Vishnu Dileesh

Before Flipkart Was a Giant, It Was Just Two Guys and a Crappy Apartment

Flipkart began in a tiny Koramangala apartment—two founders, no AC, no funding, just conviction. Sachin and Binny Bansal didn’t wait for India’s market to be “ready.” They made it ready. The lesson for founders: start scrappy, hire believers, out-execute, and stay stubborn until the shift happens.

3 min read

It starts in Koramangala.

A small apartment. Two engineers. No AC. No safety net.

Just code, conviction, and the ridiculous belief that India would one day shop online.

No YC. No warm intros. No tech Twitter. Just Sachin and Binny Bansal, stringing Flipkart together with duct tape and hunger. VCs laughed them out of rooms. Friends stayed at Infosys. The odds? Terrible.

But they kept building anyway.

Vision First. Even When It Sounds Delusional.

Sachin wasn’t chasing GMV charts. He was gunning for something that didn’t even exist yet—The Great Indian Internet Company. Before Indian internet had real bandwidth. Before people trusted online payments. Before e-commerce had a playbook.

And that’s the thing about vision.

It doesn’t look like a pitch deck. It looks like late nights, bad lighting, and a decision to keep shipping even when no one’s watching. Flipkart wasn’t a stroke of genius. It was a compounding loop of tiny bets, course corrections, and customer obsession.

Flipkart didn’t wait for the market to be ready. It made the market.

For founders, that’s your cheat code. Don’t just spot trends. Make them inevitable.

Ship Fast. Break Everything. Fix it Twice.

They scaled recklessly. Every few months, new categories, new features, new fires. Big Billion Days? It crashed their site. Melted their backend. Fried customer trust.

But they didn’t fold.

They rebuilt. Refactored. Made it work.

The playbook wasn’t “move fast and break things.” It was: move fast, break everything, then rebuild better before anyone notices.

Startups that survive aren’t the ones with clean roadmaps. They’re the ones with dirty hands.

Chaos Is the Default Setting

It took them 18 months to raise their first million. Investors didn’t get it. India wasn’t “ready.” But they kept hacking, kept showing up, kept getting told no—until one yes (from Tiger Global’s Lee Fixel) changed everything.

That’s how it works. Most days it’s no. But it only takes one believer.

Your job? Stay alive long enough to meet them.

Culture Is Who You Hire When You Can’t Afford to Impress Anyone

Early Flipkart hires weren’t plucked from FAANG. They were scraped off Orkut threads and won over with late-night calls. No pedigree. Just belief.

Credentials didn’t matter. Conviction did.

Because early-stage isn’t about building a company. It’s about building a cult—people who see the world the same way and will sprint with you until it shifts.

Money Buys Time. Not Traction.

Flipkart raised billions. But each round came with strings. More control lost. More pressure added. More politics, less product.

Eventually, it ended with a $16B acquisition by Walmart. A win on paper. But not without bruises.

Lesson? Cash is fuel, not a moat. Product obsession is. User love is. Trust is.

Don’t Just Scale. Multiply Impact.

Flipkart didn’t just unlock shopping. It unlocked dreams—for sellers, drivers, warehousing partners. Entire ecosystems sprung up around their rails.

That’s what scale can do. If you let it.

So, What’s the Flipkart Playbook for Indie Hackers?

  • Start stupid early. Before the market is “ready.”

  • Out-execute. Faster, scrappier, sweatier than anyone expects.

  • Build your cult. Hire believers, not resumes.

  • Burn your own fuel. Don’t confuse funding with freedom.

  • Play long games. Brand > buzz. Trust > traffic.

  • Zoom out, even when you’re in the trenches.

Because your story—yes, your 2 a.m. side project—might just be the next Flipkart-in-the-making.

Just stay stubborn enough to find out.