Startups To Focus On Growth And Profitability, Says Nandan Nilekani The Infosys co-founder also said that the key to success in business is to invest in its people

By Teena Jose

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Nandan Nilekani Twitter handle

Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder and non-executive chairman said that the key to success in business is to invest in its people. He also advised that startups should focus on growth as well as profitability. He was speaking at the startup summit by xto10x.

"I think the question of growth and profitability comes only if the basic unit economics are not correct. But if your unit economics are such that you are making money on every sale, you are going to do both, grow and be more profitable. If you get that right, the rest follows," said Nilekani.

While expressing his views on resilient companies, Nilekani said that, "We started Infosys completely bootstrapped in the 80s. Without the internet, we had to build our company and its network manually. But we always went ahead with a strategy in mind of how to grow our company from x to 5x to 10x and further."

He also added that, "There were no angel investors during that time. All our goals were in revenues and not in market capital. We kept upping the game in terms of what we want to get, and 40 years later, Infosys is now a company with a revenue $16 billion."

Founded in 2018 by Binny Bansal, Saikiran Krishnamurthy and Neeraj Aggarwal, xto10x is a scaling platform for growth-stage startups.

"The first 4 to 5 years of the Flipkart journey was always focused on moving ahead. We were at 'x' and how could we move this to 2x to 3x within the next year. As we scale, we understand that we will need to set forward looking ambitions and then work backwards on making plans to reach the goals," said Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart and xto10x, in a statement.

Teena Jose

News Desk Reporter with Entrepreneur India

Teena is a post graduate in financial journalism. She has an avid interest in content creation, digital media and fashion.
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