Personal Profile- Sachin Bansal
Co-founder and CEO of Flipkart has received Economic Times Entrepreneur of the year 2013 award.
The award seeks to recognize the ability of a business leader to enter the big league and take on the best in the world. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal both alumnus of IIT Delhi quit their job at Amazon and started Flipkart in 2007 with an initial investment of Rs 4 Lakh. Initially Flipkart focus was on selling books online and later they expanded in to electronics and fashion items.
Online retail market of India was not attractive enough for biggest online retail player Amazon and they never played in Indian market as they are playing in other markets. A vacuum was there and Flipkart filled it perfectly. Their conviction that Indian market is ready for online shopping paid them well.
Flipkart literally taught Indians that it is OK to buy goods online. Their payment model which include cash on delivery and card swipe on delivery allowed customers to go ahead and shop online. Communication strategy of Flipkart has literally taught Indian market to do online shopping.
The first item Flipkart sold was a book by John Woods’ Leaving Microsoft to Change the World and today Flipkart is selling items in 17 category. The growth of Flipkart has been exemplary and they are expected to cross yearly sales of $1 billion by 2015.
Tiger Global, Naspers, Accel Partners and Iconiq Capital has made investment in Flipkart at different stages of investment. Flipkart is one of the lone starts in terms of entrepreneurship India has seen in many years.
The biggest achievement of Flipkart is that they have created the online retail market in India. They have created this market through innovative payment model and communication strategy. One of the primary focus of Flipkart has been the experience of customer while shopping and this focus has created great brand value for them. They have redefined Online shopping as Flipkart Karo.