‘So why can’t we build a world-class app and keep the desktop site?’
‘Because the desktop site will only be a crutch that won’t let us focus on the mobile app.’
These conversations would continue over the next few months. But it was an intoxicating time, with Flipkart’s growth consistently high, its valuation rising all the time, so that all reluctance eventually fell away. Lee signed off on Flipkart 3.0.
In December 2014, Flipkart raised another round of funding. Less than six months after the billion-dollar round, it received another $700 million in fresh capital. Along with Flipkart’s present investors, five new firms, including Qatar’s national fund, contributed to the round. Flipkart was in such great demand that the company was able to handpick investors from a queue. Its valuation quadrupled to $11 billion in a little over a year.7 This capital infusion was as strong an endorsement of Flipkart’s new vision as there could be. To the Flipkart investors, it didn’t matter that the company was unprofitable. The fact that its sales were expanding prodigiously eclipsed any concerns. It was a global trend – investors were backing fast-growing startups in the belief that once these firms acquired a large market share, they would figure out how to make profits eventually.
THE NEW FLIPKART 3.0 council of more than a dozen members would now convene at the large conference room in the Myntra office, about half an hour from the Flipkart headquarters in Koramangala. They also continued to meet at Sachin’s house. The discussions there would last until late into the night. At one such meeting, towards the end of 2014, Sachin gave his colleagues a surprise.
They had been discussing how fast the company could implement the new plan. What Sachin had envisioned was a wholesale makeover of Flipkart, a company that employed more than 30,000 people and had thousands of vendors and suppliers. It was a complex, chaos-inducing undertaking that was inherently dangerous. Some Flipkart officials suggested that the company spread out the implementation over three years. They were already unsure about Sachin’s decision to break up the company. To them, it made little sense to separate the marketplace business from Ekart, which was the most important component in delivering reliable service to customers. They suggested that Flipkart should at least not make these changes in haste. Staggering the plan over three years would give the company sufficient time to practise and learn without disrupting its present business. But Sachin shot down his critics. ‘No, we’ll have to do this by the end of 2015, within one year,’ he said. His colleagues were in shock. At the start of these discussions, they had been told that the plan would be implemented over the next three to five years. Now, suddenly, Sachin wanted to taste immediate success.
Managing people had never been one of Sachin’s strengths. He had always been a demanding, volatile boss. Over the years, his colleagues had found ways to deal with him. But by now, Sachin had become an altogether different man. His abrasive tendencies, his zeal, ran unchecked. His respect for others had diminished. He tended to be dismissive of those who dared to differ. When a colleague complained that he was being too critical of others, Sachin said in response, ‘People are ultimately resources. Don’t get too invested in them.’ All of Sachin’s ideas now were radical; his conviction in his vision was so strong, his belief in his ingenuity so unshakeable, that he felt no need for conflicting opinions or the benefits of trial and error. Citing Xiaomi’s example, he demanded that the company immediately stop spending on marketing – the app would be so attractive that it would naturally pull users. Citing Apple’s example, he called for the shutdown of the desktop website. When some colleagues opposed him, pointing out that a large number of users still shopped on the website rather than on the app, Sachin told them, ‘When Apple gets rid of old products, their customers also complain. But the replacements they come out with are so much better that users migrate to the new product. Our app, too, will be much, much better than the website.’
At an early 2015 meeting of the Flipkart 3.0 council in the Myntra office, things came to a head. Many of the dozen members gathered there were again arguing for a more gradual shift to the marketplace. Amod Malviya was one of the dissenters. He reminded Sachin that Flipkart didn’t have a good history of implementing big changes. ‘We should start small, keep learning and move incrementally,’ he advised. If they suddenly became a marketplace, they would have to take a revenue hit. It would compromise customer experience.
‘It’s OK,’ Sachin said. ‘We’ll take the hit.’
Bemused, Amod laughed out loud.
‘Why the fuck are you laughing?’ Sachin shot back.
‘Matlab kya hai – what do you mean?’
‘You can’t smile at my meetings!’
‘You can’t speak to me that way!’
The exchange was short but it grew so heated so quickly that, within seconds, both Sachin and Amod had jumped to their feet, furious. Alarmed, their colleagues had to intervene.
Over the next few weeks, the members of the Flipkart 3.0 council kept dwindling. Anyone who opposed the new plan would not be invited to the next meeting, their approach dismissed as small, limited, limiting.
At the end of January 2015, Sachin was ready to carry out his grand new vision. He wanted to announce it to a larger group of employees in order to bring them around – not simply to persuade them to make the requisite changes, but to encourage them to think of their jobs in a new way. What Sachin ultimately wanted was a sweeping change in the company’s culture: the employees of an internet company couldn’t think in the same way as the members of a retail company would.
Flipkart invited about a thousand of its highest-ranking employees to an auditorium at the Jyoti Niwas College in Koramangala. It was a fitting choice for
