Info Edge: The Internet Pioneer That Built India's Digital Marketplace Economy

From wandering around a city with a hard copy resume to clicking ‘apply’ from the comfort of home, job hunting has evolved with time and technology. But this wasn’t a day’s matter. It took time for internet-driven companies to build trust among people about the legitimacy of applying through online portals. In this respect, it is safe to say that InfoEdge is one of the key market leaders in India.

As India’s digital economy expanded, a new category of businesses emerged that transformed traditional classified services into online marketplaces. Among the earliest and most influential of these companies was Info Edge (India) Limited, founded in 1995 by Sanjeev Bikhchandani.

What started as a small internet venture evolved into one of India’s leading consumer internet companies. Today, Info Edge operates several prominent digital platforms, including Naukri.com, 99acres, Jeevansathi and Shiksha, each catering to different aspects of everyday decision-making for millions of users.

Naukri.com, launched in 1997, emerged as one of India’s earliest online job portals and became the foundation of Info Edge’s growth story.

But the journey of Sanjeev Bikhchandani as an entrepreneur started long before India opened up to the internet.

According to a Forbes report, before he started his venture, he was working as a product executive for Horlicks at HMM, now GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare. During this stint, he had picked up some insights. He noticed that most of his colleagues would be reading the back pages of magazines. This was because the last few pages of the magazine were filled with job advertisements.

Upon realising the potential of the job market, he left his job to start the venture. While the company began with only a handful of employees working closely with its founders, its growth over the next three decades translated into significant direct employment generation. Filings suggest that as of March 2026, Info Edge employed approximately 6,000 people across all its businesses. This reflects the scale that the organisation has achieved since its modest beginnings in the mid-1990s.

What started as leveraging a market gap turned out to be a key driver in the Indian job hunting market. Info Edge's FY24 Annual Report, over 98 million job seekers had registered on Naukri, while the platform was helping more than 50,000 recruiters access candidate profiles and manage hiring. The company also reported over 8.5 million resumes uploaded annually and around 4 million job-opening emails being sent every day.

From Startup To Investor

Interestingly, Info Edge’s contribution to India’s digital economy was not limited to the businesses it built for itself. By the early 2000s, the company had established a profitable internet business. This was the time when a significant number of Indian startups were still in the nascent stage.

This gave it something rare among homegrown technology firms of the period. It was the ability to back other entrepreneurs. As India’s internet economy matured, Info Edge gradually evolved from being merely a company to becoming one of the country’s most influential startup investors. It supported ventures that would go on to reshape industries ranging from food delivery to insurance and financial services.

Through its investment arm, Info Edge became one of the earliest backers of several Indian internet startups, including Zomato and Policybazaar, both of which later evolved into publicly listed companies.

Overall, it backed a significant part of the Indian tech and digital economy.

At The Heart Of Modern India’s Hiring Ecosystem

The scale of Info Edge’s impact becomes evident through the reach of its flagship platform. Company disclosures reveal that by FY25, the number of resumes hosted on Naukri had crossed 106 million, while Info Edge's recruitment business was serving over 128,000 corporate clients.

Yet, Info Edge’s influence extends far beyond Naukri. Through platforms spanning real estate, education and matrimony, the company has played a significant role in shaping how Indians search for information, make decisions and engage with the digital economy.

Latest financials show that 99acres continued to strengthen its position in India's online real-estate market, benefiting from sustained demand in the housing sector. Meanwhile, Shiksha has emerged as one of the country's leading education-focused platforms, helping students explore colleges, courses and career pathways, while Jeevansathi remains among India’s prominent online matrimony services.

Together, these platforms have enabled Info Edge to build a diversified internet ecosystem that extends well beyond recruitment, serving users across multiple stages of their personal and professional lives. These figures underscore how a platform that began by digitising newspaper classifieds evolved into one of the largest connectors between multiple sectors.

Beyond the numbers, platforms owned by Info Edge have helped reshape the dynamics of India’s internet-driven businesses.

Traditionally, access to employment, real estate, or matrimonial matches would be influenced by geography, personal networks or awareness of specific vacancies. By bringing these onto digital platforms, the company connected people as per their needs.

In the long run, this reduced information gaps for millions of Indians. In the internet age, gaps in information pose major challenges to people irrespective of the need. Info Edge is one such company which pioneered bridging that gap and created an internet ecosystem.