Spawned with the motivation to create video games, brothers Divyank Turakhia and Bhavin Turakhia began programming a game when they were still in the primary school. Their father, a chartered accountant, even bought them books about game programming.
During their teen years, they developed a business-simulation game as part of Divyank’s computer project at school, who was 13 at the time and Bhavin was 15, which took them an entire year. The game started with an animation sequence. It was on how a commercial partner betrays the player and takes over the company. So, with zero money in hand, the player has the challenge to build a rival business from scrapes.
21 years later, the brothers are playing it for real. Now, the two brothers are known as the best personalities in the world of Indian ad-tech. Like the game, the brothers together have been part of developing dozens of companies. And after selling few of such companies made it through the India’s richest people’s list.
The story of their success makes anyone with a dream believe they can touch the skies. The brothers were born in a middle-class family. Their father persuaded Divyank to continue studies and get a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce and he had to take admission. But Turakhia brothers could not part from their obsession of coding. Divyank never attended college and instead he and his brother would stay home to gain expertise knowledge over coding. When they acquired the expertise they were adamant to start their own business.
In the year 1998, Turakhia brothers convinced their father with extreme persuasion to give them the initial capital that they needed for the business and were given Rs 25,000 as debt.
Divyank was 16 and Bhavin 18 when they set up the company named Directi. This company would offer website domain names to the other companies. Directi also provided internet services to the Indian companies.
Under the banner of Directi, Turakhia brothers launched 11 startups. Directi is growing at a speed of 120% annually. Such an achievement was not even found by any of the traditional brands.
In 2010, they launched Media.net which allowed the publishers to display ads that were relevant to the content of a web page, automatically. Yahoo-sourced most of the ads. Many ad networks and ad tech companies internationally as well have the license of Media.net. It worked from Mumbai and Bangalore as well as from New York, Los Angeles, and Zurich. In 2016, the brothers sold their Media.net venture for $900 million to a Chinese group.
Both the brothers are excellent coders without an engineering degree. Talk about self-made people! The both had each other and no external assistance. Turakhia brothers today are known to be the first internet entrepreneurs. Both of them are workaholics and they do not have any time for starting a family. They play no more, just serious business!
