Bhavin Turakhia

Bhavin Turakhia (born December 21, 1979) is a serial tech entrepreneur, and the co-founder and CEO of Directi,. Directi now comprises of various tech businesses including Ringo, Flock, Zeta, Radix, Media.net and Skenzo. Bhavin is also the founder of CodeChef. In 2014, he sold Directi’s four business units - BigRock, Logicboxes, Webhosting.info and ResellerClub to Endurance International Group.
Bhavin started his first tech venture - Directi - with his brother Divyank Turakhia - when he was 17. His businesses today comprise 1500+ employees, across 8 global offices, with millions of customers in 200+ countries, and a combined networth of over $1.4 billion. Every business he has been involved in has been bootstrapped and organically grown, without any external investment or debt.
Early life
Bhavin was born in Mumbai, and is the eldest son of Mahendra Turakhia and Priya Turakhia. His father is a self-employed Chartered accountant and his mother is a home maker. His father inculcated a passion for reading at an early stage of his life and saw immense potential in him.
Bhavin spent his school years in Arya Vidya Mandir, which is also where he had an early introduction to computers. The school built out a computer lab when he was in the 6th grade, and almost immediately, Bhavin began spending all his time - breaks, free classes, and several hours after school in the computer lab, writing code on GW-BASIC and MS-DOS. He also learnt advanced programming on his own with the help of all the books his father kept buying. Apart from computer science, his other favorite subjects were Mathematics and Physics.
While in school, he decided to start an enterprise of his own. This idea was firmly implanted in his mind because of the countless biographies of various successful tech companies he passionately devoured in that time.
He subsequently joined DG Ruparel college for 2 years and then transferred to Sydenham College of commerce and economics for his Bachelors. During these years he started various business ventures with modest success, until eventually co-founding Directi with his brother Divyank Turakhia
Career
Starting up
During his years in Ruparel College, Bhavin continued to enhance his tech skills - and was engaged in several side enterprises involving consulting and software sales earning trivial sums of money while studying. Soon after he launched 2 businesses - Bits & PCs - a computer hardware business, followed by The Web Spinners - a web consulting firm - both of which were unsuccessful.
In 1996-97, he tried building an online recruitment application, which was shutdown after sometime due to low traction .
Eventually, with a ~$500 loan from his father, Bhavin started Directi's web presence business along with his brother, Divyank Turakhia. Operating from the kitchen of an apartment owned by his father, this company engaged in providing web hosting and domain name registration services. They diversified the company into different business units in the later years.
Business Units
Web presence
The Web presence business, co-founded by Bhavin, comprises 4 business units formed between 1998 and 2010 viz Resellerclub, Logicboxes, Bigrock and Webhosting.info. Combined, these businesses comprise 500+ employees, across 6 offices, with millions of customers. Directi is amongst the top 5 in the web presence space worldwide.
In February 2014, the web presence businesses were acquired by NASDAQ listed Endurance Group for a part cash and part stock transaction valued at over $110 million. Bhavin continues in a management capacity in these businesses.
Online Advertising
Bhavin's brother, Divyank Turakhia, runs the online advertising businesses viz. Media.net and Skenzo. Media.net is a leading player in the contextual advertising market and boasts customers like Forbes, Yahoo and others.
Domain Registry
Radix
In 2011, Bhavin co-founded Radix, a leading player in the Domain Registry space. Radix is the largest applicant under the ICANN new gTLD program from Asia. Radix won the license to operate several TLD extensions including .website, .space, .tech,. press. host, .store, .online and .site.
Communication Services
Ringo
In 2014, Bhavin founded Ringo, a low cost international and domestic calling app. Ringo functions independent of the internet and aims to make calling simple, seamless and free from telecom related hassles.
Flock
In September 2014, Bhavin introduced Flock. Flock is a messaging app for teams and workplaces that simplifies work life. With features like video conferencing, to dos, reminders along with integration capabilities, Flock is available on iOS, android, windows phone, mac and PC.
Mobile Payments
Zeta
In the year 2015, Bhavin and Ramki Gaddipati co-founded Zeta. Zeta is a digitized solution that functions as a substitute for paper and plastic money, simplifying payments for merchants, corporates and consumers.
Non-Profit Educational Initiative
Codechef
Established in 2007, Codechef is a global competitive programming platform which supports over 35 programming languages and has a large community of programmers that helps students and professionals test and improve their coding skills.
Awards and recognition
An early internet technocrat, Bhavin is respected in the Web 2.0 landscape, and is a frequent speaker at various seminars, tech conferences and colleges around the country.
He has also authored several technology patents and won numerous awards, including the Entrepreneur of the year award in 2005. Bhavin was the former chairman for the Global ICANN Accredited Registrars Constituency for two consecutive terms.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu