‘Good. And you?’ said Kalyan.
‘Very good.’
‘Very good? Look at what you guys have done to the company. You find it good? I find it irresponsible!’5
Leaving the employee speechless, Kalyan strode into work.
At the office, he immediately called for a meeting of key Flipkart executives. He asked them pointed questions about their roles and the performance of their functions. ‘I’m happy to have come back and am looking forward to working with everyone – there’s obviously a lot of work to be done,’ Kalyan told them.6 When a colleague asked about his role, the title being vague, Kalyan made sure there was no room for doubt about his authority. ‘I’ll run the show now,’ he said. ‘I will decide how things are to be done here.’7
In his very first week back at Flipkart, Kalyan showed just how serious he was about that statement. Based on the intelligence that his acolytes had supplied to him beforehand, Kalyan had singled out executives in the sales function who would have to go. As soon as his return was finalized, he demanded their removal. It had the legitimacy of an edict. These executives weren’t even allowed a chance to defend themselves. What made it all the more shocking was that two of them had been Kalyan’s protégés during his first tenure; they were people he had eagerly promoted. Now, Kalyan betrayed no qualms about discarding them. Nitin Seth, who had pledged to work closely with Kalyan, facilitated these exits. Kalyan had convinced Nitin that he needed freedom to operate and couldn’t be hindered by bureaucracy. He would need to form his own team; senior leaders would have to be sidelined. Kalyan made it clear who he would work with and for whom he had no time. Given the trouble that Flipkart had found itself in, there was no time to play nice, Kalyan told Nitin. And just as Kalyan wanted, changes were instantly executed. The people Kalyan had chosen were immediately given new roles to support him; those who didn’t have his blessings were made irrelevant, regardless of their title.
The message to the rest of the organization was clear: Flipkart was now going to be merciless. If you didn’t deliver, you would be cast away without a second thought. There was too much money involved, too many important careers that hinged on Flipkart’s turnaround. No one could be allowed to come in Kalyan’s way, collateral damage be damned. A group of Binny’s closest associates found this out at close quarters within a few days of Kalyan’s entry. In a meeting, these executives were debating whether Flipkart should hold the Big Billion Days sale that year. While it would boost Flipkart’s sales, the company would also end up losing large amounts of cash. Did it really bring any lasting benefits to Flipkart, they asked one another. Kalyan was infuriated by the discussion – that such a debate was being held in this most critical of periods told him that these people were amateurs. ‘You guys can discuss whatever you feel like but I’ve already started placing orders for BBD,’ Kalyan said to them, before storming out.
Kalyan’s acerbic manner and his decision to summarily remove important sales executives had the desired effect. It shocked the sales division – which had become moribund – into action, as they kick-started a frantic turnaround effort. Kalyan’s most urgent priority was to prepare Flipkart for the festival season sales face-off with Amazon that had now turned into a knockout contest for his company. Kalyan had no doubt that the Big Billion Days sale was the most important event of the year in the Indian retail business. A good performance would set the tone for the coming year. Brands, suppliers, employees would all be reassured; surely, investors would follow. A poor showing would be unacceptable in any year; this time, it could spell the end for Flipkart as an independent company.
To avoid such an outcome, Kalyan went back to the formula that had worked in his first stint: procure smartphones on an exclusive basis, cut prices in other categories and carry out speedy order deliveries. Over the past few months, Flipkart had struggled to rekindle sales partly because it no longer had exclusivity with the key smartphone brands. The loss of Motorola and Xiaomi had been particularly damaging. For Kalyan, repairing relationships with these brands was paramount. Motorola and Xiaomi phones, by themselves, could contribute more than fifteen per cent of Flipkart’s sales in some months. If Flipkart could win back exclusivity with these brands, sales growth would be assured.
Kalyan’s chosen team went to work. It was a group filled with relatively junior managers, many of whom had worked with Kalyan in his previous stint. They were all overachievers, aggressive, earnest and completely willing to work themselves to exhaustion in order to carry out Kalyan’s will. Among the familiar faces who returned from other functions into sales roles were three of Kalyan’s favourites – Amitesh Jha, Sandeep Karwa and Smrithi Ravichandran. He put another person, Ayyappan R., in charge of the day-to-day running of the smartphone business. One man stood out in this crowd: Ajay Veer Yadav. Ajay had joined Flipkart as head of smartphones in May after a spell as COO of The Mobile Store, a chain of smartphone stores. In his mid-forties, Ajay was a decade older than most of his colleagues. He had cut his teeth at United Spirits, Vijay Mallya’s liquor company. Working for the liquor baron and his associates in the heyday of United Spirits, Ajay had picked up colonial mannerisms. Tall, broad-shouldered, he would turn up at work in a suit and tie, shoes spotlessly polished. He spoke correct English and addressed people formally. His appearance and manner amused his colleagues who, like other startup professionals, dressed in casual attire as a principle and spoke in colloquial Hindi or a pidgin of Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and English.
Along with Ajay and Ayyappan, Kalyan
