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Ab har wish hogi puri
Imagine two young engineers sitting inside a small two-bedroom apartment in Bengaluru, surrounded by books and cardboard boxes.
There was no huge office. No massive team. No fancy warehouse.
Just Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, two computers, and a crazy idea.
Eleven years later, the company they started would attract one of the biggest corporate deals in startup history: Walmart would invest about $16 billion for a 77% stake in Flipkart.
But the story began with something much smaller.
Flipkart was founded in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, two IIT Delhi graduates who had previously worked at Amazon.
Interestingly, despite sharing the surname Bansal, they are not brothers or relatives.
While working at Amazon, they saw something interesting. India had a huge population, but online shopping was still almost nonexistent.
The two initially thought about building a price-comparison website.
Then they discovered a strange problem.
There weren't enough Indian e-commerce websites to compare.
So they changed the idea.
Instead of comparing online stores, they decided to build one.
And they chose books.
In 2007, selling books online in India looked almost foolish.
People were not comfortable buying things online. Internet access was limited, online payments were unfamiliar, and customers were worried about whether their product would actually arrive.
But books were a simple starting point.
So Sachin and Binny put together their savings—around ₹4 lakh—and launched Flipkart as an online bookstore.
Their office was essentially their home.
They wrote code, contacted publishers, packed orders and even delivered books themselves.
There was no giant supply chain.
There was no army of delivery executives.
There was just one customer at a time.
This is where the story becomes interesting.
In October 2007, a technology enthusiast named V. V. K. Chandra came across Flipkart through a comment Sachin had posted on his blog.
He was looking for a book called Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood.
Flipkart listed the book.
So Chandra ordered it.
There was only one problem.
The founders couldn't find the book.
They searched bookstores and distributors across Bengaluru until they finally found a copy.
They got the book to Chandra, and that tiny transaction became Flipkart's first real order.
It was only one book.
But for the founders, it proved something important:
Someone was willing to trust the internet enough to buy from them.
As orders increased, the founders needed help.
Enter Ambur Iyyappa, who became Flipkart's first full-time employee.
His job was delivery and logistics.
In those early days, Iyyappa knew almost everything about every order—what book had to be purchased, which customer was waiting and where an order was stuck.
Binny Bansal later called him Flipkart's “Human ERP.”
Before sophisticated software systems handled thousands of orders, one man's memory was doing the job.
But Flipkart was about to discover something bigger.
The biggest problem wasn't technology.
It was trust.
Why would someone pay online before receiving a product?
Flipkart attacked that problem with a simple idea:
Customers could order online and pay only when the product arrived at their doorstep.
That changed the psychology of online shopping in India.
Flipkart also invested heavily in logistics and built Ekart, its own supply-chain and delivery network.
The company wasn't simply building a website anymore.
It was building the infrastructure needed to make online shopping work in India. Flipkart itself describes Cash on Delivery, easy returns and other customer-focused services as major innovations in its journey.
The company began attracting serious investors.
In 2009, Accel Partners invested $1 million in Flipkart. Around that period, its team grew to about 150 people.
Then Flipkart moved beyond books.
It entered categories such as:
Electronics
Mobile phones
Home products
Fashion
The smartphone boom became particularly important.
Flipkart partnered with brands such as Motorola and Xiaomi, creating huge demand for smartphones on its platform. Limited phone launches sometimes sold out within seconds.
The little online bookstore was becoming a full-scale marketplace.
Flipkart understood that online shopping wasn't going to be about books or electronics alone.
Fashion was becoming a massive part of Indian e-commerce.
So Flipkart expanded through acquisitions, including Myntra in 2014 and later Jabong.
It also acquired PhonePe, which eventually grew into a major digital-payments business.
The strategy was simple:
Don't just build one shopping website. Build an ecosystem around the Indian consumer.
Then came one of the biggest challenges.
Amazon entered India aggressively.
Now the battle wasn't between small Indian startups anymore.
It was Flipkart versus one of the world's biggest technology companies.
Both companies spent heavily on discounts, logistics, technology, sellers and customer acquisition.
Flipkart had something Amazon couldn't easily copy: years of experience understanding the Indian market.
Amazon had something Flipkart couldn't ignore: enormous global resources.
The competition pushed both companies to grow faster.
And eventually, Flipkart reached a point where something unexpected happened.
In May 2018, Walmart announced that it would invest approximately $16 billion for about 77% of Flipkart.
The transaction valued Flipkart at roughly $20–21 billion, depending on the deal structure and valuation used at the time. Walmart completed the transaction in August 2018.
It was an extraordinary moment.
A company that had started with two people selling books from an apartment had become valuable enough for one of the world's biggest retailers to spend billions acquiring control of it.
Sachin Bansal exited Flipkart as part of the transaction, while Binny Bansal remained involved for a period before later leaving the company.
Flipkart's story isn't really about selling books.
It is about building for the reality of the Indian customer.
The founders didn't simply copy an American e-commerce model and put it online.
They had to solve Indian problems:
People didn't trust online payments → Cash on Delivery.
Delivery networks were unreliable → Build Ekart.
Customers wanted convenience → Easy returns.
Millions wanted smartphones → Make mobile commerce accessible.
That is what transformed Flipkart from a small bookstore into one of India's most important digital-commerce companies.
And perhaps the most powerful part of the story is how small the beginning was.
Two people.
₹4 lakh.
A two-bedroom apartment.
One difficult book order.
And a belief that Indians would eventually trust the internet.
They were right.
