Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal started Flipkart by delivering books themselves in 2007
Binny shares his experience of handing over the baton of his company to Kalyan Krishnamurthy
He left Flipkart on allegations of personal misconduct in November 2018
Someone once said that the journey is more beautiful than the destination. And just sometimes, the journey changes the destination.
Something similar happened with Flipkart, India’s ecommerce posterboy, and its founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. The course of their journey, which started from a humble two-storeyed building in Koramangala, was altered irrevocably by US retailer Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart and the exit of the founders. However, the destination is still a long way ahead.
Anand Daniel of Accel Partners, in Accel’s #INSIGHTSPodcast series for 2019, talked to Binny Bansal, the entrepreneur who strummed the strings of technology and product development in the backend with the motto of making ecommerce simple and seamless for Indians. He also made decisions which altered the course of Flipkart and played a big role in shaping what it has become.
During the candid chat with Daniel, the 37-year-old Flipkart cofounder reminisced about the most important moments from his stack of memories — right from his childhood to launching his first startup to building the Flipkart Mafia. “My childhood was mostly dedicated to sports and athletics. However, things changed when computers as a subject was introduced in Standard IV. My interests changed,” said Binny, as the conversation started.
From being an average student, Binny went on to join IIT Delhi’s Computer Science graduate course, a place where he found both his cofounder, Sachin Bansal, and his soulmate, Trisha. Interestingly, Snapdeal cofounder Rohit Bansal was also his batchmate and they were best buddies in the first year.
While the story of the Flipkart cofounders and their journey of building India’s most-valued ecommerce unicorn has been told and retold often, every time either of the Bansals speaks about it, they reveal some new experiences, some untold stories.
Here is one such unshared version of Binny Bansal’s 11-year journey in the Indian ecommerce ecosystem.