Former Infosys employee Ruchit Agarwal went on to work in Los Angeles for Merrill Lynch before returning to India to establish a start-up that is currently valued at over $3 billion. One of the four co-founders of the online used automobile marketplace CARS24, which debuted in 2015, is Agarwal. The platform's other co-founders are Gajendra Jangid, Mehul Agrawal, and Vikram Chopra.

Agarwal, an educated chartered accountant, recently discussed the specifics of his arduous and thrilling journey—which began with an IT business, continued with a bank abroad, returned home, and ultimately launched a start-up—in a YouTube podcast. Agarwal, who is originally from Agra, expressed gratitude for the opportunity to work at Infosys and acknowledged that he needed to put in a lot of study time before he could leave the city and travel.

"I was fortunate enough to get hired on campus by Infosys in Bangalore. Delhi was the largest city I had seen. In 2004, Bangalore was a distinct city. The Infosys campus was located in Electronic City. He described it as "mind-boggling" on the Invetographer podcast. 

"Infosys was a highly well-run firm with a billion-dollar revenue. Everyone was traveling to the United States and the United Kingdom. "I also wanted to go," Agarwal stated. However, having a CA meant fewer possibilities to go overseas. So he chose to get an MBA and enrolled at Cornell University in New York in 2007. 

In 2009, after earning his MBA, Agarwal joined Bank of America's investment and wealth management subsidiary Merrill Lynch. "CA offered technical skills, Cornell taught management, but how do you apply them to a firm or industry? "I started working on that aspect," he explained.

Working with Merrill Lynch provided Agarwal with financial security, allowing him to move past his financial commitments and return to his family in India.  "In 2014, I was able to do an internal job posting in Merrill Lynch's Mumbai office," he told me.

During his time at Merrill Lynch, Agarwal had the opportunity to connect with American startup entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. When he returned from Silicon Valley, he took the concepts with him to India. "I worked for Merrill Lynch in India for a year. "The US start-up bug had bitten me," he remarked.

Agarwal met the other co-founders of CARS24 through mutual connections, and they clicked. "I realized it would be tough to establish a business alone, so we started thinking. Vikram and Mehul had an idea to go into the automobile sector. They formerly worked in the furniture sector (Fab Furnish). They proposed tapping into a sufficiently large industry. Automobiles are quite popular in India. "Used cars were very appealing," he explained.

CARS24 has grown to become one of the nation's largest online used automobile marketplaces in the nine years since its start. CARS24 expanded into new countries in 2021, including Australia, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. Tracxn estimated the startup's value to be $3.21 billion as of January 26, 2022.