Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story

a mess. It had suddenly been thrown into turmoil in February 2006 – soon after Sachin had started at Amazon – when the A9 CEO, Udi Manber, left Amazon to join Google.8
Just days later in India, Bharat Vijay, who had been hired by Manber, also quit Amazon. Over the next month, some of the most consequential leaders at Amazon India followed suit. Vikas Gupta, the head of FPS, returned to the US to launch a startup called Jambool, which built payments software for online games. (Jambool would be acquired by Google in 2010 for $70 million.)9 Vikas was frustrated with the pace of work at the office and didn’t get along with his boss Amit Agarwal either. He was independent-minded and no longer cared for a long career at Amazon or any other corporation. He became the first engineer to leave Amazon India to be an entrepreneur. At the same time, Krishna Motukuri, another important Amazon executive, also leftto start a comparison-shopping website called uGenie. This company, too, would be acquired by Lulu.com a few years later.10
The departures of these leaders marked the beginning of the end for Amazon’s experiments building innovative products at the India base. Technical skills aside, Bharat, Vikas and Krishna were also popular, charismatic leaders. Amazon had turned out to be a rewarding workplace for many employees, but the peculiarity of its work culture was grating and could lead to burnout. Bharat and Vikas’ easygoing personalities as well as Amazon’s initial extravagance had made working here seem gainful to its employees. As these two well-liked leaders made their exits, the environment of bonhomie at the office began to disintegrate.
By this time, Amazon had also decided against launching its operations in India. Its China venture was faltering, so the company chose to sort out those issues rather than rush into another difficult market. Amazon had evaluated the benefits of buying Indian online retailers such as Indiaplaza. But it passed up the opportunity to buy these firms, realizing they were too small and shoddily run. Amazon had also initially considered starting its own operations; they would’ve just had to find ways to circumvent the prohibitive foreign investment laws. But the risk of being trapped in a regulatory minefield overshadowed this temptation. Amazon’s decision to abandon its India plan was a pivotal factor in the launch of startups like Flipkart and Infibeam. It is doubtful if the Bansals and the Infibeam founders would have launched e-commerce ventures with Amazon as a rival.
By the start of 2007, when Binny joined Amazon, the India base had morphed into a typical back office engaged in specialized routine work. Amazon had come to India with the goal of creating world-beating products. Less than three years later, the dream had died. No one was calling A9 the Google Killer any more. Employees were disenchanted; Amazon had lost its hold over them. When a member of the A9 team was on his way out, he was instructed, by the same company that had lured employees with its office bar and commuter benefits, to return his laptop bag. In a bold act of white-collar solidarity, nearly every employee on the floor threw down their own bags.
Earlier, the Amazon India office operated almost like two different startups, each team working towards building its respective product – A9 and FPS. But after Amazon moved to the Ali Asker Road office in 2006, it introduced many new processes that employees found constraining. Amazon teams in Seattle had also started hiring engineers in Bangalore to handle routine tasks for the headquarters after realizing that they could adhere to high professional standards, and would cost much less than their American counterparts. For many employees in India, it was their first experience of ‘seeing a startup become a corporation’.
As Amazon’s appeal waned, entrepreneurship became a more enticing prospect, and the entrepreneurial urge that had seized some senior executives at the company in early 2006 gradually turned into a broader movement over the next two years, drawing dozens of engineers from Amazon and other companies, and even some colleges.
Inspired by the likes of Vikas Gupta and Krishna Motukuri, a few mid-level Amazon employees leftthe company in 2006 to launch their own ventures or enter the startup scene in some capacity – as investors or senior employees. Among the first of such deserters was Gaurav Singh Kushwaha. After graduating from IIT Delhi, Gaurav had worked independently as a freelance software engineer for a German company. Ever since, he had felt inclined to start his own company.
At Amazon, Gaurav had seen how the power of the internet could change lifestyle choices. This got him thinking about what kind of internet services could work specifically in India. It was an optimistic period for the country. The economy was booming. Indian companies were buying foreign ones, including companies based in the land of their former colonial masters. Mobile phones were selling faster than manufacturers could make them. Telecom connections were hitting record numbers every month. Everyone assumed that the masses would be introduced to the internet soon. Bursting with confidence, Gaurav felt his time had come.
This was the spirit with which many people like Gaurav lefttheir jobs to pursue entrepreneurship. India’s flourishing economy and their stint at Amazon led these would-be entrepreneurs to ask themselves why they were working for someone else. Why couldn’t an internet company be built in India, for Indians, by Indians?
The Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were driven partly by the belief, however misplaced, that they were changing the world for the better. In Bangalore, in those days, it was the urge to prove that an Indian engineer had the wits and the audacity to be an innovator, to create something indigenous, reject the middle-class championing of professional ‘service’, combined with a lust for excitement, wealth and fame that propelled many to take up entrepreneurship. Over the next few years, many of these startup founders would fail to realize their dreams. Even for the Bansals, who became entrepreneurial icons admired for their energy, skill and