Five founders. One vision. One relentless journey.

2017 — Five Students. One Dream. Zero Backup Plan.

We graduated with B.Tech (CSE) from K.R. Mangalam University, Gurgaon (Batch 2017) — Rishi Kumar, Ankit Awasthi, Neeraj, Vishal Bhan & Biswajith Bose. Instead of taking the safe route, we decided to build something of our own.

Our first ideas and products came much earlier — bringing Sarojini Nagar-style products online, then Zolokart.com for used books, and later Zovme.com (2016), a used mobile marketplace (we didn’t even know Cashify existed then).

Zovme got immediate traction. We re-launched it in 2017 and received 70+ orders in a few hours. But we faced immediate obstacles:

• No funding to procure inventory
• Shipping delays due to early-stage e-commerce logistics
• High return & refund risks
• Payments clearing in 3–4 days, creating cashflow issues
• Risk of defective/returned products without repair budget

The idea wasn’t bad. The cashflow model was impossible for us at that time. So we shut it down before it could bury us.

2017 — “We faced a problem… so we built the solution.”

While building Zovme, we built everything ourselves — the website, the Android app, our SEO, and marketing. We wrote the code; we designed the screens; we handled deployments. No outsourcing. But we hit wall after wall:

• Complex real-world website & app challenges beyond classroom learning
• SEO & marketing concepts nobody clearly explained to us
• Hosting instability that wasted time and frustrated customers

We thought: If we — computer science grads who coded everything ourselves — are stuck here, thousands of other founders must be too. This became the foundation of Spingtree.

2017 — Spingtree Begins - The Basement Where Spingtree Was Born

We pooled ₹2,00,000 and rented a basement office in Sector 56, Gurugram (E-Block) for ₹7,500/month. We were broke but determined.

• First team: 15–16 close friends
• First project: ₹2,500 (50% advance)
• First major client: TheBlushBoxx (Miss Shreya Chopra) doing ₹2–3 lakh/month

Her trust validated us. It was the spark that grew Spingtree into a real operation.

2017 — Our First Office: A Basement That Became a Launchpad

Before Spingtree officially began, we had already experimented with multiple ideas: KrazyBlue.com (2013) — an early attempt to bring Sarojini-style markets online, Zolokart.com — an online used book store, and later Zovme.com (2016) — a used mobile marketplace. We briefly shut Zovme down when the “Freedom 251” announcement made us believe buyers would not purchase used phones at all.

In 2017, we relaunched Zovme and received 70+ orders in a few hours. But real-world obstacles appeared immediately: no funding, no capital for inventory, slow logistics, high return risks, and payment delays of 3–4 days — all of which made the model unsustainable for us at that time.

That failure triggered a more powerful realization: we needed to solve technology problems, not product logistics.

Our first team consisted of 15–16 close friends working day and night. Our first paid website project was ₹2,500 (with 50% advance).

Our first major breakthrough came through TheBlushBoxx (Miss Shreya Chopra) — a beauty subscription box brand earning ₹2–3 lakh/month. She trusted us when we had no portfolio, and we not only built her website but also assisted with early SEO and marketing strategy.

Even today, you can find her products unboxing videos online on youtube (50+) few links below, a reminder of those early days:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdegeJp6P2E
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrLbfFxVX_E
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5etCdn9PGzA
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g52Z_6vRSGE
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkVF_hsqBtY
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3_RUZJpAm8

Her trust validated our direction and became the spark that grew Spingtree into a real operation.

2017–2018 — We Learned by Building (300+ Projects)

As Spingtree grew, many development agencies began outsourcing their projects to us. They avoided hiring full-time developers — instead, they relied on our team, purchasing our development services and reselling them at higher margins (sometimes 10×).

Our combo package — E-commerce Website + Android App priced between ₹3,500–₹10,000 — became a runaway hit. Agencies, freelancers, and small businesses used it widely.

Before OnoHosting existed, we had already built:

• 300+ websites
• 50+ Android apps
• Dozens of SEO projects
• Multiple white-label/reseller solutions for agencies
• Large reseller networks using our development team as backend support

This experience — end-to-end design, dev, hosting, SEO, support — gave us hands-on knowledge impossible to gain from books or courses.

But as the number of clients grew, we faced a major problem: managing hundreds of websites across separate shared hosting plans.

2018–2021 — Hosting Issues, Reseller Risks & The Turning Point

As our client base increased, managing dozens of individual shared hosting accounts became unscalable. We shifted to reseller hosting plans from MilesWeb, ResellerClub, and others, merging all sites under central dashboards for easier renewals and management.

But reseller hosting came with serious risks:

• If one website caused trouble (malware, spam, high CPU), the provider could suspend the entire reseller account.
• A single suspension meant hundreds of client websites going down at once.
• Backup inconsistency across multiple providers made disaster recovery extremely difficult.

The situation escalated on 29 January 2021 when a MilesWeb server crash wiped out data for our development clients and some early OnoHosting users. When we requested backups, the response was: “We do not have backups available.”

This was a breaking moment for us. We realized two things:

• We could no longer depend on third-party shared/reseller hosting for client reliability.
• We needed to build our own infrastructure to protect customers properly.

At this time we already had enough development clients to justify a hosting platform of our own — even if it didn’t grow externally, we could use it internally and avoid losses.

This is why we registered OnoHosting.com on 9 April 2018 — not as a random business idea, but as a necessity from real-world struggles.

Late 2018 — We Built OnoHosting (Born From Real Problems)

When reseller hosting became difficult to manage, and with risk of suspension if even one website misbehaved, we needed a safer long-term path. We already had 300+ active development clients, and apps built across India and overseas, so even if hosting didn’t sell publicly, it would still help our internal operations.

Our goal was simple but bold: offer the lowest price possible with the best support possible. We launched plans starting at ₹20/month and premium yearly plans around ₹999 — not because of margins, but because affordability mattered to us.

At this time, none of us had big salaries. Everyone earned between ₹5,000–₹8,000/month, and we saved every rupee for company stability. Our team size was ~15+, and every member worked with belief, not comfort.

We also did not know anything about hosting automation — WHM, WHMCS, server integrations, cPanel auto-creation, email templates, cron jobs — nothing. But every night, while Spingtree projects happened in the day, we spent 4–5 hours learning everything from scratch.

This period also highlighted the extraordinary contribution of Ankit Awasthi, who handled almost 80% of the initial build-out of OnoHosting — automation, WHMCS, website, SEO, positioning — and set the foundation for what OnoHosting would later become.

For SEO, Rishi and Ankit worked together, identifying keywords that in Google's keyword planner then: “Cheap Web Hosting India”, “Cheap Web Hosting”, “Cheapest Web Hosting”. These terms became industry standards later — but at that time, we were the first to target them.

Year 1 revenue was only ₹35,000. But we knew this was the seed of something bigger.

2018–2020 — Learning, Sacrifice & Midnight Work

These years shaped us more than any course or job could. While Spingtree ran during the day with hundreds of development clients, OnoHosting was built every night — line by line, configuration by configuration.

We learned WHMCS automation, built provisioning systems, configured WHM and cPanel, automated billing, created email templates, and experimented with marketing — all without any mentor, funding, or roadmap.

During this period, almost all our college batchmates moved abroad or joined large companies — Amazon, banks, government roles. We stayed together, earning less, but building something of our own. For us, staying united after college was the real achievement.

By 2020, we had already built 2100+ projects collectively for Spingtree and agencies. Those websites carried someone else’s branding, but the work — the code, the learning — was all ours.

This was also the period where we slowly paused most development, SEO, and app orders, because we realized that the future potential was in OnoHosting, not dev work.

2020 — The Moment We Had to Choose Our Path

As OnoHosting grew month after month, we reached a moment that every founder faces at least once — a decision point that changes the future forever. We were still running Spingtree development services, still building websites, apps, SEO campaigns, and automation systems for clients and agencies.

But at the same time, OnoHosting was showing a level of potential we had never imagined. Traffic was rising. SEO dominance was increasing. Customers were joining every single day. The foundations we had built during late-night learning sessions were finally taking shape.

Then came the moment of truth — our first ever ₹1 crore milestone, reached around March. It stunned us. We had never even dreamed of hitting a number this big, and suddenly we were here. And with that success came a difficult question:

“Should we continue with development… or dedicate ourselves fully to OnoHosting?”

The choice wasn’t easy. Many vendors relied on Spingtree because their business depended on our development and support. We tried hiring more developers to balance both, but salaries, training time, and delivery pressure made it unsustainable. Selling a ₹2,000 project while simultaneously running a hosting brand didn’t make sense anymore.

And so, with courage and fear together, we chose the harder road — we shifted our energy, time, and focus onto OnoHosting, believing it could scale to a level that development could never reach.

This decision changed everything. It was the first time we truly stepped into the identity of being a hosting company, not just developers. The road ahead was bigger, but also heavier.

2020 — Lockdown, Demand Surge & 30× Growth

When the COVID lockdown hit, India went digital overnight. New founders, local businesses, influencers, retailers — everyone needed websites and hosting.

Spingtree’s development workload doubled. But OnoHosting grew at a scale we never imagined — 30× growth almost instantly.

From earning ₹35,000 in the first year, OnoHosting crossed ₹1 crore ARR by March 2021. For a bootstrapped five-founder team, it was surreal.

This growth came with an emotional milestone: for the first time ever, each founder took a salary of ₹1,00,000. Rishi gave his first lakh directly for his sister’s college fee at BIT Mesra — a moment of pride that made every struggle worth it.

2021 — Our First Team Vacation After Reaching ₹1 Crore ARR

After years of non-stop struggle — coding days, learning nights, lost data, infrastructure battles, and the unpredictable chaos of COVID — we finally reached a milestone we once believed impossible: ₹1 crore ARR.

For the first time since the company began, we decided to celebrate not as founders, but as a team. Before this, any trip we took was by train and planned with a tight budget. But this time, for the first time ever, we booked flights — a big moment for people who built everything from nothing.

We took the entire core team on a memorable vacation to Goa, flew together, stayed in a hotel, and lived a moment that felt like a reward for years of sacrifice. Soon after, we also travelled to Mumbai — even though there were strict entry rules at that time, including mandatory tests that made the trip stressful and uncertain.

These vacations weren’t just trips; they symbolized the moment we realized that hard work, sleepless nights, and unity actually changed our lives. It was the first time we felt the success we had been building quietly for years.

2021–2022 — We Became a Real Company: Hiring, Roles & Team Growth

When OnoHosting crossed ₹1 crore ARR and Spingtree’s development work kept expanding, we reached a milestone we once thought impossible — we began hiring our own staff. This moment was emotional for all of us. For the first time, we weren’t just five founders — we were becoming a real organization.

During the pandemic, work-from-home became the default model. In our early hiring, we discovered that women candidates brought higher stability and better customer empathy. Many male hires left quickly due to financial pressure or salary expectations, but our female team members stayed longer, learned faster, and handled customer conversations with calm efficiency.

Among our early team, several names still stand out for their dedication and loyalty: Shivani Sharma, Saurabh Pandey, Ridhi Sharma, Madhu Kumari, and others who helped us build systems we had never built before. Their contribution shaped the identity of both Spingtree and OnoHosting.

We trained people ourselves — live chat support, technical support, verification, research operations, content writing, blog writing, SEO work, and more. Each founder took ownership of a vertical based on strengths:

• Rishi — customer success, communication systems, sales, onboarding
• Ankit — marketing, SEO, branding, growth frameworks
• Vishal — servers, infrastructure, deployment, uptime
• Neeraj — billing, finance, compliance, accounting
• Biswajith — support operations, retention, ticket management

By mid-2021, our combined strength reached 20–30 team members. For a company born in a basement with ₹7,000 rent, this was one of the proudest moments of our journey.

2022–2023 — Infrastructure Expansion & Competing With Giants

With exponential growth came exponential responsibility. Reseller hosting was no longer safe: one customer issue could suspend an entire server. To protect thousands of websites, we began setting up our own high-performance servers.

We deployed AMD EPYC and Intel Gold machines with high-core CPUs, NVMe storage, and optimized configurations. It was a massive leap from ordinary hosting plans. By late 2020, our infrastructure costs rose to ₹7–8 lakh per month.

But the results were worth it — our shared hosting servers performed faster than many competitors' VPS machines. We consistently outperformed platforms like GoDaddy, Hostinger, and MilesWeb in real-world speed tests.

We built our reputation on three pillars:

• Super-fast servers with top-tier hardware
• Responsive support, especially for customers facing urgent issues
• Transparent pricing without hidden conditions

Meanwhile, the keywords we pioneered — “Cheap Web Hosting India”, “Cheapest Web Hosting”, “Cheap Hosting” — suddenly became targets for major brands: GoDaddy, Hostinger, MilesWeb, and others. But despite the competition, we stayed on Page 1, continually ranking between positions 3–6.

We grew without agencies. All SEO, content, backlinks, on-page optimization, YouTube partnerships, performance tuning — everything was done in-house by the founders and our small but powerful team.

This was the period when OnoHosting evolved from “a hosting service” into a powerful, scalable platform trusted nationwide.

2023–2024 — When Growth Attracted War

By 2021, OnoHosting wasn’t just growing (25,000 + Active Users) — it was exploding. Our revenue tripled, we were serving thousands of customers, ranking nationwide, and competing with giants. And that is exactly when the attacks began.

These weren’t technical issues or customer complaints — they were coordinated attacks from rival companies. We saw fake reviews from people who didn’t exist in our database, planted PR articles meant to defame us, threat emails, and live-chat messages saying: “Pay us, or your server will go down in 10 minutes.”

And they did it — again and again. Massive DDoS attacks, targeted server crashes, uptime threats. Competitors tried to break our infrastructure to force us into selling.

Our strongest pillars — speed, support, and transparent pricing — started to crack. Speed fell because servers were constantly under attack. Support suffered because our best engineers worked 24/7 fighting fires. Pricing suffered because we were burning money just to stay alive.

Our co-location vendors warned us: “If these attacks continue, we may have to remove your hardware.”

Customers didn’t know the truth — they only saw downtime. Behind the scenes, we were fighting a war they could never imagine.

Every day was damage control. Every night was panic. Every hour was fear of the next attack. And slowly, painfully, we realized: We can no longer live like this.

2024 — The Breaking Point & The Hardest Decision

By early 2024, we accepted something brutally honest: if we continued this war, our servers would fall, our customers would suffer, our brand would die slowly, and our seven years of effort would fade away.

OnoHosting wasn’t just a business. It was our identity — our child — our first ₹20/month plan, our first ₹1 crore revenue, our sleepless nights, our belief. We had two choices:

• Let it die in silence
• Or pass the legacy to someone strong enough to protect it

We chose the second. In June 2024, we handed OnoHosting to HostingRaja, ensuring its thousands of users would continue receiving the support they deserved.

It was the hardest decision of our lives — but also the most responsible one. No founder wants to watch their brand collapse. Passing the legacy was how we protected everything we built.

2024 → Now — The Rebirth of Spingtree 2.0

After the sale, we stepped back and asked ourselves: “What did these seven years truly teach us?”

We learned how to scale from zero to a ₹1 crore+ brand. How to manage thousands of websites and apps. How to build teams and systems. How to fight attacks, survive pressure, and stay online. How to rank nationally through SEO and branding. How to protect customers during a crisis. How to survive as bootstrapped founders in a brutal industry.

We realized something important: the knowledge we earned the hard way is exactly what other businesses need.

That is how Spingtree 2.0 was born — not as a development agency, not as a hosting brand, but as a premium digital operations partner for companies that need:

• High-end development & engineering
• Infrastructure & technical operations
• Automation (ERP, CRM, systems)
• AI-powered SEO & growth
• Performance marketing
• PR, reputation & retention systems
• 24×7 uptime strategies
• A partner who truly understands struggle

We choose fewer clients — deeper partnerships — and higher-quality delivery. Because we know what chaos feels like, and we know how to prevent it.

We are not the same founders we were in 2017. We are survivors of a war. Builders of a brand. Operators who have lived every shade of the digital world.

Let’s build the company you dream of, with the experience we earned the hard way.

Now — Spingtree 2.0: We build quality, not volume