Bangalore: On some days when they were starting out, the Bansals would get on a motorbike to make the rounds of book warehouses around Bangalore, ride back to their two-bedroom apartment and package up orders for online customers.
It was a humble beginning for Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, two ex-Amazon.com software developers who set out in 2007 to beat their old employer at its own game long before the world’s top online retailer had even drawn up plans to enter the Indian market. “We were doing everything ourselves for the first four to five months - from packing to shipping. Because our volumes were very low, our courier partners would sometimes refuse to pick up items from our apartment,” Sachin Bansal recalls of the six months before they moved into their first office.
“So we used to get on a motorbike, hold the shipment in our hands and personally deliver them to our Bangalore clients.”
In those rocky first days, Sachin told Reuters, the Bansals’ suppliers -- seeing two youngsters who had quit stable employment with a reputable firm to go it alone -- would sit them down and counsel them to get a proper job.
The young Bansals have since been feted at home as poster boys for entrepreneurial India, establishing their company, Flipkart, as a leader in the fledgling Indian e-commerce market.
Flipkart is now India’s biggest online bookseller, with over 10 million titles distributed from warehouses in five cities. It has branched from books into mobile phones, appliances, gaming consoles, music and movies, and now sells 10 products a minute.
It generated $11 million in sales last financial year, expects revenues to cross $100 million this year and is aiming at $1 billion by 2015.
That sharp growth trajectory has attracted $31 million in funding from US venture capital firms Tiger Global Management as well as Accel Partners, which has a stake in Facebook.
Sachin Bansal declined to comment on a media report this week that Flipkart is lining up a $150 million fourth round of funding, but said earlier there are no current plans for an initial public offering (IPO).
Flipkart’s business model and even its website resemble those of Amazon. But as a company it is dwarfed by the US-based giant, whose revenues stood at $34.2 billion last year.
It is possible to order Amazon products from India, but the cost of postage is high and delivery is slow. Amazon still has no formal presence in India yet, though a source familiar with the matter said it is mulling plans to set up in the country next year.
“Amazon’s idea is not new ... It’s all about the execution,” said Sachin Bansal, 30, now chief executive officer of the company he co-founded.
Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Flipkart’s 28-year-old chief operating officer, are not related. But they both grew up in Chandigarh, they are both alumni of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi and they briefly worked together for Amazon in Bangalore, the IT hub where numerous global companies have back-office operations.
NAME-DEEPAK KUMAR JHA
PGDM (3rd sem)
pg/10/06
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