Concurrent to the entry of the new leaders at Flipkart was the departure of the old team. By the middle of 2015, within the space of three months, they exited, one after another. Sujeet Kumar, who had built the company’s sales and logistics functions; Amod Malviya, the chief technology officer; Sameer Nigam, the engineering head; Saran Chatterjee, the product chief; Vaibhav Gupta, the business finance leader – all of them left, bitter, angry, unwanted. The significant wealth they had earned notwithstanding, what rankled was that their association with the company had been cut short against their wishes. They may not have been fired, but it was made clear to them that they weren’t especially welcome – Vaibhav Gupta went on sabbatical, but on his return, he struggled to find a place for himself at Flipkart. There were only two survivors: Ankit Nagori, who had been promoted to Chief Business Officer, and Mekin Maheshwari, the HR head. Despite seeing many of his old teammates and mentors fall out with the Bansals, Ankit was keen to continue. Flipkart was thriving; its future had never seemed brighter. He had recently been rewarded with a lucrative pay hike, attractive stock options and a promotion. And he had formed a friendly working relationship with Mukesh Bansal. For his part, Mekin had always been close to Sachin. He saw no reason to leave at this opportune time. As HR chief, Mekin had even helped the Bansals find replacements for their old colleagues.
Such an exodus of long-time senior leaders would have been alarming for any company. Jettisoning an entire leadership team that had delivered excellent performance for years in favour of a new group of untested leaders who had little knowledge of e-commerce would have drawn scrutiny, prompted anxious questions from board members and investors, and received criticism from the press. It wasn’t that all of them were leaving, it was that they were leaving all at once. But such was the aura around Flipkart and the Bansals that they encountered minimal resistance.
In this regard, as with all the other changes at Flipkart, the decisive factor was the close relationship between Lee Fixel, the company’s all-powerful investor, and the Flipkart co-founders, Sachin, in particular. Lee was a hyper-rationalist investor who judged a business or an entrepreneur in a cold, dispassionate manner. Considered ruthless by those who fell out of favour with Lee, he had little personal affinity for entrepreneurs. Those who delivered were rewarded with more capital and higher valuations, while those who failed to meet targets were cut out. There was no place for emotion in his decisions. But with Sachin, it had always been a bit different. Before every board meeting in Singapore or Dubai, which took place once every four months, Sachin would meet Lee over dinner or breakfast. They spoke regularly over the phone. Dinner with the Bansals was a fixture of his India trips. Lee, who called him ‘Saa-chin’,8 had known the Flipkart CEO for nearly six years by now. When Lee had first decided to invest in Flipkart in late 2009, he was an unknown figure in the startup world. Since then, from being an anonymous fund manager, he had risen to become one of the smartest young startup investors anywhere in the world. By the end of 2014, the not-yet-thirty-five reclusive fund manager, who had not granted the media a single interview, had devised a unique investment strategy that spanned continents. Few in the business could match his global network of investor connections, his deep knowledge of the internet market ranging from eastern Europe to the subcontinent, his ability to spot the brightest entrepreneurs across these very diverse markets.
But Lee’s crown jewel was Flipkart. They had risen together, Lee as an investor, Sachin and Binny as entrepreneurs. Their relationship was symbiotic, they fed off each other’s successes. Lee’s soaring reputation as an investor had much to do with his bet on Flipkart, on the entrepreneurial abilities of Sachin and Binny. However, Lee had harboured doubts about Sachin’s radical plan to remake Flipkart. He had challenged Sachin, and the two had fought each other in vigorous debates. Still, Lee’s belief in Sachin’s entrepreneurial genius did not waver.
Just how strong Lee’s faith was in Sachin would become evident soon. In the summer of 2015, Sachin approached Lee with a startling request: remove Kalyan Krishnamurthy from Flipkart’s board of directors. Sachin cited a technicality to seek the replacement of Kalyan – who had become a Singaporean citizen – with an Indian national. It was apparent to all that this was just a ruse. Everyone knew there was bad blood between Sachin and Kalyan. The Flipkart CEO had criticized Kalyan for ‘damaging’ Flipkart’s brand with his mishandling of the Big Billion Day sale. In turn, Kalyan had denounced Sachin’s makeover of Flipkart and his recruitment of a new management team. A few weeks after Kalyan leftthe Flipkart board, Sachin accused him of hiring Flipkart employees at other companies in Tiger Global’s portfolio. A Flipkart sales executive had agreed to join a smaller rival, another Tiger-funded company on whose board Kalyan served as a director. Kalyan had facilitated his exit by vouching for him to the new company. Sachin believed that Kalyan had, in fact, persuaded this employee to leave Flipkart. A furious Sachin complained to Lee that Kalyan held a grudge against him. Kalyan denied this categorically.
This episode was a blip in an otherwise heady season for the Bansals, for Lee, and for Flipkart. In April 2015, Flipkart had finalized another funding round of more than $500 million. The company’s valuation now soared to $15 billion. Its business was surging forward. Over the past eighteen months, monthly sales had quadrupled. With the grand new valuation, Sachin and Binny, not yet thirty-five, crossed a new threshold: they, too, had become billionaires. Each
