Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story by Mihir Dalal

Author:Mihir Dalal [Dalal, Mihir]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2019-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

17

THE COMEBACK

By the time of the billion-dollar fund raise, Sachin Bansal was fighting his own battles within Flipkart.

In the eighteen months that Sachin had been on the margins of the company, it had turned into a retailing juggernaut. After taking the reins in late 2012, Binny had strengthened Flipkart’s spine. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, on secondment from Tiger Global, had vastly improved the finance function and empowered the sales team. Under Amod Malviya, Flipkart’s technological edge over rivals had widened. The logistics fleet, technically owned by WS Retail, was expanding at a dizzying pace under Sujeet Kumar, who had returned from exile to lead the company’s relaunch of its large electronics category and then its supply chain. Vaibhav Gupta, a former McKinsey consultant, had emerged from anonymity to lead the business finance function which, along with the sales division, had become the driving force of the company. Ankit Nagori had been promoted to lead the company’s marketplace business. Flipkart had started this initiative of adding third-party sellers on its platform in 2013, to address regulatory concerns about its structure as well as expand its assortment of goods. These executives, along with other senior leaders at Flipkart, made a formidable team. But it was a team that had little room for Sachin. In fact, many of these executives had an uneasy equation with the Bansals, and especially with Sachin. Every once in a while Sachin would call his colleagues, mostly to complain about something. The recipient of the call, not pleased at having to hear what had upset or excited their boss, would roll their eyes before answering and say to their nearby coworkers: ‘Aa gaya phone – here comes the call.’

Until the end of 2012, when Sachin was at the peak of his powers, he had undoubtedly been the pivotal figure at Flipkart. His ability to conjure a grand vision for the company, his knack for coming up with the big ideas that unlocked the promise of e-commerce, combined with his audacity in pursuing these ideas, made him a peerless entrepreneur. He had run Flipkart through instinct as well as careful thought.

But it wasn’t just Flipkart’s anatomy that had changed considerably in the time he had been away from the action; even the e-commerce market had grown by magnitudes. Flipkart, which was at the frontier of this change, had expanded considerably along with it. There were new dynamics; power equations between senior executives had altered. Teams coordinated with each other in new ways. This process had been organic, as it often is at a fast-growing startup. Employees would joke that one year at the company seemed like the equivalent of five at any other. All the senior leaders had strong personalities and had built fiefdoms of their own. They wielded enormous power, primarily because their performance was beyond reproach. Since the end of 2013, Sachin had been trying to recover his former authority, but it hadn’t been easy. Indeed, for months, he had been consumed by a strange, almost schizophrenic feeling –

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