Ankur Warikoo is a famous content creator, entrepreneur and public speaker.
He is also an author, angel investor, mentor and teacher.
Introduction-
Ankur Warikoo was born on 25 August 1980 into a middle-class family.
He hails from Delhi and grew up in Lajpat Nagar in Delhi.
His father worked as a sales representative and mother was a school teacher.
Ankur has a sister.
Clarity from childhood-
From 1986 to 1998, Ankur did his schooling from Don Bosco School, New Delhi.
He was a nerdy kid in school and since class 8, he was interested in physics.
Ankur was inspired by The X-Files and Men in Black movies and developed an interest towards astronomy and space.
He chose science in his school and his future plan was to do a PhD from an American university and then, join NASA as a space scientist and then, travel to Mars.
Ankur participated in the extra-curricular activities of debating and public speaking in his school.
After completing his schooling, he wanted to join an IIT but he failed thrice to clear the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE).
Later, Ankur wanted to join St Stephen’s College but he also got rejected there.
College education-
Finally, in 1998, Ankur joined Hindu College, University of Delhi, New Delhi to study BSc Physics.
Here, at 19, he met his future wife, Ruchi Budhiraja.
They got married in 2007 and they have two children, Vidur and Uzma.
While in college, Ankur participated in debating, public speaking and photography.
He graduated in 2001.
Moving to the United States-
In 2002, Ankur moved to the United States to study PhD and to afford his plane ticket, his father took out a loan of ₹50,000.
Fortunately, he received a full tuition waiver (scholarship) through teaching and research assistantship at Michigan State University.
After around two years in his PhD program, Ankur realised that even though he was good in physics and was performing very well in the university, he wasn’t happy studying it.
So, in 2004, he dropped out of the PhD program and returned to India.
Michigan State University was kind enough to give Ankur a Master’s degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Pursuing MBA-
After returning to India, Ankur was confused about his future.
During that time, he wanted to do MBA from IIMs but unfortunately, he couldn’t succeed.
Finally, Ankur settled for the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad.
As he wasn’t able to afford the course, he took a loan of ₹14 lakhs from his father to join a one-year MBA program in Finance in 2005.
Ankur graduated in 2006.
An interesting read- Inspiring story of MBA Chaiwala
Job & business-
In 2004, Ankur joined NIS Sparta to work as a consultant and he worked here until 2005.
After finishing MBA, he joined A.T. Kearney in May 2006 as an Associate.
In 2007, Vivek Pahwa, Ankur’s friend from ISB invited him to work in his start-up, Accentium Web.
Accentium Web was operating SecondShaadi.com, a matrimonial website for divorcees and widowed people.
A co-founder-
In April 2007, Ankur joined Accentium Web as a co-founder.
And until April 2009, he worked full-time as a consultant at A.T. Kearney and used to work for Accentium during nights and weekends.
Eventually, SecondShaadi.com became successful and thanks to this, Ankur quit his job in April 2009 to work full-time for Accentium Web.
During that time, he used to receive very little salary package compared to that of his previous job at A.T. Kearney but he left his high-paying job only because he liked working for SecondShaadi.com.
Apart from SecondShaadi.com, Accentium Web used to manage other websites like Gaadi.com, StudyNation.com, Taaza.com, SitaGita.com, etc.
Ankur sold off a few websites and exited from this company in September 2010.
Joining Rocket Internet-
In December 2010, Ankur joined Rocket Internet and worked here as a Venture Partner until April 2012.
Then, through Rocket Internet he moved to Groupon.
In Groupon, he worked as a CEO and Head.
Then, Ankur acquired Groupon India and received fundings from Sequoia Capital.
He rebranded Groupon India to nearbuy.com.
nearbuy.com is a commerce platform focused on India and Ankur worked as the CEO of nearbuy.com until October 2019.
A content creator-
Ankur has been a content creator since 2005.
In 2005, he started his blog by the name, ttiot to document his learnings in ISB.
Ankur published his first ever blog post on this blog on 15 May 2005.
He still regularly blogs on his website, Ankur Warikoo.
Ankur also started sharing content on Quora, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Initially, he used to share only text content and images on LinkedIn but later, in 2016, he started consistently publishing videos on LinkedIn.
Ankur’s videos, which he branded as warikoo Wednesdays became very viral and he gained thousands of followers.
YouTube, newsletter and podcast-
On 1 August 2017, Ankur started his YouTube channel by the name, warikoo.
As of December 2021, he has more than a million subscribers on this YouTube channel.
On 26 September 2020, Ankur started his second YouTube channel by the name, Woice with Warikoo.
He also runs a podcast by the name, Woice with Warikoo Podcast and a weekly newsletter on his website.
Speaker, author and teacher-
Ankur delivered speeches at Google, Amazon, Flipkart, HP, etc. and at many TEDx events.
On 27 December 2021, he published his first book, Do Epic Shit.
Ankur also developed many courses on Josh Skills related to public speaking, personality development, handling emotional crises, etc.
In October 2019, he started Brand warikoo and this brand focuses on education and content creation.
Ankur along with his family is currently residing in Delhi NCR.
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About Author
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