Flipkart journey: From handing bookmarks to handling a multi-billion dollar company

Flipkart is among the first batch of India’s biggest startups to have achieved a billion-dollar valuation today. Its success story has inspired many entrepreneurs to start their own startups.

Back in 2007, when Flipkart was launched, Indian e-commerce industry was taking its beginner steps. The company is registered in Singapore, but their headquarters are in the city of Bangalore, India.

They started as a small book e-retailer with $6,500 in their pocket and became an $11-billion company.

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who were working for amazon then, had an idea to start an e-commerce company in India. Both of them are alumni of IIT, Delhi and are native of Chandigarh, India. They left their jobs in Amazon to start their own business.

They both were techies and wanted to build something where they don’t have to deal with marketing and sales. So they thought of building a comparator search engine for e-commerce. But soon they realized there weren’t enough e-commerce sites to compare and found a better opportunity in opening an e-commerce platform.

One can easily call that a risky move. In a country where people have various tastes and preferences, an ecommerce start-up will always have enormous challenges. In India, people often prefer to shop in person and buy goods they see and like. Today, thanks to Flipkart, e-commerce has become one of the fastest growing sectors in India.

Why the name ‘Flipkart’: They wanted a name that could speak of more than books, so that it could suit any category of products that they may add in the future. At the same time they wanted the name to be catchy and simple. So they arrived at the name ‘Flipkart’ that in simple terms means,’Flipping things into kart’.