Indians are embracing the blooming e-retailing with great zeal. The online shopping portals, with great discount offers are spearheading offline shoppers. This field of India’s biggest e-retailing start-ups with eye popping success is incomplete without Flipkart. It started off by selling books and today it’s offering a wide variety of almost all household products. Let’s read about its journey, Flipkart: From Scratch to the Zenith.
Evolution and Laying the First Stone
Two brilliantly gifted intellects, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal alma mater of IIT Delhi by the course of fate became colleagues while working at Amazon.com. The duo seeded a common thought to start an e-commerce company in India. Their passion and obsession for the e-commerce start-up domain along with their enthusiasm for developing a user friendly online portal for better customer services led to the genesis of Flipkart in 2007.
It was registered in Singapore as Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd but, had its headquarters in India. Initially, they started off as a platform for selling books. Their outset marketing strategy included strolling over the streets of Bangalore procuring and delivering orders. By religiously following their mantra, ‘Don’t count your customers before they smile’ and humble services soon led to expansion of Flipkart and they ventured into new waters, selling fashion and lifestyle products, electronic goods, stationary, etc. as well.
Flipkart Funding
The duo sharing a common passion, strong technical background, sharp business acumen and a mere initial investment of Rs. 4 lakhs which was spent majorly on website development got down to business. Securing mind-boggling popularity they bagged a whooping fund of $ 1 million from venture capitalist Accel India in 2009. They succeeded in obtaining a sizable $ 10 million in 2010 and $ 20 million in 2011 from Tiger Global. In 2012 they procured a prodigious sum of $150 million from MIH and ICONIQ Capital. These initial funding served as stepping stones for the huge leap of Flipkart’s success. As Flipkart’s stature grew, more and more investments crawled in. Flipkart continuously repaid its investors’ faith with mind-blowing performances. Flipkart reported a sale of Rs. 40 million in the year 2008-2009, Rs. 200 million in the financial year 2009-2010. Again, it raised a gigantic sum of Rs. 750 million in the year 2010-2011. Year after year the company has performed extraordinarily. Their outstanding performance has obligated investors and as of 2015 they have already raised $ 3 billion.
Related: App-only: Is it the right way forward for the e-commerce giants?
Some things Flipkart did a bit differently:
The Devil Resides in the Detail
Flipkart was not unique. E-commerce was blooming several companies were already operating. However, it overshadowed the others. How? During it’s launch time all e-commerce companies faced a major obstacle, online payment gateways. People did not prefer online payment mode. Flipkart seized this problem as an opportunity and emerged with the now popular concept of ‘Cash On Delivery’. This increased customer’s faith and trust over Flipkart thereby paving in the way for more and more customers. The aforesaid minute detailing, show the great attention with which the company addressed its customer’s needs.
Service is the Key, Not Discounts
Discounts make your customers fixated. However, bad service mars your reputation. People want to receive good quality goods along with great service. Another problem that Flipkart tackled impressively was the supply chain mechanism. For any online venture to be successful it has to deliver goods at a promised time. To deal with the lags and delays Flipkart launched its own supply chain system.
Be Innovative, Don’t Play Safe
E-commerce provides you the platform for experimentation which aids you with some serious takeaways. Important decisions in business are made during tough times. the company came up with the idea of ‘The Big Billion Day’ which had technical glitches and was considerably a failure. However, the idea was innovative and if worked upon can serve as a major marketing strategy. Only when you are drowning do your defenses kick in and you learn how to swim. Thus keep innovating.
With a mind set on providing best service at best price and acting according to the customer’s feedbacks and needs without ditching responsibilities Flipkart turned into a massive success. In a country like India which homes various cultures and a diversified market, for any e-commerce to be successful it has to unify them which is a great challenge and it has overcome this challenge coming out with flying colors. Flipkart’s story motivates us in a simple way that if we believe in ourselves and we are doers not just thinkers our hard work will pay off and success will knock at our doors.
