taking a different approach with growth for Flock’s US-based CMO and CRO.
Turakhia spent the last three months connecting with the best CMOs and CROs he could find. He had about 30 conversations on the role, what it takes to be successful and how to find the best talent. He read the books they recommended and made himself an expert in the area he seeks to grow next.
Do you have the values of a billionaire?
When faced with the notion that Americans don’t stick in one position as long as the people he’s had experience with, he surprisingly passes no judgment. He says, "People can choose their own paths, but they should always consider the impact of a change on both themselves and on the world."
These two lenses are critical; particularly with someone to whom massive impact is a priority. Turakhia believes it is everyone’s responsibility to make an impact proportional to their potential. He believes he hasn’t even begun to reach his.
He does not assess impact in dollars. He never worries about money and says he never did.
Turakhia encourages all entrepreneurs, to focus on value, not valuation. Money, he says, is a side effect of the tireless focus on value.
It may not always be the side effect, but it absolutely should not the aim. At least not to Bhavin Turakhia. Not in his first 11 companies, and not in the many to come.
