The two sides of Flipkart coexisted awkwardly. While Sachin recognized from the early days the importance of a powerful operations machinery, he was insistent that the technology function would be ascendant at Flipkart. Sachin was like a father favouring the child who had taken up his profession. A sales executive says that Flipkart functioned like two different companies. According to him, ‘the product–tech people used to have their offsite in Goa. We would have to make do with some random resort near Bangalore. We had to work six days a week. They had weekends off. They had Nintendo, company food, Red Bull. We had roadside chhole kulche every day in Delhi. The product–tech guys also had loose accountability. Even if there was a delay in shipments and it was proven that it was because of a tech glitch, we had to manage the customers’ wrath.’
The two sides clashed often. To please brands, sales executives would frequently ask engineers to make changes on the website. But engineers were given free rein to resist these requests if they believed that the website’s look and feel would suffer. It was a privilege they exercised frequently. Still, the bonhomie amongst the senior leaders meant that both teams ultimately worked towards the benefit of the company and rivalries were kept in check.
Sachin and Binny had divided responsibilities so that Sachin loosely oversaw the ‘demand’ side (technology, marketing, customer support), and Binny the ‘supply’ side. But the man who exercised tremendous control over the operations function – the most important aspect of the supply side – as well as much of the sales function, was Sujeet Kumar. When he had joined, Flipkart was little more than a books-selling website struggling to make headway with distributors and courier partners. In less than three years, the equation had reversed: book distributors and courier partners were now at Flipkart’s mercy. The company had developed the confidence to start its own logistics fleet. Much of the credit for this belonged to Sujeet and his team. Sujeet was also a popular figure at the company. He had hired hundreds of people, mentored many young sales and operations employees, promoted them to leadership positions. His closest associate, Ankit Nagori, recalls that Sujeet was a ‘big factor’ in building camaraderie at Flipkart. ‘Sachin and Binny are a bit introverted, but Sujeet is the biggest extrovert. He would organize team dinners, lunches and outings. He was always on his toes to ensure everyone was united.’
But Sujeet came across as abrasive to some employees. His personality hadn’t changed from his college days and people who didn’t know him well found his manner coarse, improper for a corporate environment. He had no qualms about calling out what he thought was substandard performance. As the seniormost Flipkart executive after the Bansals, he had the authority to do so, and he asserted it freely. When Sachin or Binny wanted to remove someone but were feeling awkward about having the difficult conversation, they would sometimes leave it to Sujeet, a task he would take up without reluctance. He deployed very aggressive tactics to undercut Flipkart’s rivals – while this helped the firm, it discomfited the Bansals at times. Sujeet ran the supply chain function in a freewheeling manner. In the rare case, he hired employees to dole out a personal favour rather than purely based on their competence. He would also sometimes remove employees without due process. On the whole, however, the Flipkart co-founders had great trust in him, and both sales and supply chain functions thrived ceaselessly. This was primarily why, in spite of themselves, the Bansals didn’t rein him in. Instead, they generously awarded him large quantities of Flipkart stock in recognition of his contribution.
In 2011, Flipkart formalized its hierarchy. Sujeet and Mekin, who were already part of the Core Team along with Sachin and Binny, were both given the title of President. There were other promotions, too. Ankit Nagori, Anuj Chowdhary, Amod Malviya, Maneesh Mittal and Vaibhav Pandey were all made Vice Presidents. The move further strengthened Sujeet’s hold over the sales and operations functions. Ankit, Anuj and Maneesh were close to Sujeet and reported to him. Through them, Sujeet had complete control over operations and significant influence on the sales and business development teams.
Ankit’s rise at Flipkart had been spectacular. After joining the company in April 2010 at age twenty-four at the lowest level in Flipkart’s hierarchy, he had become one of the highest-ranking employees at the company. His role was now expanded to include digital products such as e-books and music.
The first person Sujeet had hired after coming to Flipkart was Maneesh. For the first few months, the Bansals used to refer to Maneesh – who was about the same age as them – as ‘sir’, a persistent habit from their IIT days. Maneesh had a knack for identifying small fixes in the supply chain that led to huge improvements. He was the brains behind the warehousing systems and processes. The process of collecting thousands of books in a day, sorting, packaging, labelling them, ensuring that no label and book were mismatched, had been designed by Maneesh. He had ensured that the process worked efficiently and at scale. Maneesh had set up a smart, diverse team that included MBA graduates, software engineers and operations experts.
Another key associate of Sujeet was Anuj Chowdhary, who had returned to Flipkart to head logistics. In 2011, the logistics service, which would later be named Ekart, was expanded to many cities. The company hired and trained hundreds of delivery workers, whose navy blue T-shirts with the Flipkart logo would become a familiar sight on the streets. By the end of
