Dinesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of IndiaMART

Dinesh Agarwal is the Founder and CEO of IndiaMART, the largest online marketplace in India that connects Indian suppliers with domestic and international buyers. IndiaMART is the country’s largest online business-to-business marketplace for small and medium-sized businesses.

Dinesh started the company in 1996 and has guided it to its current position as the world’s second largest B2B marketplace. IndiaMART.com is a platform where suppliers, usually SMEs, can register and conduct business transactions using IndiaMART.com’s business leads.

Dinesh began his career with CMC, where he worked on the country’s first railway reservation system, before joining Sam Pitroda and his team at the Center for Development of Telematics to design an indigenous digital telephone exchange for India. Dinesh relocated to HCL in the United States in 1992 to establish offices on the East Coast. There he witnessed the development of the internet in America and grasped its potential and the influence it could have on the Indian people. He left HCl in August 1995 and returned to India. Agarwal came up with the idea of creating an online marketplace for exporters and importers.

IndiaMART.com’s 700,000 registered members and almost 5 million global buyers have access to a wide range of value-added products and services from a variety of sectors and verticals.
In the past several years, IndiaMART.com has been nominated for Emerging India Awards 2008, won Red Herring 100 Asia 2008 Award, Indira Super Achiever Award 2008, Amity Corporate Excellence Award 2008, and received numerous other nominations. Various media outlets and industry organizations have honored him for his contributions to the Indian business environment. CNBC named him a Young Turk, and The Economic Times dubbed him “The Market Maker.”