Sachin and Binny had realized that they would have to decide who between them should take on the role of CEO. It mattered to investors who was at a company’s helm. Too many startups had been broken up because their founders fought over who was more important. It had become clear that Sachin was the one with the vision – the big thinker. Binny’s contribution, however, was no less important. Managing operations was critical to Flipkart’s success, but it was inherently secondary to Sachin’s role. So, the Bansals agreed that Sachin would be Chief Executive Officer and Binny the Chief Operating Officer. When they met the higher-ups at Accel Partners, it was clear that Sachin was CEO and Binny the COO. This was reassuring. Abhishek tried to nudge them on the subject, but the Bansals didn’t seem to have any differences. They were very thick, very close. They would almost always meet Abhishek together. Abhishek noticed that Sachin and Binny could predict each other’s thoughts and opinions on any subject. Their chemistry was evident – they took trips together, ate out together – it almost seemed like they were brothers.
Abhishek was also struck by the Bansals’ perseverance. They regularly worked more than twelve hours a day. Even on weekends, Sachin and Binny would be in the office until 8 p.m. Sachin liked going on long drives to unwind and eating dosa chicken and other Indian dishes at local restaurants. Both Bansals, along with Abhishek, would also go to the far-off Windsor Pub for beers. But the Bansals were particular about spending only so much time outside of work. After Abhishek had convinced Sachin to go out and take it easy one Sunday afternoon, the Flipkart CEO had relented, only to come back to Abhishek later half-jokingly, ‘Yaar, chaar ghante barbaad ho gaye. Main tere saath nahin aaonga phir se!’ Man, you wasted four hours of my time. I’m not going out with you again!
As impressed as Abhishek was with the Bansals, he couldn’t convince his fund to back Flipkart. The Erasmic Venture partners weren’t even alone in their scepticism towards the company. The Bansals had approached every venture fund in India for capital. They met partners and associates at all the marquee funds, from Sequoia Capital, NEA-Indo US, Matrix Partners, IDG Ventures to Nexus Venture Partners. Not one of them showed serious interest. Some fund managers scoffed at them. Others didn’t like the name ‘Flipkart’. Why was it spelt kart, not cart? The Bansals considered renaming Flipkart to WSpot but finally decided against it. One investor even asked the Bansals if their operations had Six Sigma certification. Six Sigma is a complex mechanism of business processes made famous by General Electric, a giant manufacturing company. Operating out of an apartment office in Koramangala, Flipkart managed its supply chain using Excel sheets, printouts and the human ERP, Iyyappa. The Bansals had, of course, not even heard of Six Sigma. To add to their woes, there were venture capitalists who even offered unsoliticed career advice, ‘You guys are educated – why are you trying to do this?’9
These reactions were in keeping with the times. Venture capitalists were considered lords, and their sense of self-importance matched this stature. Entrepreneurs were expected to be in their thrall, grateful that they were given a few minutes to pitch their unconvincing ideas to the masters whose gyan, wisdom and aura were to be absorbed and admired. This equation would change over the next decade; VCs now compete to prove who is the most humble servant to star founders. In 2008, however, it was the venture lords whose egos had to be massaged by startup founders, who had to be courted and coaxed diligently into writing cheques, never mind that these lords were paid crores in management fees to do so. When it came to e-commerce, the verdict of the pantheon was unanimous: it wasn’t going to work in India, and even if it did, two software engineers would be the least likely to make it happen.
In those days, no e-commerce website worked smoothly. This was primarily because of the founders’ ineptitude in running operations. ‘E-commerce is all about warehouses, factories, moving goods – the website is the easiest part,’ says Abhishek. ‘If you’re doing millions of transactions, how would you maintain quality? ... How would two software engineers succeed in such an operations-heavy business?’
Books also allowed very low margins, which made profitability in an e-commerce set-up dubious. It didn’t matter that the Bansals eventually wanted to sell all kinds of products. The VCs remained unmoved. To them, the numbers still didn’t add up. Even if a business such as Flipkart were to grow very fast, it would still not amount to much. If somehow the startup defied the odds and achieved significant scale, it would require at least $20 to $25 million in capital. And no one was willing to risk that kind of cash.
IN 2007, APART from Flipkart, two other e-commerce startups had emerged from the detritus of Amazon India. One was Anand Rao’s Pustak, which focused solely on selling international books unavailable in the country to domestic customers. The other was Infibeam, founded by Vishal Mehta, who came from a wealthy Gujarati business family that owned a large Toyota dealership. After working in Amazon’s acquisitions team in Seattle for five years, Vishal had moved back to India in 2007. He sensed that there was an attractive opportunity to build an e-commerce firm as Amazon had cancelled its plan to launch in the country. He gathered a stellar founding
