Founder and CEO, YourStory | Founded 2008 | Bengaluru
In August 2008, Shradha Sharma stood in front of a gathering of entrepreneurs in Mumbai and told them what she planned to do. She would start a venture that told the stories of entrepreneurs who were not yet famous.
Some people in the room encouraged her. Most of the experts did not. One of them, she later wrote, told her: “You will not survive more than six months. It’s a social hobby and nothing more.”
Eighteen years on, YourStory has told about 1.5 lakh stories of Indian entrepreneurs, and the woman who was given six months is still running it.
Five children in Patna
Shradha grew up in Patna, Bihar, one of five children: four daughters and a son. Her father served in the Merchant Navy and was often away at sea, so her mother largely raised the children on her own, according to an Accel podcast profile published by YourStory in 2019.
She was ambitious from a young age and wanted, above all, to make her mother proud. Her mother remained a major source of inspiration, and her death was a deep personal loss.
A profile published by Kalaari Capital notes that opportunities for girls in Bihar in the 1980s and 1990s were limited. Shradha left Patna for Delhi to study.
History, then the newsroom
She studied history at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, where she discovered an interest in communication and writing. She then went to MICA, the communications school in Ahmedabad.
Her career took her into India’s biggest media houses. She worked at The Times of India and then at CNBC-TV18 in Mumbai, and rose up the corporate ladder. Along the way, she kept meeting small entrepreneurs whose stories were not being told. Big companies got the coverage. Small founders rarely did.
A blog, a stage and 16 September 2008
The question stayed with her, and in 2008 she decided to answer it herself. She left her job at CNBC-TV18 and, after that August evening in Mumbai, launched YourStory on 16 September 2008. “I listened to my heart,” she wrote in 2015. (Some later reports give the founding month as October 2008; Shradha’s own account gives 16 September.)
It began as a blog. According to a profile published by Kalaari Capital, she started with about ₹2 lakh of her savings and help from students at IIT Bombay.
The early years were hard in ways that had little to do with money. Founders sometimes refused interviews because YourStory had no brand name behind it. Investors assumed she was running an NGO, and she had to convince them otherwise. Friends were reluctant to join. Many people ridiculed the idea, she said on Accel’s podcast. “I chose to be the heroine of my story and not the victim,” she said. “I used every stone thrown at me.”
She also knew it would be slow. “I knew my business was not going to be an overnight success, and that it will take time to build,” she said in the same conversation. “I wasn’t chasing big money or building a unicorn but drew joy from the work, it was what I loved doing.”
Seven years without outside money
YourStory grew the slow way. In 2010, it held the first edition of TechSparks, a startup conference that became one of the best-known platforms for young Indian technology companies. Shradha and her team wrote about founders such as those behind Ola and Paytm long before they became unicorns. In 2010, NASSCOM gave her its Ecosystem Evangelist award.
For seven years, she ran the company on its own revenue. “I bootstrapped for seven years and it is COOL,” she wrote on YourStory in August 2015.
That month, she announced YourStory’s first outside investment. The Series A round was led by Vani Kola’s Kalaari Capital, with Qualcomm Ventures, Ratan Tata and T V Mohandas Pai. The amount was not disclosed; Shradha told VCCircle it was between $3 million and $5 million. Ratan Tata’s backing in particular drew wide attention, and she has since named him as a role model.
“I clearly remember the day in August, 2008,” she wrote when announcing the round, looking back at the expert who had given her six months.
Raising the stakes
The money went into new products, including YourStory’s move into Indian languages. More funding followed. In February 2017, YourStory raised $3 million from Qualcomm Ventures, Kalaari Capital, 3one4 Capital and UC-RNT, Global Venturing reported. In October 2017, YourStory closed a $6 million round led by UC-RNT, the fund formed by the University of California and Ratan Tata, with Kalaari Capital, 3one4 Capital and Qualcomm Ventures.
In her note announcing that round, Shradha wrote that the company was chasing $4 million in revenue that year and had a team of nearly a hundred people. YourStory also launched in Germany in 2017, its first market outside India.
By 2019, YourStory had a team of 93 people, had published 80,000 stories and had a million subscribers, according to the Accel podcast profile.
Recognition followed. She was named to Fortune India’s 40 Under 40 list three years in a row, won the Forbes Power Trailblazers award in 2018, and was twice named a LinkedIn Power Influencer. With T N Hari, she co-wrote Cut The Crap And Jargon, published by Penguin Random House India.
The business itself stayed lean. Agency Reporter, citing Tofler data, reported in 2021 that YourStory earned revenue of ₹27 crore in FY20, up 41%, with a net loss of only ₹16.5 lakh.
Back to Bharat, back to Bihar
Shradha’s attention has increasingly turned to the India she grew up in. She is a member of the National Startup Advisory Council, which advises the government on the startup ecosystem, and served as co-chair of the S20 engagement group during India’s G20 Presidency.
In April 2025, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal launched The Bharat Project, a YourStory initiative that aims to support one million entrepreneurs from tier II and tier III towns and rural India. “India’s future is not limited to metros. It’s brewing in the kitchens, backyards, and streets of Bharat,” Shradha said at the launch. The project includes an AI-powered guide for entrepreneurs in Hindi and English, an ideathon open to more than 1,000 districts, and Shuru-kar, a documentary series on startups from smaller towns.
In June 2025, the project came home. At a press conference in Patna, the Bihar government’s Department of Industries, the Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna and YourStory launched the Bihar Idea Festival, aiming to find 10,000 startups across all 38 districts of the state. The plan included a bus yatra through every district to collect ideas, and Shradha joined the institute as a mentor. “I especially want women from across the state to participate actively,” she said.
YourStory says it now reaches about 20 million users a month and has hosted more than 650 flagship events. In January 2025, Shradha appointed Sangeeta Bavi, a former Microsoft executive who had worked with her since 2012, as Chief Operating Officer. Shradha remains Founder and CEO.
The expert in Mumbai gave her six months. She has spent the years since proving, one founder’s story at a time, that the stories were worth telling.
Founder Journeys is a Sakhi Sangini series telling the stories of women who built businesses in India. This story is based on public interviews and reporting.
Sources: YourStory (August 2015, September 2017, March 2019, January 2025, June 2025); afaqs! (August 2015); Global Venturing (October 2017); Penguin Random House India; Kalaari Capital; Agency Reporter (January 2021); The Tribune (April 2025); Business Wire India (June 2025).
