Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal success story; this is how it began

With Walmart acquiring Flipkart, the latter is now valued at over $20 billion and the two founders are multi-billionaires. When they started out, their parents gave them Rs 10,000 a month as allowance for almost 18 months. They had invested Rs 2 lakh each from their savings. It was in their two-bedroom flat in, Bengaluru that the duo, who share a common interest in computer science, built the first version of the site, with just two computers. People who know them say they have different temperaments.

Sachin joined Amazon first and a little over a year later, in 2007, Binny joined the same team as his future business partner. Image source: company website

If Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal had gotten better marks they might never have met and Flipkart might never have come to life. But Lady Luck had plans for the Bansals, who are not related to each other but hail from Chandigarh. It was in the summer of 2005 when Sachin, then 24, and Binny, then 23, crossed paths while sweating away at IIT-Delhi’s FPGA hardware lab to improve their scores. While both moved to Bengaluru after completing their courses, they had jobs at different firms. Interestingly, Google rejected Binny twice.

Sachin joined Amazon first and a little over a year later, in 2007, Binny joined the same team as his future business partner. It was during this stint that the thought of starting up crossed their minds. Remember, this was still 2007 when entrepreneurship was not yet cool. Direct e-commerce was not their first idea — it was to launch a price comparison site. But market research led them to the idea of an e-commerce site, and thus, Flipkart was born in October 2007. And the rest is Indian start-up and e-commerce history.

With Walmart acquiring Flipkart, the latter is now valued at over $20 billion and the two founders are multi-billionaires. When they started out, their parents gave them Rs 10,000 a month as allowance for almost 18 months. They had invested Rs 2 lakh each from their savings. It was in their two-bedroom flat in, Bengaluru that the duo, who share a common interest in computer science, built the first version of the site, with just two computers. People who know them say they have different temperaments.

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Many say Sachin is quick to take offence, while Binny isn’t. Sachin also has a dry sense of humour — the description on his Linkedin profile for his role as CEO of Flipkart reads as “Odd jobs”. Sachin is said to be more intuitive, while Binny is a data junkie.

Both, primarily techies at heart, have always been quite wary of the media. This reporter remembers how Sachin gave short, crisp answers when she interviewed him for the first time in 2012 but later began opening up more, giving detailed answers and even speaking about how his son thought televisions would also become touchscreen soon.

Sachin, as CEO, was more often the face of Flipkart. Binny, who was COO until 2016, would join Sachin for joint interviews during important occasions, like the Myntra acquisition in 2014.

In informal interactions, Binny opened up more easily, like him joking to this reporter that he had become a complete Myntra man as he was wearing the site’s private label jeans and was carrying a Myntra brand wallet for the event that announced Flipkart acquiring the fashion e-tailer.

There is also a streak of sentimentality that sometimes reflects in how the company communicates and operates even now.

For instance, it was in 2007 that Flipkart moved to its first proper office — a bungalow in a quieter lane of Koramangala. Today, the company’s headquarters is housed in 30 floors across three buildings, which translates to 8.3 lakh square feet. Yet, the company has retained that first office. Some teams retreat to this office every now and then.

A few months ago, when Sachin was building the Billion private label brand for Flipkart, he chose to base his team in this bungalow.

The bungalow’s landlord has said in the past that Sachin used to pay the rent in person for many years.

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However, it isn’t sentimentality that helped the duo make Flipkart an industry leader. With innovations like cash-on-delivery, Flipkart was able to win over trust.

Source: DNA Money (Yourstory.com)

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