Mapping the Flipkart mafia: India’s foremost startup gardener

Anand Ayyadurai, co-founder of Vogo – a keyless bike and scooter rental startup, heard of Flipkart for the first time in 2010. He had been hooked on an epic fantasy series, but the newly released 10th book in the saga at the time was nowhere to be found offline.

The book arrived the next day after Ayyadurai ordered it on Flipkart. “I remember thinking, how did this happen? How did they deliver it in 24 hours?”

India was just warming up to ecommerce then – Amazon was still about three years away from launching operations in the country. Intrigued and inspired by the industry’s potential, Ayyadurai quit his job at a multinational pharmaceutical company and joined Flipkart a few months after his book order.

Founded by ex-Amazon employees Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (no relation), Flipkart started in 2007 the same way Amazon did – by selling books online. The duo would stand at book fairs, giving out flyers to announce their website’s launch.

Since then, a lot has changed.

In 2018, Walmart acquired a 77% stake in Flipkart for US$16 billion, which is the biggest exit for an Indian tech company to date. According to a report from wealth management firm Bernstein, Flipkart had a gross merchandise value of about US$12.5 billion last year on a standalone basis, around US$1 billion higher than its rival Amazon India. Flipkart is expected to go public in the US in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Earlier this year, SoftBank returned as Flipkart’s investor. The ecommerce platform raised US$3.6 billion, taking its valuation to US$37.6 billion.

See more: The leading Asian tech players eyeing an IPO in 2021

There’s little doubt that Flipkart has changed the landscape for homegrown startups.

“People who made money through Flipkart’s employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are passionate about investing in other startups. Now the ecosystem is just fueling itself,” says Vikas Bansal, former Flipkart employee and co-founder of Crejo.Fun, an online extracurricular learning platform for children.

A lot of credit goes to Flipkart for molding India’s startup ecosystem into how it is today, he adds.

According to Tech in Asia’s research, ex-Flipkart employees have founded at least 140 active tech startups. These businesses are spread across verticals, including ecommerce, urban mobility, recruitment, travel, cloud kitchens, edtech, healthtech, and fintech, as well as the hottest new trend in India’s ecommerce sector: direct-to-consumer brands.

See more: The decade of D2C has just begun in India

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