Building India’s Amazon: Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal (Part 7)

Sramana: Does your customer base access Flipkart only through desktops and laptops?

Sachin Bansal: We have mobile commerce, but it has very little traction. >>>

Building India’s Amazon: Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal (Part 6)

Sramana: At this point, India has developed a digitally savvy consumer base which is very affluent. How will this impact the future of Flipkart?

Sachin Bansal: I expect that people will adopt e-books, but at a rather slow pace. The digitally savvy consumer base may have money, but most of them have the same background as ordinary Indians and have kept some of that mentality. They are misers. >>>

Building India’s Amazon: Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal (Part 5)

Sramana: Internationally, the book industry is going through huge changes. Now that you have years of experience in the book industry, what are you hearing in terms of dealing with e-books and e-readers? Amazon expects that e-books will overtake paper books in the near future.

Sachin Bansal: I have been following that, but as I am focused on India I follow that news in terms of the Indian market. India is slower moving with e-books. >>>

Building India’s Amazon: Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal (Part 4)

Sramana: Let’s fast forward to March 2009. How have the relationship with the distributors and the operational mechanics of your business changed?

Sachin Bansal: We actually opened another distribution center in Dehli. To our surprise, almost every distributor in India knew about us, so it was not hard to make a new relationship in Dehli. >>>

Building India’s Amazon: Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal (Part 3)

Sramana: How much money did you put into acquiring inventory to sell?

Sachin Bansal: They had computer systems which maintained inventory of their stock. We received a download of that every day. >>>

Building India’s Amazon: Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal (Part 2)

Sramana: Why did you decide to write a comparative shopping engine?

Sachin Bansal: They were a big thing in the U.S. but there were not any in India. We started doing some market research. We found that there were almost no other sites to compare against. Rearden Commerce was the only company that had any real offerings in India, but it was not really doing a good job. We concluded that comparative shopping in India would probably be a bad thing because there was no user market. >>>

Building India’s Amazon: Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal (Part 1)

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[Also check out my Entrepreneur Journeys book, Seed India – How To Navigate The Seed Capital Gap in India]

I first learned about Flipkart when I discovered that Flipkart is the only e-commerce company in India that is selling my books online. Subsequently, they became the only company in India to sell all five of my books, since I have chosen not to sell the publishing rights to Vision India 2020, Entrepreneur Journeys Volume Three: How To Test, Validate and Bring Your Idea to Market, and Entrepreneur Journeys Volume Four: Innovation, Need Of The Hour to my original publisher, Hachette India, because they offered me horrible terms.

Today, it is my pleasure to bring you our next Entrepreneur Journeys story, a conversation with Sachin Bansal, one of the pioneers in e-commerce. Sachin and his partner Binny are working on building India’s Amazon.

Sramana: Sachin, let’s begin by exploring the genesis of your story. What is your background?

Sachin Bansal: I am originally from Chandigarh, which is the capital of Punjab. My business partner, Binny, is also from Chandigarh. We are not related in any way, it just happens to be a coincidence that we are now working on Flipkart together. We both grew up in Chandigarh and went to the same schools yet did not know each other well. >>>

My New Year’s Resolution

I wish you all a happy 2010, dear readers!

I was reflecting back on 2009, and thinking what would be a good synthesis of the work I have been doing, and how I might succinctly summarize a New Year’s resolution for myself. Here is what I have come up with: >>>