When and how did iimjobs.com come into existence?
I graduated from IIM Indore in 2003 and it took me a while to figure out that big horizontal portals do not cater well to the career requirements of MBAs from top business schools. Most of these graduates get to know of job opportunities through their professional/personal networks or some other unstructured source.

So, people with better networks and reach would always have better access to opportunities, most of which are never advertised. At the same time, recruiters also struggled to zero in and reach out to graduates from top business schools.

Through my personal network, I used to come across various opportunities that my friends never could find. Initially, I used to send it to some of them through e-mails, which I thought was not the best way. So, in February 2008, I launched the site as a blog, where I posted all the job openings I got to know of from my sources. At that time I didn't expect it to grow beyond my circle of friends.

What made you think that you had a serious business proposition up your sleeve?
IIM graduates (and MBAs, in general) constitute a very tightly-knit community. Owing to this reason, the traffic to the site started growing on its own. I started getting e-mails from people I had never met, congratulating me on the effort. Recruiters started asking for premium slots on the website. At that point in time I realised that I had stumbled upon something valuable.

"We identified a niche that wasn't served well by big players, and built an offering that recruiters and jobseekers would find valuable."

After about a year, in February 2009, looking at the traffic growth I decided that iimjobs.com could well become a sustainable business on its own. I quit my high paying job as director-Business Development at RockeTalk, to focus on building and growing the site.

The site has been growing 40 to 50 per cent, month-on-month. In August 2009, the website touched the one million monthly page-views mark.

What makes iimjobs.com an innovative start-up?
iimjobs.com is innovative from the standpoint of the business opportunity that it taps. We identified a niche that wasn't served well by big players, and built an offering that recruiters and jobseekers would find valuable.

How do you market your portal?
Online recruitment is a highly competitive market, dominated by big players with deep pockets. Most of them throw around loads of money to attract job seekers. We have been able to carve out a niche for ourselves without spending any money on marketing/advertising. Most of it was through word of mouth, within a tightly-knit community. We also promote the site through targeted PR campaigns, which doesn't cost anything either.

Apart from that, I write for a few publications, which helps me build the brand and drive traffic to the website. We have been also covered in several leading journals, which has helped spread awareness about our site.

Is there no other portal of this kind at the moment?
Many imitative sites have come up in the last couple of months but none of them has been able to reach a comparable scale.

Have you bootstrapped your start-up, or availed angel or VC funding?
We run on a zero cost structure. The site runs on open source solutions so there are no product development and engineering costs.

Besides, I don't have any co-founders or investors at this stage. I have been able to scale-up without any external help so far, and going forward, I don't see that changing either. At least, not in the near future. Our ability to achieve so much with such limited resources is our source of competitive advantage.

What kind of business model do you have and how do you make money?
The business model for any job portal is fairly standard and has been cracked by the bigger players. For us, it is just a matter of reaching scale before that could be enforced. We have been making decent money from premium services (like the resume booster) and advertising. It works well because there are no cost structures.

iimjobs.com timeline February 2008: The idea for the portal germinated. February 2009: iimjobs.com was launched. August 2009: Reached one million monthly page-views.

Any suggestions for budding entrepreneurs who may be sitting on an idea for a Web-based business?
Launch early and iterate. Keep your cost structures very low and do not run after investors early on. Strive to create something people will like to use.

Which companies do you have on board, posting jobs on your portal? Is there any cost attached to that?
I would not like to name the companies for the sole reason of protecting our competitive interests. There are no costs attached to posting jobs on the portal at the moment. Anyone can post jobs for free.