Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story

‘ragged’ by the seniors from their respective hostels. These ragging sessions were called ‘interactions’ or ‘interviews’, which often lasted a few weeks. The severity of the ragging depended on the personalities of the victim and the interviewer. First-years were meted out tasks that could range from having to scream slurs against other hostels or wear full-sleeved shirts in the choking Delhi summer; only in the rarest cases were the freshers physically abused. Mostly, these sessions ended with juniors and seniors finding a degree of bonhomie amongst one another. Very few juniors rebelled. Sachin was one of them. He took an instant dislike to these interactions. He didn’t do his tasks properly, his displeasure evident, and on a few occasions, he refused his seniors outright. Nevertheless, in the years after Flipkart’s founding, one of his ‘interviewers’, Sujeet Kumar, would become one of the most influential employees at the company.
Sachin was assigned to the Jwalamukhi hostel, Jwala for short. Some hostels such as Kumaon and Aravalli were known for producing skilled sportsmen and hosting impressive cultural activities. Jwala, which means flame in Hindi, was the most infamous. True to its name, it was considered to be the most aggressive hostel when it came to student body elections. The hostel’s frequent success in these elections made it all the more unpopular. It also boasted an excellent canteen which served a weekly chicken biryani of great repute. But Jwala’s notoriety was primarily due to its high population of Instant Chutiyas or ICs. IC is IIT slang for an abrasive, irritating fellow, instantly recognizable by their off-putting personality. According to Pranay Gupta, a student at IIT Delhi in the early 2000s, the ICs were essentially oddballs. ‘You would come across them and think, “Faltu mein apne aap ko hero samajh raha hai.” He thinks too much of himself for no reason.’ ICs were misfits, and not in an interesting way. They were considered uncooperative and duplicitous, not willing to help their classmates with homework even if they had completed it with ease.
Sachin wasn’t considered an IC, but he was made an involuntary member of the Chandigarh Chutiya Association, or the CCA. All IITians hailing from Chandigarh were clubbed together in this imaginary group. Students from Chandigarh tended to stick together and there were many of them at IIT Delhi. Several of them exuded confidence, were generally liked and, most importantly, were popular with the very few girls on campus, hence condemned by their less-fortunate mates into the infamous CCA.
Sachin assimilated at IIT Delhi after the first-year ragging sessions. His hostelmates and classmates alike remember Sachin as a regular guy, who was just one of the boys. Short and dark, with glasses perched loosely on a square, smooth face, Sachin was of medium build. He mostly stuck to his small group of friends and did well in his first-year exams.
Varun Gupta was Sachin’s roommate in their first two years at IIT Delhi. The Jwala hostel rooms were small at just twelve feet by twelve feet. A half-wall of concrete separated two rooms. In this cramped space, Varun found Sachin to be a quiet, serious fellow, a pleasant roommate who even had a sense of humour. Varun was the highest scorer in Sachin’s batch and later found success as an academic in the US. Many people in class would borrow Varun’s notes, but not Sachin, who preferred to read the textbooks. ‘Sometimes he would lose interest in a topic and ignore it. But if the topic interested Sachin, he would be really good at it,’ Varun recalls.
Sachin was also rather blunt. Harsh Dhand, a fellow CCA member, believes that with Sachin, one always knew where one stood. ‘If he didn’t like something about you ... he would tell you that without caring much for the consequences.’
In Sachin’s second year, the college installed internet connections in the hostels. This prompted some of the more well-off students to install computers in their rooms. Previously, students could use computers only in a communal laboratory. Now, this new infrastructure changed the way students lived. It is probable that Sachin had some exposure to computers before coming to IIT. Binny, by his own admission, was familiar with the machines to a great extent before starting college. As for many of their classmates, especially those from smaller cities and towns, it was at IIT where they were introduced to computers for the first time. Some of these people, who had not seen or used computers, much less the internet, until just a few years prior, would soon find success as internet entrepreneurs or senior executives in the technology world.
As soon as some students installed computers in their hostel rooms, they began to spend large parts of their days cooped up; Sachin confined himself in his room more than others. While he was neither popular nor notorious at IIT, occasionally his independent and rebellious traits came to the fore.
During his intermediate years at IIT, Sachin created a new file-sharing software. It was his first foray into creating technology products, which would later become a full-time occupation. This software allowed users to share photos and videos with each other. The product had a sleek, well-designed interface that made files on one computer accessible to all computers within the same network. Theirs being a network of adolescent male engineering students, Sachin’s software was mainly used to share pornography.
A few weeks after Sachin designed the file-sharing system, it caught the attention of the forbidding IIT administrators, who made sure that it quickly fell out of use. The students quietly moved on to a more covert alternative. Sachin was crestfallen. He had hoped the software would become a fixture and bring him lasting recognition and popularity.
Despite this setback, Sachin soon displayed his tech skills again. An electronic game of anagrams had become popular on campus. Those who decoded anagrams fastest would be awarded the highest scores. Naturally, the players most proficient in English did better than the rest. Sachin, whose English was only passable, grew very irritated with