Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story

unofficial guest house for Flipkart employees. In the US, hippies like Stewart Brand, editor of a popular counterculture magazine in the sixties, and John Perry Barlow, a member of the band Grateful Dead, had later turned into the cheerleaders of the internet, subsumed by the cause of capitalism. In the India of the new millennium, Tapas was no different. He was as relentless a ‘customer advocate’ as Sachin. But while Sachin’s mania was informed by his experience at Amazon, Tapas’ stemmed from his idealism, his belief that the internet was a force for the good and that Flipkart was driven by high-minded principles, unlike a typical corporation that only cares about sales and profits.

Tapas was friends with many of his Flipkart colleagues. But this wouldn’t stop him from screaming at them if a customer lodged a complaint. ‘Why the fuck has this customer not received his book?’ he would yell. ‘You guys are useless.’ And yet, he was well-liked around the Bangalore office. When out drinking with his colleagues, Tapas would unfailingly foot the bill. His only condition was that each person present had to contribute one hundred rupees in tips for the waiters – Tapas was the most popular patron at many Bangalore bars.

In the early years, it was Tapas who kept Flipkart true to its more idealistic impulses. Rohan Jahagirdar, a friend of Tapas who worked in Flipkart’s marketing team, recalls that there would often be a debate around who the company should value more: the customers who spent more money or the ones who ordered more often. ‘But Tapas always insisted that you can’t bucket customers like that. You have to treat all customers equally. Since he always came from the point of view of the customer, it was very tough for anyone to argue against him because Flipkart was built around customer obsession.’

Tapas would spend three hours every day, from midnight until 3 a.m., reading customer emails. The volume of these emails increased exponentially over the years; he would still read them all. By 2011, Flipkart had set up a large call centre team under Marcus Terry, an experienced customer service leader. Marcus’ team would handle hundreds of customer calls, social media messages and emails daily. Sachin had allowed his team leeway to resolve customer issues directly. But the really truculent customers would be leftto Tapas. To placate the particularly difficult customers and win their trust, and sometimes just to delight them, Tapas would simply send them free books. During Flipkart’s first few years, Tapas gifted his customers thousands of books. He would make conversation with his customers, speaking with them in a friendly manner and winning them over with his charm. Many people who would call to rage about their orders would end up as fans of Flipkart.

Before Flipkart had a large marketing team, Tapas oversaw all its social media promotions and wrote the company’s blogs. These blog posts sported a witty, irreverent style similar to that of Hugh MacLeod, an American cartoonist whom Tapas idolized. MacLeod is known for his cartoons about business and marketing and is the author of Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity,² among other books. One of Tapas’ blogs intended to encourage people to apply to Flipkart read: ‘Come, join us. As a perk, we give free samosas.’ Another blog recounted how Flipkart employees, including the CEO, would come in on Sundays to sweep the floors themselves. His blogs and social media posts gave the impression that Flipkart nurtured a bohemian culture. In reality, however, Flipkart was a fast-growing startup engaged in the age-old business of selling products to people. It was true that Flipkart’s corporate culture was refreshingly democratic, merit-based and far less uptight compared with the ‘lala’³ culture with which Indian businesses are typically associated. Most of Flipkart’s employees enjoyed working there, relishing the independence and power they were given at a young age. But it was ultimately a Darwinian workplace run by capitalists, whose lead investor was a financier in New York, the mecca of capitalism. The company’s purpose was to expand its business as fast as it could and get higher valuations. So, bohemian it wasn’t. Yet, working at an internet startup, a continuum of the real world and the virtual, especially one at the frontiers of a new industry, allows for such romantic ideas.

Tapas’ idealism was an encapsulation of how Flipkart saw itself in its preliminary years – it helped the company believe that it was an underdog pursuing a noble mission, that it was unique in its endeavours and ambitions.

Sachin and Tapas would compete to come up with the most popular Flipkart post on Facebook. Tapas won one of these rounds by posting a plain white image, which was so odd that many customers found it arresting. In the next round, Sachin countered it by posting a plain black image. They were also responsible for commissioning and approving Flipkart’s first television advertising campaign which was set in an old English village. Unsurprisingly, the campaign bombed. When Flipkart finally hired a specialist marketing head in early 2011, their colleagues were understandably relieved.

Tapas was Sachin’s most trusted associate; he was also quite selfless. A few months after Flipkart restructured itself and created WS Retail, it was Tapas who was projected as one of the owners and directors of this new company.⁴ It was a very risky undertaking – if Flipkart was ever investigated by regulators, Tapas would be in the firing line.

Tapas was also one of the few Flipkart executives who could stand up to Sachin, oppose him, even ridicule him on occasion. When Flipkart began, Sachin and Binny were not in favour of luring customers with heavy discounts. In the first few years, the company, in fact, sold books at higher prices than some rivals. The Bansals believed that if they delivered consistently excellent service, customers wouldn’t mind paying a small price for it. But after raising venture capital, the company’s solitary objective was to grow fast. Discounting increased 2010 onwards. Tapas would