The journey started when two IIT-Delhi graduates left their jobs at Amazon to pursue their entrepreneurial dream in India
Founded 11 years ago by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal
India’s largest e-commerce company Flipkart on Wednesday agreed to sell 77 per cent stake to US retail giant Walmart for about $16 billion. Lately, its biggest rival in India Amazon was reportedly seen interested in acquiring Flipkart but the company decided to go with the offer offered by Walmart. That’s not all Walmart also plans to juice in about $2 billion as equity into Flipkart to make a greater hold on the e-commerce firm in India. Walmart entry in India, Amazon finds itself head to head with its rival in India.
Here is a quick flashback to the company’s journey from a two bedroom office to where it stands now in the Global e-commerce world. Both the Indians worked as interns at Amazon, no one could have ever imagined seeing the duo building something this big which would rival Amazon itself in India.
All started when Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal decided to come back to India and start with something of their own instead of working with Amazon. Founded 11 years ago in 2007, in an apartment in Koramangala in Bengaluru where both stayed with two other IIT Delhi batchmates. Although they share the same last name and with the same origin, the two are not related. A batch apart, who became friends while working together at Amazon.
Flipkart first started selling out books which they promise to be delivered anywhere in India. In a very short interval, the orders started coming in and at that point, Flipkart started to scale up. They first opened its first office in Bengaluru in 2008 just a year after they started followed by a bunch of offices in different parts of India.
Flipkart last month combined all its Bengaluru offices into one large campus spread across 8.3 lakh square feet. Flipkart bought online apparel retailer Myntra in 2014 and Jabong in 2016 both the deals were in some million dollars. It also bought payment startup PhonePe in 2016. eBay also agreed to make a $500 million cash investment in and sell its eBay.in business to Flipkart in 2017 in exchange for an equity stake in Flipkart.
Sachin was Flipkart CEO for nine years. In the year 2016, Binny took over as CEO as Sachin Bansal became executive chairman. Last year Kalyan Krishnamurthy took over as Flipkart CEO. Binny Bansal became CEO of the whole chain of the company, which included Myntra, Jabong, PhonePe and logistics firm Ekart.
Walmart entering India will put in some serious competition to Amazon, It will have no easy time in India. The Bansal’s together have proved to be the best businessmen making Flipkart be at this position over a decade now.
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