How to Build a ₹100 Crore Business With ₹0 (The Hidden Formula of Indian Entrepreneurs)

Imagine sitting in an office, staring at your screen, wondering, "How did Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Deepinder Goyal, Piyush Bansal, Aman Gupta, Ritesh Agarwal, Narayan Murthy, and others manage to build such massive businesses? Did they have millions from birth? Is it impossible to start a business without money?" If you feel this way, you're living under a big misconception. The biggest lie in today's world is that you need money to start a business. The truth is very different.

If money were the real secret to business success, people like Dhirubhai Ambani, Narayan Murthy, and the founders of Flipkart would never have been able to build their empires. These individuals did something very few understand: they built their businesses not with money, but with leverage. They utilized resources effectively, even without using their own capital. This concept, known as "resourcefulness," means using whatever resources you have—whether it’s others’ systems, funds, or expertise—to build your business.

If you watch this video till the end, you'll understand that even a small shopkeeper, a delivery guy, or a roadside tea seller can build a ₹100 crore business. This is no fairytale but a secret formula followed by successful Indian entrepreneurs. And the best part is that anyone can use this formula without investing a single rupee.

I’m going to reveal the hidden secrets that the world's richest people know. By the end, I’ll also share four simple and actionable steps you can follow to scale your business to crores in no time.

Most people believe they need money to start a business, but the truth is that even if you have money and don’t have the right strategy, your business will sink fast. On the other hand, if you start with the right strategy, without investing your own money or taking unnecessary risks, you can scale your business rapidly.

To understand this better, let’s look at the lives of some well-known entrepreneurs who started from zero and built billion-dollar empires using leverage and resourcefulness. Dhirubhai Ambani is known worldwide, but do you know how he started? In the 1950s, Dhirubhai, only 17 years old, went to Yemen to work for ₹500 a month. There, he learned how market prices fluctuate and how the same product can be sold at different prices in different places. He learned the powerful concept of "arbitrage."

Arbitrage is a simple but powerful strategy where someone buys a product cheaply from one market and sells it at a higher price in another. Dhirubhai saw that petrol was cheap in Yemen and expensive in India, so he bought petrol cheaply and sold it at higher prices in India. This gave him a huge profit. When he returned to India, he entered the textile market, but there was a big question: If he didn’t have his own money, how did he start his business?

This is where leverage comes in. Dhirubhai never built his own factory or bought fabric with his own money. Instead, he took orders first, then bought the fabric using the customer’s money. This is how he scaled his business. Reliance’s IPO was launched at just ₹10 per share, and 57,000 people invested in it. Today, Reliance is a ₹19 lakh crore industry.

What’s the lesson here? If you don’t have money, learn to use others' money and market gaps to your advantage. Narayan Murthy, who made India a global leader in the IT sector, didn’t have money when he started Infosys. In the 1970s, there was barely any IT sector in India, and Murthy realized that the future was in software. But his biggest challenge was how to start an IT company when there were no big experts in India in the field.

Here again, he used leverage. He convinced six of his friends to start a software company with him. They had no office, no computers, no clients, but they had one thing—knowledge. They saw that global companies in the U.S. and Europe needed talented software engineers at affordable rates. Indian engineers had the talent, but the opportunity was missing. Murthy and his team decided to connect Indian engineers with global companies, and that’s how they built Infosys, without needing any investment at the start.

Infosys made its first deal with Data Basics Corporation in New York, but they still didn’t have computers. They took payment from clients first, then bought computers and completed the projects. This is what smart business looks like—getting money first, then delivering the service.

Infosys' first year was challenging, with no funds, infrastructure, or resources. But the team had one thing—vision. In 1993, Infosys launched its IPO, and even though the Indian IT sector was not trusted, the company grew by over 300%. Today, Infosys has a market value of ₹6.5 lakh crore and employs over 3 lakh people. It counts companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft among its clients.

Now think about it—if Narayan Murthy had made the excuse, "I don’t have money, how can I start a company?" Infosys wouldn’t exist today. He didn’t use money; he leveraged skills. He built his company without computers, infrastructure, or funding. This shows that if you always think you need money to start a business, this video is your wake-up call. It's not money; it's the idea and execution that builds a business.

The same concept applies to Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who started Flipkart in 2007 with just ₹4 lakh. They didn’t have any inventory in the beginning. They used leverage. Flipkart’s model was simple—list products online first, and once a customer ordered, they bought the product from the supplier. This is the beauty of leverage. They didn’t need to buy inventory upfront. This allowed them to build a multi-billion-dollar business, and in 2018, Walmart acquired Flipkart for $16 billion.

You don’t need millions to start. You need knowledge, the right network, and the ability to leverage resources.

Here are four simple steps to help you build a business that can scale to crores:

Step 1: Identify a Problem Business success doesn’t come from a unique idea but from solving a significant problem. Dhirubhai Ambani built his business by solving the problem of providing affordable and durable clothes for the Indian middle class. Sachin and Binny Bansal solved the problem of people spending hours in markets to buy books by creating Flipkart. Identify a problem, and the money will follow.

Step 2: Focus on Building Your Network, Not Money You don’t need money first. You need a network. Vijay Shekhar Sharma didn’t have a bank when he started Paytm, yet he built a multi-crore payment system. Similarly, Zomato didn’t own restaurants, and Oyo didn’t own hotels. They built networks and connected others' resources to their brand.

Step 3: Take Baby Steps Big businesses don’t build overnight. Amazon started by selling books, Ola began with just a few taxis, and Reliance started as a small polyester business. Focus on one small client, then scale up slowly. The key is to start small, reduce risks, and learn as you go.

Step 4: Be Hungry for Knowledge Business isn’t about sitting in a CEO chair or driving fancy cars. It's about learning. Dhirubhai Ambani started as a petrol pump salesman, and Narayan Murthy began with a small salary. The key is to learn first, then grow. Ratan Tata and others worked at the ground level before they took the helm of big companies.