Post by CA Sunil Shah

Three failed startups. Years without traction. And then he built a ₹7,000 Cr global company. This is the story of Manas Human, founder of Nagarro. Manas studied at IIT Delhi and Stanford, yet success didn’t come easily for him. Before Nagarro, he failed three times: a manufacturing venture, a supply-chain startup, and a consulting firm. Most would’ve stopped their ambitions right there, but Manas persisted. In 1996, with four IIT batchmates and a 15-member team, Manas started a small software firm from an office above a shop in Delhi. Winning clients was brutal. European customers didn’t trust Indian vendors, and prices were constantly undercut. So Manas rewired his business. Instead of generic IT outsourcing, Nagarro focused on custom-built software products deeply tailored to each client’s business. The shift worked. Nagarro began winning global clients like Lufthansa, Audi and BMW, and opened delivery centres in Gurgaon, the US and Romania. By 2010, it crossed ₹105 Cr revenue, with 840 engineers across five countries. In 2011, German technology group Allgeier acquired Nagarro, but allowed it to operate independently. The company kept expanding into cloud, enterprise software and analytics. In 2020, Nagarro listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, becoming a ₹7,000 Cr unicorn. Today, Nagarro generates ₹8,800+ Cr in revenue, ₹1,300+ Cr in profit, serves 1,000+ clients across 71 countries, and employs 17,500 engineers worldwide. All were built after failing repeatedly. This also clears a bug myth that founders have, that pedigree builds companies. Manas didn’t win by being bigger than Infosys or TCS. He won by being more specific. And that’s a lesson I often share with my partners: When you stop selling hours and start solving problems, margins follow. When you build depth, scale becomes inevitable. Failure doesn’t disqualify you. Lack of clarity does. #success #leadership #growth #business