Padma Awards: PM bullish on startups, says Info Edge’s Sanjeev Bikhchandani

Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Co-founder of Info Edge , said that the Prime Minister was ‘bullish on startups.’ 

In his conversation with the Padma Shri awardee at the ceremony to confer the honour, the Prime Minister expressed his happiness at the increase in employment rate and hiring in India post-pandemic, as reflected in the Naukri JobSpeak Index. 

Sanjeev was conferred the Padma Shri for the year 2020 for being an internet services pioneer. The alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad founded Info Edge in 1995, which operates job portal Naukri.com, matrimony website JeevanSathi.com, real estate classifieds platform 99acres.com , and education platform Shiksha.com.

The Naukri JobSpeak Index report said that the Indian job market continued its recovery at an annual growth of 57 percent as observed for the month of September 2021. Hiring for the IT-software sector fuelled the growth with 173 percent year-on-year growth for September 2021. Other sectors that saw recovery included hospitality and travel as well as retail.

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Apart from these businesses, Info Edge was also an early investor in publicly listed food technology major Zomatoand insurance aggregator, PolicyBazaar. 

To double down on early-stage startup investments, Info Edge launched its $100 million corpus Category II Alternative Investment Fund, Info Edge Venture Fund, in 2020.