Vikas Kedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Vikas Kedia | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 25, 1977 Kolkata, West Bengal, India. |
| Occupation | Online Entrepreneur |
| Website [2] |
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Vikas Kedia is a Nevada based online entrepreneur. Vikas Kedia runs four online finance communities on mortgage, debt, insurance and credit.
Contents |
[edit] Early life and education
Vikas Kedia was born in Kolkata on 25th October 1977. He graduated from Sri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi. He finished MBA from IIM-Bangalore in 2000. During his MBA he represented India at the Global Entrepreneurship Challenge, sponsored by Stanford University[1]. He ranked in the top 5% of his batch and was offered a possible $100,000-a-year job by a New York based company [2]. He did not accept the job because he wanted to be an entrepreneur.
[edit] Early career
He started a software company to detect click fraud[3] that showed a lot of potential at the beginning. However, it could not sustain the growth for long. Soon it ran out of initial funding and investors decided to stop further investment. Thus he had to close the company. After this he did research on Ad-Hoc processing of data[4].
[edit] The tough times
This time had a big impact on Vikas. He was jobless and during that period he racked around 20K in credit card debt. Vikas says “I still remember thinking where should I eat-McDonalds or Taco Bell? Taco Bell was cheaper. With $5 in my pocket to last till the next odd job, it had better be the cheapest place. Those were the hard times. I had to go through a lot of struggle. I slept in churches, Salvation Army and on the streets while at the same time looking for a job.” [5] He received a lot of threats from the collection agencies during that period. Finally he got a job as a software designer and eventually worked his way out of his debts successfully.
[edit] The online ventures
It was during this period that he first thought about starting a website to help people in debt[6]. Over time he developed it into a community based platform (the internet’s first get out of debt community) where people can discuss their debt related problems and find a solution. With more than 150,000 registered members, that community is a big success today.
Within 5 years he was successfully running other communities on mortgage, insurance and credit. In total, his communities have more than 400,000 registered members.
