Big Billion Startup - The Untold Flipkart Story by Mihir DalalMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Flipkart is a name we associate with Indian entrepreneurship and ingenuity. I still remember buying books from Flipkart in the early days when it was launched (in fact I was quite disappointed as in the later years books fell off from Flipkart’s priority). This book has very good background and details on the building of Flipkart.
Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal, both from IIT Delhi firm up their plans to start an e-commerce venture when they were at Amazon India. Amazon India at that time was a technology back office for special initiatives. The description of the initial days of Flipkart where Sachin & Binny start by selling books online makes for fascinating reading. They would source the books from bookstores initially after an order was received. Customer satisfaction was a strong philosophy which the founders promoted, and Flipkart made a reputation for itself based on that with very little marketing effort.
The next phase of expansion needed funding and Flipkart was fortunate to get funding from Accel India initially and later Tiger Global. Lee Fixel from Tiger Global continued to very closely involved for long since the early times, additionally providing professional support as required. Sales leapfrogged on the back of good customer service, product expansion and new ideas. Flipkart also found ways to get around the government regulations around marketplaces by creating a new entity for logistics. Initiatives like Big Billion days, exclusive product launches (starting with Motorola with Moto G becoming a best seller) lead the way to high growth. There were also the misses such as attempting to go solely mobile app and shut down the website (a silly step I thought myself at that time), music download and entering too many categories too quickly. I get the impression Flipkart’s founders would have benefitted with mature senior counsel in many instances.
The power struggles between Sachin and Kalyan Krishnamurthy (a Lee nominee) becomes a distraction as well. The complications in the working relationships leads to most of the early employees of Flipkart exiting. The success story culminates in abrupt exits for the founders (both billionaires) for different reasons after Walmart takes over a majority stake.
The author, Mihir mentions that he was not able to speak to senior Flipkart executives for the book. While that is a drawback of sorts, the amount of background he provides in the book is surprisingly very extensive.
A very good read to understand the making of Flipkart.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing me a free copy of the book in order to provide a review.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment