Even at the IITs, observes Professor Balakrishnan, career choices of students were often shaped by caste and class. The large demographic of students from business communities at IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur commonly show a strong inclination towards entrepreneurship. He contrasts the success of many of these ventures with his former startup, Kritikal Solutions. The first-ever on-campus technology startup at IIT Delhi, Kritikal Solutions was set up in 2002 by Balakrishnan and four other professors, along with seven students. It was launched with the intention of producing cutting-edge technical work for corporate clients in the field of digital imaging. But the firm went nowhere. ‘We were all from salaried, middle-class backgrounds. Not one of us had any business sense – complete absence of risk-taking ability.’ Besides, he adds, five professors can hardly agree on anything.
For the Bansals, and particularly for Sachin who came from a business family, the support of their folks was crucial in the first few months. While Varun’s parents forbade him from taking up entrepreneurship, Sachin’s father encouraged him and even offered significant practical help, the lack of which could have killed his ambition.
Setting up a functional e-commerce startup meant working with other businesses, including a payment gateway firm that would allow Flipkart to receive customer payments online. In 2007, it wasn’t easy for two anonymous entrepreneurs in their mid-twenties to get access to a payment gateway. For weeks Sachin and Binny ran around meeting banks and payment firms. But the payment processing fees were either too high or the Bansals were sent packing as soon as the banks realized they were novices. In despair, Sachin finally turned to his family. With little effort, Sachin’s father was able to procure the elusive services of a payment gateway on account of his long-standing trading business. This important milestone achieved, on Sachin’s father’s advice, the Bansals went on to register the startup as a proprietorship, rather than a limited liability company, as was the norm for new businesses. This reduced their administrative burden, freeing them to direct their energies towards running Flipkart. These were some of the small but important tweaks that a Bania family background supplied.
Sachin’s newfound identity as a proprietor even helped him get married in 2008. In a rare nod to his family background, Sachin admitted in 2010, ‘In our community, a person with a salaried job is less valued than someone who runs their own business. As it happened, I was married within a few months of starting out on my own.’3
IN THE FIRST few days after the Bansals launched Flipkart, their family members and friends placed orders on the website. At the end of the third week of October 2007, the Bansals noticed an order from an unknown person named V. V. K. Chandra. The order had been placed from Mahabubnagar, a small town in Andhra Pradesh (now in Telangana). Chandra had purchased a book titled Leaving Microsoftto Change the World by John Wood.
Still working out of their NGV apartments, Sachin and Binny had planned to source books from nearby bookstores after a sale had been booked. Thrilled to have received their first legitimate order on Flipkart, they went hunting for John Wood. But their excitement soon turned into embarrassment as they couldn’t locate the book in any store. Binny personally wrote an email to Chandra informing him that the book was in scarce supply, but the search was still on. A copy of the book was finally found at the Sapna bookstore on the edge of Bangalore’s upscale Indiranagar suburb, a few miles west of Koramangala. But the copy Binny had traced was old and he now felt unsure if Chandra, already seemingly disappointed by the delay, would accept it. So, he emailed Chandra again asking if he would accept an old copy or prefer to wait for a week so that Flipkart could look for a fresher one. Additionally, Binny also offered Chandra a ten per cent discount to compensate for his troubles. Chandra, a software engineer who ran a consultancy business, was so eager to read the book that he asked Binny to send the old copy. On 31 October, the Bansals shipped the book. Two days later, it reached Chandra. He was rather impressed. He held in his hands a book he had desperately wanted but not found in any bookstore in all of Hyderabad. An unknown website not only procured it for him but displayed unheard-of solicitousness in the process. The delayed delivery of an old copy of a book wasn’t the ideal start the Bansals had imagined for their company, but Flipkart’s customer service had already entranced the company’s first real customer.
Chandra lefta comment on Flipkart’s website, which was proudly displayed for several months:
‘The best Indian online book store I have ever seen. Fast and free shipping, discounts and a large number of titles. I could not have expected more. You guys really rock. Good luck.’4
Over the next few months, Sachin and Binny applied this rigour and sincerity to win over many more customers. Their business model was crude. After receiving an order, either Sachin or Binny (Binny more often than Sachin) would make a bookstore run – Sapna, Gangaram’s and Blossoms were the most frequented – wrap the book in attractive paper and ship it to customers through a courier service. They also tried sourcing books directly from book distributors but were turned away by many. After much persuasion, a couple of distributors finally agreed to give the Bansals access to their inventory. Now a few times every week, by turns, Sachin or Binny would pay a visit on Binny’s motorbike to
