Flipkart, a name that is cherished by Indians. Its own homegrown e-commerce brand, a strong competitor to Amazon and founded by graduates from India’s prestigious College, IIT. Infact, it isn’t an everyday occurrence that a brand as big as Walmart would show interest and then acquire an Indian brand.
But then again, Flipkart and its founders have been through an immensely difficult journey. Their start-up took time to launch, required a lot of running around and kept on failing to get the interest of venture capitalists during the initial days.
It was during this start and journey that a lot of things happened, especially for the company and its founders.
What was the story?
Infibeam, a company in Ahmedabad had offered to buy the Flipkart brand in 2008. More so than offering to buy, it was taking advantage of Flipkart’s situation during those days.
Basically, Infibeam was a peer of the Flipkart. Both new start-ups launched by IIT graduates and both founders were ex-employees of Amazon. Yet, the reason Infibeam was in a position to even offer an acquisition at such an early stage of operations was because of its founder and his family wealth. Vishal Mehta has a business family for backup and legacy funds unlike the Bansal’s, Flipkart founders who kept facing the rejection of venture capitalists.
Now, Infibeam offered to buy Flipkart and in return also hire the Bansal’s in Ahmedabad while only giving them less than 5% compensation, that too in the form of Infibeam stocks. Their salaries? Only 15,000 per month at Infibeam.
How did things unfold?
The Bansal’s were offended by the salary amount and contacted Infibeam head, Vishal Mehta. However, on receiving a blunt and rude response, they thankfully decided to consider their decision to make this sale.
The confusion was genuine, especially when such a meager salary was given to TCS and Wipro freshers as compared to the Bansal’s, IIT grads with work experience in a big brand.
Finally, the sale offer was rejected by Flipkart and the Bansal’s didn’t stop working, not then and not till the time they made Flipkart a name in every household of the nation.
Hard work always pays off! Always.
More so than Bansal’s, the Indians are glad to discover this new information in the latest book, Big Billion Startup — The Untold Flipkart Story by Mihir Dalal, especially now that Infibeam is a company valued at just $400 million unlike Flipkart, valued at more than $20 billion. The company has proven that ‘if you don’t give up, there’s nothing that you can’t achieve!’
