Young Entrepreneurs - Divyank Turakhia

Divyank Turakhia, of Mumbai (Bombay), India, started internet consulting at the age of 14, and started his domain registration and site-building company two years later with $600 borrowed from his parents.

That original business, Skenzo, is now part of Directi, owned and operated by Divyank and his two years older brother, Bhavin. It is the number 1 fastest growing domain parking company worldwide, and number 3 in absolute revenue terms.

The other elements of Directi are LogicBoxes, ResellerClub, and WebHosting.Info - all well placed for the internet marketing goldrush, because they are "shovel suppliers". They supply the tool sthat others need to make money in more speculative business ventures online.

Whether the website makes money or not, the web hosting and domain name registration get paid.

When Divyank was seventeen, the company was profiled by Rediff. The reporter was particularly fascinated by the attitude the young entrepreneurs displayed toward formal education. Bhavin claimed they woul dnot employ anyone who had attended classes.

The unconventional HRD policy will not sound so drastic when you consider that the four-head-strong staff of Direct Information is hardly out of college and still at war with teachers who are generations removed.

However, Bhavin had by that time graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Commerce, and Divyank was enrolled in his first year of the same program.

Programmer and first employee Hitesh Makhijani also attended university, and was in his final year at the time of the interview. He said that he was self-taught in most of the programming languages he used in the business.

One reason for their complete disrespect to formal education is that none of them believe that they learnt anything at school or college. Most of the skills they need to run their business have been learnt online including lessons in programming.

Hitesh who does most of the programming learnt all the languages he currently uses while surfing the Net. These include PERL, Java script, PHP and ASP script.

"I learnt all the programming myself. I did join classes to learn C and C++," explains Hitesh. "But then I realised that the teachers there didn't know much. I used to ask them questions and they wouldn't be able to answer. So, now I go online whenever I want to learn something."

Today, Divyank oversees the global operations of Directi, and directs the development of several major product lines. He was nominated as one of Asia's Top 25 Under 25 for 2007 by Business Week magazine.

Directi has been in the Deloitte and Touche Technology Fast 50 List for the past three years, and looks set to continue its success.