The young winners told stories of ideas that were often dismissed as pipe dreams, but went on to become Unicorns, startups with a billion dollar valuation.
They told their stories, of struggle and success and dreams unlimited, the founders of
six Indian start ups that are the
NDTV Indian of the Year 2015.
The big winners of the evening were Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm, Quikr, Zomato and Inmobi.
"It is an evening for stories," said
NDTV's Prannoy Roy at the start of the show. And the young winners told their stories of ideas that were often dismissed as pipe dreams, but went on to become Unicorns, startups with a billion dollar valuation.
Pranay Chulet's shared how he hit upon the idea of Quikr, during his first efforts to make a movie - a subject he knew little about.
A fan of
Amitabh Bachchan, who sat in the audience today, Mr Chulet said he moved from Rajasthan to New York City armed with the ambition to make a Hindi film.
"Life has a funny way of putting things together," said Mr Chulet, "I recruited 50 actors from an US website." But when he came to India to shoot portions of the film, he found no Craigslist equivalent.
To fill that gap Quikr, a classified advertising platform, was born. Today it has listings for more than 1,000 Indian cities in categories like cellphones, cars, real estate and jobs.
Kunal Bahl, the creator of Snapdeal, said that at a time when everyone was spending billions on start-up ideas, he looked around for someone to provide - if not the capital - advice and trust. The person he thought of was Ratan Tata.
"I went and we had a little bit of discussion about the business... but my real objective was to prove to my parents and wife that I had gone to meet him... and I finally asked him for a selfie." Later, Mr Tata put up the initial investment for Snapdeal.
Sachin Bansal, the creator of Flipkart, India's highest valued startup that employs 33,000 people, sketched the journey of e-commerce companies over the last seven years.
"When my wife and I started, a lot of e-commerce companies were there but when we went in deeper, we found nobody wants to shop on them," said Mr Bansal. "From there, we have come a long way... we have been solving those problems... from logistics and talent... to figuring out how to access customers."
Deepinder Goyal, the creator of Zomato - the wildly popular restaurant search and discovery platform -- sadly confided that he doesn't get to eat out much. "Because if I get sick I can't go to office and I can't afford that."
"I grew up in a family that was not so privileged that they can build large companies or bright futures... I gave up 40% of the company for 8 lakh rupees," said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, which pushed him to see if there was a way to change how Indians used financial services. His answer was Paytm, a leading online payment and mobile wallet company.
IIT graduate Abhay Singhal, who started mobile advertising company Inmobi in a room full of mattresses and today owns 24 offices, said it is all about dreaming big. His rule of thumb -- "If it is so big that you are scared to speak it out, that means it is big".