The Cloner’s Empire: Why Copycats Became the World’s Richest
💥 We worship billionaires as “visionaries.” We think they invent. The naked truth? The richest weren’t inventors at all. They were cloners.
They spotted someone else’s idea, copied it, localized it, executed like assassins, and buried the original six feet under.
From Bill Gates to Sam Walton, Ola to Flipkart, Tesla to Ola Electric — the world’s greatest fortunes were built not on creation, but on cloning.
🚨 Bill Gates: The Copy-Paste King
- Word vs. WordPerfect → WordPerfect (Bruce Bastian, Alan Ashton) ruled word processors. Gates cloned it, bundled Word into Windows, and choked it to death.
- Excel vs. Lotus 1-2-3 → Lotus (Mitch Kapor) was spreadsheet royalty. Excel cloned it, tied itself to Windows, and buried Lotus in its own cells.
- Bing vs. Google → Cloned search itself. Google still rules, but Gates proved his rule: copy + money + muscle.
👉 Gates didn’t invent. He cloned, packaged, and executed with brutal efficiency.
🛒 Sam Walton: Walmart, the Dynasty of Clones
- Sears and Kmart built discount retail. Walton copied their model.
- His twist? Go rural, crush suppliers, bleed competitors.
- Today? Walmart’s Walton family is richer than Elon Musk.
👉 Sears and Kmart are history. Walmart is the empire.
🇮🇳 India: The Copy-Paste Goldmine
India has turned cloning into an art: Western idea + Desi jugaad = Billion-dollar unicorn.
✅ The Big Cloning Wins
- Ola (Bhavish Aggarwal) → Copied Uber, added autos, discounts. Uber shrank.
- Flipkart (Sachin & Binny Bansal) → Copied Amazon. Sold to Walmart for $16B.
- Zomato (Deepinder Goyal & Pankaj Chaddah) → Copied Grubhub. IPO’d.
- OYO Rooms (Ritesh Agarwal) → Copied Airbnb. Standardized cheap hotels.
- Paytm (Vijay Shekhar Sharma) → Copied PayPal/Alipay. Demonetization made it a household name.
- Swiggy (Sriharsha Majety & team) → Copied DoorDash. Still thriving.
- PolicyBazaar (Yashish Dahiya & team) → Copied CompareTheMarket. Insurance king.
- BookMyShow (Ashish Hemrajani & team) → Copied Fandango. Monopoly in ticketing.
- BigBasket (Hari Menon & team) → Copied FreshDirect/Instacart. Bought by Tata.
- Shaadi.com (Anupam Mittal) → Copied Match.com. India’s marriage gatekeeper.
❌ The Big Cloning Failures
- Snapdeal (Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal) → Tried Amazon/Flipkart model. Collapsed.
- Housing.com (Rahul Yadav & team) → Copied Zillow. Imploded into PropTiger.
- Hike (Kavin Bharti Mittal) → Copied WhatsApp/WeChat. Burned millions. Dead.
- TinyOwl (Harsh Mandad & team) → Copied food delivery. Shut down.
- AskMeBazaar (Manav Sethi) → Copied Amazon. Died in 2016, left chaos.
👉 Lesson: Copying works only if you add the killer twist.
⚡ The Next Wave of Indian Cloners
Cloning isn’t over. It’s evolving. The next billionaires are already cloning AI, EVs, Web3, and EdTech.
- Freshworks (Girish Mathrubootham) → Salesforce clone with Indian pricing. Nasdaq listed.
- Ola Electric (Bhavish Aggarwal) → Tesla’s idea, but scooters instead of sedans.
- Rapido (Aravind Sanka & team) → Uber Bike clone.
- WazirX (Nischal Shetty & team) → Coinbase clone. Sold to Binance.
- Groww (Lalit Keshre & team) → Robinhood clone. Now India’s largest broker.
- Zerodha (Kamath brothers) → Robinhood clone. Bootstrapped success.
- Upstox (Ravi Kumar & team) → Robinhood clone. Unicorn.
- Byju’s (Byju Raveendran) → Coursera clone. Giant turned debt-ridden.
- Practo (Shashank ND & Abhinav Lal) → Teladoc clone. Survives.
👉 The cloning game never ends. It just changes skins.
🔥 Brutal Snapshot: The Global Clone Table
| Cloner (Founder) | Original (Founder) | What Was Cloned | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bill Gates (Microsoft) | WordPerfect (Bastian & Ashton) | Word Processing | Word killed WordPerfect |
| Bill Gates (Microsoft) | Lotus 1-2-3 (Mitch Kapor) | Spreadsheets | Excel buried Lotus |
| Bill Gates (Microsoft) | Google (Page & Brin) | Search | Bing survives, always #2 |
| Sam Walton (Walmart) | Sears & Kmart | Retail | Walton family = richest on earth |
| Bhavish Aggarwal (Ola) | Uber (Kalanick & Camp) | Ride-hailing | Ola dominates India |
| Sachin & Binny Bansal (Flipkart) | Amazon (Jeff Bezos) | E-commerce | Sold to Walmart |
| Deepinder Goyal & Pankaj Chaddah (Zomato) | Grubhub (Matt Maloney) | Food delivery | IPO success |
| Ritesh Agarwal (OYO) | Airbnb (Chesky, Gebbia, Blecharczyk) | Hotels | Unicorn, shaky profits |
| Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm) | PayPal (Musk, Thiel, Levchin), Alipay (Jack Ma) | Payments | Survived demonetization |
| Sriharsha Majety & team (Swiggy) | DoorDash (Tony Xu & Andy Fang) | Food delivery | Still thriving |
| Yashish Dahiya & team (PolicyBazaar) | CompareTheMarket (UK) | Insurance | Market leader |
| Ashish Hemrajani & team (BookMyShow) | Fandango (J. Michael Cline) | Ticketing | Monopoly |
| Hari Menon & team (BigBasket) | FreshDirect/Instacart | Grocery | Bought by Tata |
| Anupam Mittal (Shaadi.com) | Match.com (Gary Kremen) | Matchmaking | Dominates India |
| Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal) | Amazon/Flipkart | E-commerce | Collapsed |
| Rahul Yadav & team (Housing.com) | Zillow (Rich Barton) | Real Estate | Imploded |
| Kavin Bharti Mittal (Hike) | WhatsApp (Koum & Acton) | Messaging | Dead |
| Harsh Mandad & team (TinyOwl) | DoorDash/Grubhub | Food delivery | Shut down |
| Manav Sethi (AskMeBazaar) | Amazon | E-commerce | Collapsed 2016 |
| Girish Mathrubootham (Freshworks) | Salesforce (Marc Benioff) | SaaS CRM | Nasdaq listed |
| Bhavish Aggarwal (Ola Electric) | Tesla (Elon Musk & team) | EVs | India’s EV poster boy |
| Aravind Sanka & team (Rapido) | Uber (Kalanick) | Bike Taxis | Survives niche |
| Nischal Shetty & team (WazirX) | Coinbase (Brian Armstrong) | Crypto exchange | Sold to Binance |
| Groww Founders (Keshre, Jain, Singh, Bansal) | Robinhood (Bhatt, Tenev) | Brokerage | India’s largest broker |
| Kamath Brothers (Zerodha) | Robinhood | Brokerage | Bootstrapped success |
| Upstox Founders (Kumar, Viswanath, Subramanian) | Robinhood | Brokerage | Unicorn |
| Byju Raveendran (Byju’s) | Coursera (Ng & Koller) | EdTech | Debt-ridden |
| Shashank ND & Abhinav Lal (Practo) | Teladoc (Glen Tullman) | Health-tech | Survives |
⚡ The Naked Truth
- Inventors create. Cloners dominate.
- Gates killed WordPerfect & Lotus. Walton buried Sears & Kmart.
- In India, Flipkart cloned Amazon, Ola cloned Uber, Paytm cloned PayPal.
- Failures like Hike and Housing prove cloning without execution is suicide.
🔥 Nishani Verdict:
Innovation is overrated.
Cloning + ruthless execution builds empires.
👉 The graveyards of business are full of inventors.
👉 The thrones are occupied by cloners.
The next billion-dollar empire will again belong not to the creator, but to the cloner bold enough to steal, twist, and scale.
Comments
Hi, I’m Nishanth Muraleedharan (also known as Nishani)—an IT engineer turned internet entrepreneur with 25+ years in the textile industry. As the Founder & CEO of "DMZ International Imports & Exports" and President & Chairperson of the "Save Handloom Foundation", I’m committed to reviving India’s handloom heritage by empowering artisans through sustainable practices and advanced technologies like Blockchain, AI, AR & VR. I write what I love to read—thought-provoking, purposeful, and rooted in impact. nishani.in is not just a blog — it's a mark, a sign, a symbol, an impression of the naked truth. Like what you read? Buy me a chai and keep the ideas brewing. ☕💭 For advertising on any of our platforms, WhatsApp me on : +91-91-0950-0950 or email me @ support@dmzinternational.com
