Untold story of unicorn startup

Geetu Vaid

In spite of its all-revealing title, The Big Billion Startup is not a “cut and dried” non-fiction book. The opening lines effectively set the tone for the all the drama that is to follow. The turn of century also saw the birth of the “Great Indian Startup saga” with bright and enterprising youngsters setting out to make their big-billion dreams a reality. 

Journalist-turned-author Mihir Dalal takes the readers through the crests and troughs of success of e-commerce giant Flipkart, while sharing the “untold” and “unseen” parts of this amazing journey of the two IIT-Delhi graduates hailing from Chandigarh.  In the first few chapters the author not only familiarises the readers with Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal — their educational backgrounds, how they met and made initial career choices — but also puts the growth of Indian e-commerce domain in perspective. 

Setting the context at this early stage surely puts readers at a vantage point to enable them to comprehend the sequence of events later on in the Flipkart story. Several little known facts about the founders and their venture are revealed by the author. Be it the fact behind the “creation myth” or the story of the “third” founder, the author keeps the narrative interesting.  

Inspired by Amazon’s success, Sachin and Binny left their jobs to start their own venture by investing Rs 4,00,000 together. The name of the website was selected as it cost the cash-strapped founders just Rs 500. Building on customer satisfaction, Flipkart quickly diversified into products other than books and due to the visionary approach of 

the founders became a multi-billion business. Striking major funding deals, to the dedicated team members and the “smart” business strategies — you get a taste of the Indian business landscape as you move from one page to another. 

The not so rosy side of the story, however, lies in the setbacks like the funding back out by General Atlantic, overconfidence in launching several product categories, tussle among the top honchos of the venture as well as the “distancing” between Sachin and Binny and the exit of both of them that made headlines bringing the company into news for several wrong reasons.  With Walmart acquiring a majority stake in the companies and the ‘sudden’ exit of both founders is the culmination of this success story. Mihir’s account is exhaustive and detailed even as different chapters go back and forth in time to keep the readers’ interest alive.  

The book is based on 250 interviews, emails, news reports and video interviews of Flipkart executives, though most of those remain unnamed. For this book exclusively Mihir has not been able to get interviews of the founders and that does take some sheen away from the narrative. Despite these minor drawbacks, the Big Billion Startup is an engrossing read and presents a fairly balanced picture of how India’s iconic e-commerce success story was conceptualised, scripted and realised.    

The journalistic touch is unmistakable in Mihir’s writing which makes the narrative crisp. If the barrage of news about its founders, their rift and scandals or acquisition has left you confounded, then Big Billion Startup is the best way to gain a perspective on the roller-coaster ride to success of Flipkart. Those nurturing start-up and entrepreneurship dreams, too, will find this book immensely useful.