Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft in 18 months for ₹1,600 cr

Sabeer Bhatia started Hotmail in 1996 as an email service provider allowing anyone to access their email from anywhere in the World using the Internet. His idea became popular quickly and had over 10 million users by 1997. Then, Microsoft acquired Hotmail for ₹1,600 crores in an all-stock deal, making it their biggest acquisition of the time.