New Delhi, March 30 -- Startups need to focus on building a strong foundation even if it means they grow slowly, said Amit Jain, co-founder and chief executive of the CarDekho Group, an online marketplace for buying vehicles.

"It took us 8 years to reach the first Rs.100 crore. And it was a bootstrapped company, so we never raised funds till 2014. That's when we were actually funded. So, as a bootstrapped company we had kind of hit the Rs.100 crore scale without actually utilizing any cash, and it was profitable everywhere," he said, speaking at the Mint India Investment Summit in Mumbai.

"Since we did not have money we had to build a strategy to get traffic free of cost, and I think because of that a lot of innovation happened," Jain s...