Case

The Flipkart Story in India: Asian Journal of Management Cases

1–18
From the Start to Walmart © 2020 Lahore University of
Management Sciences
Reprints and permissions:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/0972820120914526
journals.sagepub.com/home/ajc
Thomason Rajan1

Abstract
Flipkart was launched in 2007 as an online platform for selling books by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal.
Ten years later, the e-commerce company had 54 million active users and 100,000 plus sellers and had
sold 261 million units. The founders had taken several steps to garner this growth, by making invest-
ments in technology, undertaking high-decibel advertising campaigns and promoting attractive offers on
products sold on the platform.
  Despite the growth, the company was not making profits, and investors like Tiger Global were
unhappy. Tiger Global Management brought in Kalyan Krishnamurthy to Flipkart in 2016, and a year
later, Kalyan became the chief executive officer (CEO), replacing co-founder Binny who got promoted
as group CEO. In May 2018, American retailer Walmart paid USD 16 billion to buy out Flipkart and in
the same month, Sachin exited the venture by selling his shares for USD 1 billion. Seven months later,
Binny was forced to resign on charges of personal misconduct.
  As these events unfolded, Flipkart was no longer the company founded by the Bansals.
  The case highlights critical issues in the Flipkart growth story and helps readers understand the
nuances in managing stakeholders, including customers and investors.

Keywords
Entrepreneurship, startup growth, startup profits, e-commerce India, startup marketing

Discussion Questions
1. Highlight the key strategic triggers that led to the phenomenal growth of Flipkart, including the
non-obvious issues.
2. Critique the product and technological innovations attempted by the founders of Flipkart.
3. Elucidate the role of smart investors in the Flipkart sale to Walmart which led to the co-founders
exiting the company that they built from scratch.

1
Krupanidhi Group of Institutions, Carmelaram, Bangalore, India.

Corresponding author:
Dr Thomason Rajan, Associate Professor-MBA Department, Krupanidhi Group of Institutions, Carmelaram, Bangalore, Karnataka
560035, India.
E-mail: thomason.rajan@gmail.com
2 Asian Journal of Management Cases

Introduction
10 May 2018 was an emotional day for Binny Bansal, the co-founder of Flipkart, India’s online
e-commerce company, which was based in Singapore and had an office in Bengaluru. His friend and IIT-
Delhi batchmate Sachin Bansal, with whom he had started the company, decided to exit the venture by
selling his 5.5 per cent share for close to `65 billion (USD 1 billion) and it pained him.
A few hours earlier, Sachin had posted on Facebook that his work at Flipkart was over and the time
was right to hand over the baton (The Tribune, 2018) and move on. Only a day ago, Walmart, the
American retailer giant, had announced that it acquired a majority stake of 77 per cent in Flipkart for
`1,040 billion (USD 16 billion). At a media briefing (The Times of India, 2018), Binny explained how
he tried his best to convince Sachin to stay on but had failed in his attempt.
Flipkart was launched as an online platform for selling books by the two Bansals with an investment
of `400,000 (USD 6,000). It got its first customer in October 2007 when a tech blog writer clicked on
the flipkart.com link below Sachin’s comment on a post that he had written and ordered the book Leaving
Microsoft to Change the World (Bansal, 2018). The initial marketing efforts by the duo included waiting
outside Gangaram Book Bureau on Church Street in Bangalore (Soni, 2014) and handing over Flipkart
bookmarks. The bookmarks were given only to the people coming out of the shop with books in their
hands, just to make sure that their targeting was right. Logistics management meant the two founders
riding on Binny’s motorbike for 40–50 km (25–31 mi) daily to pick up books from distributors and
packing them to send to the customers.
Sales started picking up, and a couple of years later, Accel Partners, the American venture capital
firm, invested `65 million (USD 1 million) in Flipkart (Accel, 2018). Flipkart started adding more
products like movies, games and music along with books, but its revenue of `250 million (USD 3.8
million) in 2009–10 was still due to focusing on selling around 5 lakh (half a million) books in the
previous two years. To add e-books to its portfolio and encourage recommendations to consumers based
on their purchases, Flipkart acquired weRead.com (Afaqs!, 2010), a social network–based book
discovery, recommendation and review site with more than 3 million users, 60 million books and 2.5
million reviews.
In 2010, New York–based investment firm Tiger Global Management invested around `520–650
million (USD 8–10 million) in Flipkart and a total of `65 billion (USD 1 billion) in the company over
several tranches till 2015, owning an estimated 30–33 per cent stake in the firm and eventually making
it the largest shareholder (Chanchani, 2010; Sengupta, 2017).
In 2012, Sachin Bansal had announced Flipkart’s acquisition of Letsbuy.com (Sharma, 2018), a
competitor e-commerce website that sold consumer electronics. With heavily discounted prices and a
huge product catalogue, Letsbuy had received investments from major global investors but was not
profitable. Interestingly, the acquisition for an estimated `1,620 million (USD 25 million) was initiated
by Tiger Global and Accel (Dharmakumar, 2018), who were the investors in both Flipkart and Letsbuy.
While Letsbuy staff were laid off, the two investors got additional shares in Flipkart.

The Innovation Journey

With a flush of funds, Flipkart started its journey of growth and innovations, primarily driven by building
features that helped customers in the shopping journey and through clever agreements with sellers.
In 2010, Flipkart virtually disrupted the e-commerce market in India when it introduced cash-on-
delivery (CoD), an option where customers could make the payment by cash at the time of receiving the
Rajan 3

product (Dubey, 2018). Since only about 0.5 per cent of the population used credit cards at the time, this
was a game-changer.
In 2011, it introduced a prepaid Wallet feature which allowed shoppers to store money up to `10,000
(USD 150) on the website and use it to purchase items, without having to reach for their regular payment
modes like cash, card or net banking for each transaction (Singh, 2011).
In early 2014, Sandeep Karwa, who was the head of Flipkart’s smartphone business, learned that
Motorola was trying to re-enter the Indian market. He initiated discussions and Flipkart struck a deal
with Motorola to launch the Moto G phones exclusively on the website (Dalal, 2017). The condition was
that Flipkart would sell around 125,000 units of Moto G phones in 6 months.
At midnight on 6 February, Flipkart launched the Moto G sale, and within five minutes, the company
had sold 10,000 units. In the next twenty minutes, it sold another 15,000 units, leading to Flipkart’s site
getting crashed, and within one single day, Flipkart had sold 100,000 phones, 80 per cent of the 6-month
sales target. The flash sale strategy was replicated for Xiaomi in July (Aulakh, 2015), helping the
unknown Chinese brand become popular in India and get around 3–4 per cent share of the Indian smart-
phone market within six months of its first flash sale on Flipkart (see Table 1).
The same year, Flipkart bought a stake in Jeeves Consumer Services Pvt Ltd (Dalal, 2014), a firm that
provided after-sales services on large home appliances and electronics through a service network span-
ning 250 cities in India. This would help Flipkart offer maintenance, repairs, product guarantees and
other services along with their sale of appliances and electronics.
In 2016, Flipkart acquired payments start-up PhonePe Internet Pvt Ltd (Chathurvedula, 2016), which
was launched by former Flipkart executives Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer. PhonePe
was working on a payment solution with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). UPI was an initiative of
the National Payments Corporation of India that allowed fund transfer between banks by using a single
identifier like a person’s Aadhaar (unique identification) number or a virtual address. Two years ago, it
had bought payments start-up NGPay to replace PayZippy, and a year ago, FX Mart Pvt Ltd got access
to the prepaid license issued by Reserve Bank of India (RBI). This move allowed Flipkart to offer its own
digital wallet on its app (Pani, 2014; Dalal, 2015).
An innovation of the company came out of tragic circumstances and yet got popular. In 2017, after
the murder of delivery boy Nanjunda Swamy by a customer who had ordered a smartphone (Shah,

Table 1.  Flash Sale Strategy of Xiaomi

Strategy Adopted Advantage

Get a best-selling handset and price it well below
their competitors.
Restrict sales to ONE exclusive online sales partner
(e.g., Flipkart).
Hold weekly flash sales where buyers register for the
sale through Flipkart.
After the sale, potential buyers searching for the
phone notice out-of-stock notifications in the site for
a few days
Highlight the company name during the flash sale and
the registration process
Source: The author.
Creates a desire in customers to have a high
specification phone at a discounted price
Helps in tighter control for the manufacturer (margins,
stock) and helps the partner bring exclusivity to
customers
Registrations help Xiaomi predict interest levels and
demand; Flipkart gets a database of potential customers
Fuels further demand as customers feel that they
should not have skipped the sale
The brand gets top-of-mind recall with the target
customer, with almost zero above-the-line advertising
4 Asian Journal of Management Cases

2017), the Flipkart team worked hard to introduce an SOS button (called the Nanjunda button) in the
delivery team’s app to help field executives alert the authorities immediately in case of a medical or
safety emergency.
These disruptive approaches were received well by customers, which allowed the company to reach
the `65 billion (USD 1 billion) Gross Merchandise Value target in record time (Vardhan, 2014), but not
all the innovations survived the test of time.
The company had bought the rights to the entire digital catalogue of a Bollywood (the name for the
Indian film industry) website called Chakpak.com that had 40,000 filmographies, 10,000 movies and
around 50,000 ratings (Saxena, 2011). It had also acquired a Mumbai-based business digital content
platform company, Mime360, to enter the digital distribution space. With the basic platform in place, in
2012, Flipkart announced the launch of Flyte, its digital music store where a customer could download
Indian music from the website as well as the app. It agreed to pay music labels an aggregate minimum
guarantee (MG) of around `65 million (USD 1 million) for the year.
But with the presence of music streaming services and pirated songs available for free, the revenues
from song downloads were not even half of the minimum guarantee amount (Anweri, 2013). The aver-
age revenue per user (ARPU) was only around `9–12 (USD 0.14–0.18), which made it difficult for
Flipkart to justify the minimum guarantee. Since the music had already been paid for and the minimum
guarantee mark was never reached (Pahwa, 2013), in February 2013, Flyte’s first anniversary, Flipkart
gave away 100 albums from ten genres free every day for about a week and informed customers via
email that it would shut down the service completely by June (see Table 2).
One of the key learnings for Flipkart was that the biggest barrier to adoption was the payment process,
which Flipkart felt needed to be simplified (Sathe, 2013).
In 2013, the company registered a new company, Flipkart Payment Gateway Services (FPGS) Pvt
Ltd, and launched its online payment solution, PayZippy. Customers could check out faster on the web-
site as they did not have to enter their account details every time and they could also transact on multiple
merchant websites (Sareen, 2013). One year later, Flipkart shut that down too as the product was not
picked up by a large chunk of its customers (Dalal, 2014a).

Table 2.  The Mail from Flipkart Informing Customers on Shutdown of Flyte
Dear Flyte MP3 customer,
We hope you have enjoyed the music we have made available to you.
Unfortunately, the Flyte MP3 store will no longer be operational after June 17, 2013. We request you to use
your Flyte Wallet balance, if any, by that date. But if for some reason you are unable to do this then not to
worry. We will refund the unused Flyte wallet balance to you.
If you would like to purchase any more music before the Flyte MP3 store shuts down, then please do so by
June 17, 2013. All the MP3 files that you have purchased from Flyte on or before June 17, 2013 will continue
to be available for download in your digital library till August 18, 2013. So do remember to download all your
favourite music by then.
Dates to remember:
1. M onday, June 17, 2013: You will no longer be able to purchase MP3 files from Flyte after this date. The
remaining balance in your Flyte wallet, if any, will be refunded to you.
2. S unday, August 18, 2013: You will no longer be able to download your purchased MP3 files from your digital
library after this date. So please download all your music by then.
So long – and thank you for being a part of this journey…
The Flyte MP3 team.
Source: Panda (2013).
Rajan 5

In 2015, Flipkart announced the acquisition of Bengaluru-based mobile advertising company Adiquity
(Business Standard, 2015), a mobile ad network that allowed app developers and mobile publishers to
earn revenue from their mobile inventory. It also bought Appiterate (The Economic Times, 2015), a
mobile engagement and marketing automation company based out of Delhi that helped e-commerce
companies target consumers better and increase sales through push notifications and in-app messages.
The reason for acquiring these firms was to focus on revenue generation using the Flipkart app and to
facilitate moving the customers from the mobile website to the app.
In April 2015, Flipkart decided to make its product portfolio accessible only through the app, calling
it a ‘mobile-first’ approach. The logic was that around 75 per cent of its total traffic was already from the
mobile app (Crabtree, 2015). But it had to reverse the decision 7 months later and reintroduce the mobile
web option. Peeyush Ranjan, the engineering head at Flipkart at the time, admitted in an interview that
going app-only was not a wise decision as apps also have their weaknesses—customers have to down-
load them and keep updating (Ghosh, 2015). The other trigger for a customer backlash against the app
was the October 2015 Big Billion Days when customers were forced to download the Flipkart app on
their phones to actually avail any discounts. The app crashed due to traffic (Hindustan Times, 2015) and
that made the customers angry as they were not able to buy the discounted products due to a technical
glitch.
Although the app-only decision was wrong, Flipkart quickly made an improvement—a new mobile
web application called Flipkart Lite that was an extremely light version that provided an app-like experi-
ence (Mishra & Pillai, 2015) which helped customers who did not want any installations on their phones
to get the benefits and superior experience of the app.
In October 2015, Flipkart launched Nearby, its grocery delivery app that claimed to deliver fruits,
vegetables, groceries, health and wellness products, etc. within sixty minutes of placing the order. This
was shut down after 4 months (Vikas, 2016) due to poor customer adoption. The same year, Flipkart
introduced Ping (Shrivastava, 2016), a social chat feature, and an image search button, two innovations
led by former chief product officer Punit Soni. Less than a year later, both features were shut down due
to low customer interest.

Building the Brand

In 2010, after a fresh dose of funding from Tiger Global, Flipkart decided to take the business national.
Tapas Rudraparna, an early employee of Flipkart, started looking out for agencies and reached out to
Happy Creative Services, an advertising agency led by Kartik Iyer. Flipkart’s advertising brief to the
agency was quite straightforward: ‘We sell books. We need to go out there and tell everyone to buy books
online’ (Venugopal, 2017).
The agency created Flipkart’s first television (TV) commercial and launched a `30 million (USD 0.45
million) media campaign titled ‘FairyTale’ featuring an old grandmother who was able to magically
order books with her pet mouse (Rao, 2011). Unfortunately, the campaign failed to meet expectations
and pressure started mounting on Flipkart and Happy Creative Services to up its game and deliver the
right message to its customers.
Around the same time, Ravi Vora, a former Unilever marketing manager, joined Flipkart and led the
marketing team back to the drawing board. The team researched and understood that the biggest problem
in India was the lack of trust, as people had a lot of negative experiences with online shopping. To solve
this through an ad campaign, they explored four message options: endorsement using celebrities,
6 Asian Journal of Management Cases

testimonials of satisfied customers, evidence-based demonstration of the brand’s trustworthiness and

conversation between a sceptic and a believer.
The fourth option was finally selected and that led to the ‘Flipkart Kids’ campaign launched in
September 2011 with a ‘No Kidding, No Worries’ tagline (Gharat, 2012). It used children acting as adults
to educate consumers about the benefits of shopping on an e-commerce website in a funny manner, a
clutter-breaking theme that was never used by the retail industry (see Figure 1).
Even though the team liked the advertisements, since they had had a bitter experience with the previ-
ous campaign, they tested the advertisement by releasing it first to its Facebook and Twitter audiences.
The response was overwhelming, with plenty of users sharing the videos. That gave the team the confi-
dence to launch the `60 million (USD 0.9 million) campaign nationwide using traditional media like
TV and print. The same idea of using kids was repeated in multiple campaigns from 2012 to 2015
(Bhattacharyya, 2012).
In 2014, Flipkart decided to launch its biggest marketing stunt, ‘Big Billion Days’. It was planned for
6 October, as 610 was the apartment number from where the Bansals started Flipkart (Pani & Kurup,
2014). They started an aggressive media campaign highlighting the huge discounts on phones and tab-
lets. When the sale started, within ten hours (Dalal & Verma, 2014), it met its target of USD 100 million
in GMV or the value of goods sold on the site. However, Flipkart’s website crashed several times during
the sale due to the heavy traffic, some customers’ orders were cancelled immediately after the sale began
and there were allegations of fake discounts. Sensing the customer anguish, Sachin and Binny Bansal
quickly emailed an apology (The Hindu, 2014) to Flipkart customers. The sale flopped despite their
`1,700 million spending on advertising (Anand & Dasgupta, 2015) for the year.
By August 2015, Flipkart had 45 million registered users, of which 10 million were daily users and
had around 8 million daily shipments. The same year, the company launched a re-branding exercise
complete with a logo makeover (Chandran, 2015) and a digital campaign using the theme Ab har wish
hogi puri (Now every wish will get fulfilled). The idea was that every order that a customer made was
backed by a wish (Neogy, 2015) and that Flipkart’s new focus was on fuelling and fulfilling wishes of
customers using the company’s platform of buyers, sellers and the delivery team of ‘Wishmasters’.
A ‘Flipkart Wish Chain’ video conceptualized by Lowe Lintas was released, and it was focused on
four new brand promises made to stakeholders—youthfulness, innovativeness, speed and reliability
(Asija, 2015). While the advertisement was creatively and well executed with a strong feel-good factor,
the criticism (Irani, 2015) was that Flipkart was avoiding the core customer perception issues like fake
discounts where the product’s retail prices were inflated and then a huge discount was shown, leading the
customer to believe that the deal was a good one.
While the above-the-line communications were in place, Flipkart introduced a series of innovations
to push sales. It started with No Cost EMI (The Economic Times, 2016) where customers could make
instalment-based payments with zero processing fee, zero down payment and zero interest for electron-
ics and large appliances. Then, there was the Assured Buyback (Banerjea, 2017) that promised to buy
back a smartphone at an assured price within a time period. The innovations also included a subscription-
based service called Complete Mobile Protection (Verma, 2018), which covered all the aspects of war-
ranty without any limited period, and Pay Later (Venkat, 2017), which offered a credit period for selected
customers to club purchases and deferred payments for a specific time.
Flipkart continued its efforts to acquire new customers, and by 2016, the company crossed 100 mil-
lion registered customers (Chanchani, 2016). In March 2018, Flipkart launched a more inclusive Naye
India ke saath (With new India) campaign (Tewari, 2018). It wanted to be seen as a new-age company
that reflected the way India was changing, both socially and culturally. Hence, the focus was to attract
the next set of 100 million customers from Tier-I and Tier-II cities of India (Bansal, 2018a). It featured
 a. Man 1: ‘Just because Wi-Fi is free, will you exploit it to the maximum?’
b. Man 2: ‘Miser. First return the change for this’
c. Man 1 (smiles): Sure, sure...will give it to you. What are you upto anyway?
d. Man 1: ‘....online? Is it safe?’
e. Man 1: ‘And if it turns faulty?’
f. Man 2: ‘In Flipkart, it won’t happen. Even if it does, it will be taken back and replaced’

Figure 1.  The Initial Storyboard of the Flipkart Kids Campaign

Source: Singhal (2013; https://www.behance.net/gallery/7403803/Art-Direction-Flipkart-No-Kidding-No-Worries-Campaign).
8 Asian Journal of Management Cases

commercials that broke traditional gender roles in families, like a father taking care of a daughter exactly
how a mother would.
While the marketing efforts to acquire customers went on in full swing, Flipkart also had a facility for
its sellers to create advertising campaigns and reach out directly to customers—Flipkart Ads (Ganguly,
2017)—the advertising business platform of Flipkart built on the AdIQuity platform that it had acquired
earlier. Around 100 sellers were able to use Flipkart’s tie-up with Google and YouTube to target customers
across digital channels. In 2017, the company opened up Flipkart Ads to third party companies and
targeted financial services which could use the platform for garnering customer insights, offering
extended warranties or insurance. It also scouted for deals with fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG)
firms for brand building and product sampling.

Revising the Product Portfolio

While the focus was on building brand awareness, the founders also took steps to improve the profit
margins of the company. Flipkart had started off with selling books and later included electronics to cater
to popular demand. It then added categories like apparel, home decor and household items.
In 2014, Flipkart acquired online fashion retailer Myntra (The Hindu, 2014a) for an estimated `20
billion (USD 300 million). Flipkart’s annual sales had crossed `65 billion (USD 1 billion), and the com-
pany had big plans for the apparel segment. Myntra was already established in the fashion and lifestyle
segment that included apparel and footwear. Flipkart took steps to increase the margins (Raghavan,
2015) it took from seller brands from 28–32 per cent to 36–40 per cent, a rate that was higher than the
30–35 per cent margins that vendors were giving to brick-and-mortar franchises at that time.
Around the same year, Flipkart started selling products which were developed in-house. With margins
of about 20 per cent higher than similar branded products (Shrivastava, 2016a), these products would
also fill the gaps in the existing products. With profitability in mind, it launched Digiflip in consumer
electronics, Citron in home appliances and Flippd in apparel. While this seemed like the right strategy,
the brands had limited success, and Digiflip was soon taken off the market.
Again, in 2014, the company attempted to garner customer loyalty by launching Flipkart First (The
Economic Times, 2014), its paid subscription programme which offered free shipping, ‘In-a-Day
Guarantee Delivery’, 60-day replacement policy and priority customer support service for `500 (USD 7)
per year (The Indian Express, 2016). This too was met with poor customer response (Sen, 2017).
In 2015, Flipkart acquired Jabong through its Myntra unit in an all-cash, discounted deal (Verma,
2016) that valued the online fashion store at `4,500 million (USD 70 million). Jabong had matched
Myntra in sales and, until early 2014, was valued at `33 billion (USD 508 million), only a year ago.
However, the online fashion retailer had lost market after Myntra’s parent Flipkart spent lavishly on
advertising and discounts to lure customers. For Flipkart, the deal provided rights to Jabong’s twenty-
five exclusive international brands, and the combined market share of the two acquired companies was
70 per cent of online fashion (The Economic Times, 2016a).
In 2016, Flipkart decided to offer deals on large appliances which drew in 2–3 per cent higher margins
compared to mobile phones (Mishra, 2016). Mobile phones had been a major source of revenue for Flipkart
and the company wanted to change that. Sandeep Karwa, who earlier headed the smartphones category,
was roped in, and he inked deals with major manufacturers to offer exclusive rates. This helped Flipkart
offer customers its products at a price that was cheaper than any other online retailer. The effort paid off,
and TV quickly became the second-biggest contributor to Flipkart’s overall revenues (Bansal, 2018b).
Rajan 9

Flipkart also replaced Flipkart Advantage with F-Assured that promised improved delivery service, six
different quality checks of products, better return policy and same or next-day free delivery (Shrivastava &
Chanchani, 2016). Binny’s focus was clearly on input targets—the number of customers, customer experi-
ence, net promoters score and customer satisfaction. He believed that the big picture for e-commerce in
India was to target young, middle-income Indians who had high aspirations with quality and convenience.
The same year, Flipkart hired Anurag Shukla, a former purchase manager at Samsung India with
contacts in the Chinese market. Adarsh Menon from Hindustan Unilever and Rushabh Sanghavi, found-
ing members at online furniture brand Urban Ladder (Vignesh, 2017), were also roped in. Flipkart started
collaborating with Chinese manufacturers for developing products such as electronics accessories and
appliances.
In 2017, Flipkart decided to move to the higher-margin items (Ranipeta, 2017) for private labelling
and launched SmartBuy, its in-house brand for electronics and electronic accessories, Perfect Homes for
furniture, MarQ for large appliances like TV and washing machine and Billion for things made in India.
Another private label called Billion was also being planned by Sachin at a cheaper price point in smart-
phones and categories such as home appliances and fashion.

Strategic Business Model

While the Bansals were working briefly at Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, they got
inspired to start Flipkart. Both of them wanted to recreate the US firm’s success in India. In 2006, they
had sought the advice of Kalyanaraman Srinivasan, Amazon’s global technology head for retail, who
told them that if they wanted to be entrepreneurs, they should replicate Amazon in India and also be
patient about it (Mitra, 2014). Hence, the initial focus was on increasing the product portfolio from books
to mobile phones, apparel, etc. However, by the end of 2014, Flipkart understood that a strategic shift
was necessary as Amazon was also building its business in India through aggressive promotions and a
wide product portfolio.
In 2013, Flipkart decided to change the way it ran its business and created Flipkart Marketplace which
allowed smaller players to display and sell products on its platform (Shinde, 2013). Till then, the entire
inventory of Flipkart was managed by WS Retail (Utkarsh, 2013), a firm incorporated in 2009 by Flipkart
to transact with customers.
Flipkart decided to reduce the commissions (Dalal, 2016) which it charged third party sellers to help
them join the marketplace. It also wanted to earn money from its advertising, payments and other service
platforms. Although the advertising business grew, Flipkart was not able to scale up the company as
planned.
Meanwhile, fresh trouble was brewing, this time caused by the Government of India’s Enforcement
Directorate (ED). The department figured out that Flipkart was operating in contravention to Section 13
of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999. According to them, WS Retail was acting as
a front (Srivatsava, 2014) for retail operations of Flipkart Online Services, while as per the law, foreign
direct investment was not allowed in e-commerce companies conducting business-to-consumer transac-
tions. Flipkart’s global investors ranged from the US-based Tiger Global Management and South Africa–
based Naspers to the Singapore sovereign fund and Belgium-based Sofina.
While the ED was aware of the change in the business model, the team wanted to charge Flipkart a
fine for the violations made till 2013 (Ray, 2014). However, due to the grey area in the role of FEMA
(Prasad, 2014), which only dealt with compliance in receiving foreign investment by entities and not
what the company did with such funds, the charges were dropped. The company was saved by luck.
10 Asian Journal of Management Cases

Just weeks before the investigation, the Bansals sold their stake in WS Retail to former OnMobile
Global Ltd chief operating officer Rajeev Kuchhal and resigned from WS Retail’s board. However, two
of Flipkart’s early employees, Sujeet Kumar and Tapas Rudrapatna, controlled almost half of WS Retail.
In a dramatic twist, two years later, the logistics arm of WS Retail got acquired by Instakart ServiceS
(Verma & Dalal, 2015), a company owned by Ankit Nagori and Rajnish Singh Baweja, the chief business
officer and finance controller of Flipkart, respectively.
In January 2016, Sachin Bansal stepped down from the post of CEO as he missed performance targets
(Pitchiah, 2016) and was replaced by Binny Bansal. In the same year, several key people left Flipkart and
there were talks about trimming the workforce by 3 per cent (Firstpost, 2016). In February 2016, Morgan
Stanley, the financial services firm, downgraded the value of its stock (Business Standard, 2016), cutting
the company’s valuation from `988 billion (USD 15.2 billion) to `715 billion (USD 11 billion) in 2016
and again to `325 billion (USD 5 billion) in 2017 (Gupta & Bhattacharyya, 2017). The investor firm T
Rowe Price also reduced the value of its stake in Flipkart by 15 per cent (Peermohamed, 2016).
In addition to all of these issues, Flipkart’s customer service levels and the brand image started declin-
ing, and Binny had to act fast. He introduced the Net Promoter Score (NPS), a measurement of customer
satisfaction and loyalty which helped customers know the available product selection, the speed at which
it was available and the price point (Dalal, 2017a).
In 2018, the Bengaluru Income Tax office asked Flipkart to reclassify marketing expenditure and
discounts as capital expenditure and demanded `1,100 million (USD 16.9 million) as tax assessed for
2015–16 (Modgil, 2018). Flipkart has been classifying promotional discounts as marketing expenses and
deducting them from its revenue and posting them as losses, therefore positioning itself as not liable to
pay taxes.
Although Flipkart won the case after an Income Tax Appellate Tribunal in Bengaluru and rejected the
revenue department’s contention of re-classification (Dave, 2018), the company still faced trouble as the
tax department pursued the case. Deep discounting might not be the answer to the future of e-commerce
in India.
Flipkart’s holding company Flipkart Pvt Ltd (FPL) reported that its losses more than doubled to `240
billion (USD 3.6 billion) in 2017 from `100 billion (USD 1.5 billion) in the year 2016 (Financial
Express, 2018). The holding company was set up in October 2011 in Singapore, with Tiger Global hold-
ing 30 per cent of the entity (Verma, 2014). The e-commerce business in India was run under the name
Flipkart Internet, and it projected a reduction in losses to `16.39 billion (USD 252 million) in 2016–17
from `23.07 billion (USD 355 million) in 2015–16. The company also started talks with Walmart for a
round of funding, but the efforts were not successful (Nair, 2018).
Losses kept on increasing every year, and by the fiscal year 2017, it had losses of USD 660 million,
much more than the projections. The company’s poor performance brought about fresh estimates pro-
jecting a loss of `91.11 million (USD 1.30 billion) by 2020 (see Table 3) (Philipose, 2018).

Table 3.  Flipkart’s Cash Burn Estimates

Financial Year Losses (in ` billion) Losses (in USD billion)

FY 15 −25.83 −0.37
FY 16 −46.61 −0.67
FY17 −45.86 −0.66
FY20 (estimated) −91.11 −1.30
Source: Philipose (2018).
Rajan 11

Becoming debt-free was crucial for the business. Conventional Indian information technology (IT)
companies like Infosys started earning profits within a few years of starting up by setting up a business
with very limited capital (Khanna, 2016), generating cash from operations to grow the business and then
rewarding stakeholders. But Flipkart was 9 years old and still losing money. In January 2017, Kalyan
Krishnamurthy was made the CEO and Binny Bansal stepped up as group CEO (The Hindu, 2017).
Lee Fixel was a key driving force behind Flipkart (Chanchani, 2018) since its early days, as his firm
Tiger Global Management had invested over USD 1 billion in the company. It was his recommendation
to bring in Kalyan, who was with Tiger Global Management, and he joined in June 2016 as head of ‘cat-
egory design organization.’ A former hedge fund manager, Kalyan started an aggressive route to save
Flipkart. He fired senior managers (Zee Business, 2018), set aggressive sales targets and increased
spending on promotions (Zee Business, 2018). He also implemented the Pareto 80–20 rule, focusing on
the 20 per cent of categories that generated 80 per cent of Flipkart’s revenues. Known to be a hands-on,
workaholic-type leader, he pushed his team during the Flipkart Big Billion Days sale in October 2016
where Flipkart outsold Amazon (Dalal & Verma, 2018).
In April 2017, Flipkart acquired the Indian operations of ebay.com, a competing retailer, in an `91
billion (USD 1.4 billion) deal led by China’s internet conglomerate Tencent (Chanchani & Variyar,
2017). Tencent invested `45 billion (USD 700 million), eBay Inc. contributed `33 billion (USD 500 mil-
lion) and Microsoft put in `13 billion (USD 200 million) after signing a cloud computing software Azure
deal with Flipkart.
Flipkart’s aggression in buying rivals like Myntra, Jabong and eBay led to speculation that it was
looking to buy Snapdeal, another competitor. Although the Snapdeal purchase never worked out
(Choudhury, 2017), it was able to influence a deep-pocketed investor of Snapdeal–Japan’s Softbank. In
August 2017, Flipkart raised around `162.5 billion (USD 2.5 billion) from SoftBank Vision Fund for an
18 per cent stake in the company (Peermohamed & Choudhury, 2017). Out of this, SoftBank spent `65
billion (USD 1 billion) to buy off Tiger Global’s shares and promised to invest `97.5 billion (USD 1.5
billion) in the company.
By 2017, Flipkart’s GMV had grown to `784.5 billion (USD 7.5 billion), had 54 million active users
and more than 100,000 sellers and had sold 261 million units in the previous year (The Economic Times,
2018).
Nine months later, in May 2018, Walmart announced that it was buying a 77 per cent stake in Flipkart
for about `1,040 billion (USD 16 billion)—`910 billion (USD 14 billion) for buying shares from Tiger
Global, Naspers and SoftBank and about `130 billion (USD 2 billion) for investments directly in the
company (The Economic Times, 2018a). The remaining 18 per cent stake in Flipkart would remain with
Binny Bansal, Tencent, Tiger Global and Microsoft Corp. Tiger Global reportedly made about `195 bil-
lion (USD 3 billion) as profit after investing `65 billion (USD 1 billion) and also retained 5 per cent after
the deal was closed (Parmar & Metcalf, 2018).
In June 2018, Kalyan Krishnamurthy stated in an interview that Flipkart would focus on increasing
the monthly active transacting customers as the key metric (Bansal & Chanchani, 2018), which meant
moving into new areas like grocery and also hiring for new technology talent. Profitability again took a
backseat (Dalal, 2017b) as the CEO, like his predecessors, tried to balance growth with profits.
In November 2018, Walmart announced the resignation of Binny Bansal, the only remaining co-
founder of Flipkart, over allegations of ‘serious personal misconduct’. Binny wrote an emotional email
to employees that the allegations had left him stunned and that he strongly denied them (Rao, 2018). Two
months later, Flipkart announced the exit of Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan and named Amar Nagaram
the new head of Myntra reporting directly to Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy. This practically
removed the CEO post at Myntra (Sen, 2019).
12 Asian Journal of Management Cases

The Future Ahead

For Walmart, the reason for the acquisition was quite straightforward—the world’s biggest e-commerce
purchase deal could mark its entry into the Indian market and also pit itself directly against Amazon
India. Walmart already had cash-and-carry operations (B2B) in India and it felt that it could leverage
Flipkart’s already existing ecosystem of businesses (The Economic Times, 2018b), including Myntra–
Jabong in fashion and PhonePe in payments.
The growth rate of India’s e-commerce market has been slowing down from the peak of 2013–15,
with a forecast report by Forrester Research suggesting that growth rate fell by 26.4 per cent in 2017 (The
Economic Times, 2018c). However, there was no doubt that the market would grow substantially.
According to financial services firm Morgan Stanley, India’s e-commerce market was expected to grow
(Gupta, 2017) at a 30 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for GMV and would be worth
`13,000 billion (USD 200 billion) by 2026.
Even though India is the second largest online market in the world, only around 30 per cent of its
population accessed the internet in 2016, and online retail sales accounted for less than 3 per cent of total
retail sales (Carter, 2018). In 2017, around 24 per cent of the population in India accessed the internet
from their mobile phone, and this figure is expected to grow to 34.85 per cent in 2022 (Statista, 2017).
In August 2017, Amazon, with a `325 billion (USD 5 billion) budget for its India operations, made its
first delivery to the cold desert mountain valley of Spiti (Sachitanand & Singh, 2017), a place in Himachal
Pradesh of some 34,000 inhabitants, that no other company had attempted so far. It was part of its ambi-
tious plan to focus on every geographic segment of India’s online retail market (Bailay, 2017).
While the e-commerce market in India had scope for immense growth, the two companies Flipkart
and Amazon had 30 per cent each of the market (Bhattacharyya, 2018). Flipkart was again attempting to
position itself as the country’s ‘fashion capital’ (Bansal, 2018c). The idea was to change the general
belief from the company being a ‘horizontal platform’ selling several categories of products to one that
is dominant in one ‘vertical’—the fashion category (Srivastav, 2018). The heat was on for a duopoly war,
and for Flipkart, the fight was only getting started!
One year after the acquisition, Walmart saw a drop in gross profit rate and operating income for its
international business for the February–April 2019 quarter, mainly due to including Flipkart in its finan-
cial performance. Reports also suggested that an initial public offer (IPO) was being planned for the year
2022 in the United States, signalling a possible exit of Walmart from Flipkart (Sharma, 2019).
The Flipkart tale from 2009 to 2018 was indeed a curious one. At one end, the founder duo became
the poster boys for igniting the entrepreneurship spirit among young Indians (Nair, 2018a) by building a
company from scratch, devising clever innovations in services plus marketing and managing a complex
legal structure in the country. The parallel story, however, was about an e-commerce enterprise in India
struggling hard to make profits despite its best efforts at transforming business. In the end, only profits
mattered to investors who chose the right time and people who made profits from their investments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of
this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Rajan 13

References
Accel. (2018). Series A in 2009. Retrieved from https://www.accel.com/companies/flipkart
Afaqs!. (2010). Flipkartcom acquires weReadcom. Retrieved from http://www.afaqs.com/news/story/29177_
Flipkartcom-acquires-weReadcom
Anand, S., & Dasgupta, P. M. (2015). E-commerce firms like Flipkart, Amazon and others spend mega on
advertisement. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/advertising/e-commerce
-firms-like-flipkart-amazon-and-others-spend-mega-on-advertisement/articleshow/46846330.cms
Anweri, J. (2013). Flyte fails to take off, Flipkart to shut down music store. Retrieved from https://www.gadgetsnow.
com/tech-news/Flyte-fails-to-take-off-Flipkart-to-shut-down-music-store/articleshow/20334016.cms
Asija, M. (2015). Flipkart’s new logo has a smile & this video explains how it puts one on its customers with
#AbHarWishHogiPoori. Retrieved from https://inc42.com/buzz/flipkart-video/
Aulakh, G. (2015). Xiaomi ropes in Amazon, Snapdeal; ends exclusive tie-up with Flipkart. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/xiaomi-ropes-in-amazon-snapdeal-ends-exclusive-tie-up-with-
flipkart/articleshow/46836378.cms
Bailay, R. (2017). Amazon’s India strategy: Focus on every geography to become ‘everything for everyone’.
Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/amazons-india-strategy-focus-on-
every-geography-to-become-everything-for-everyone/articleshow/57761644.cms
Banerjea, A. (2017). Flipkart’s ‘buyback guarantee’ offer: Why it’s a boon for smartphone users. Retrieved from
https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/flipkart-s-buyback-guarantee-offer-why-it-s-a-boon-for-
smartphone-users-117051200472_1.html
Bansal, B. (2018). Dear Sachin, you will be missed. Retrieved from https://stories.flipkart.com/sachin-bansal-
farewell/
Bansal, V. (2018a). Flipkart on rebranding route to get next 100 million customers. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/flipkart-on-rebranding-route-to-get-next-100-
million-customers/articleshow/63278840.cms
———. (2018b). TV is now Flipkart’s second highest revenue-generating category. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/tv-is-now-flipkarts-second-highest-revenue-
generating-category/articleshow/62813794.cms
———. (2018c). Flipkart all set for a fashionable makeover. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.
com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/flipkart-all-set-for-a-fashionable-makeover/articleshow/64726990.cms
Bansal, V., & Chanchani, M. (2018). Flipkart losses swell 68% to `8,771 crore in FY17. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/flipkart-revenues-rise-29-losses-swell-68-in-fy17/
articleshow/62761811.cms
Bhattacharyya, A. (2012). Flipkart: From real to reel. Retrieved from http://www.afaqs.com/news/story/35153_
Flipkart-From-real-to-reel
———. (2018). The Walmart-Flipkart deal is unlikely to make Amazon back down in India. Retrieved from https://
qz.com/1263018/the-walmart-flipkart-deal-is-unlikely-to-make-amazon-back-down-in-india/
Business Standard. (2015). Flipkart acquires mobile ad network Adiquity. Retrieved from https://www.business-
standard.com/article/companies/flipkart-acquires-mobile-ad-network-adiquity-115030700121_1.html
———. (2016). Morgan Stanley cuts Flipkart value by S4 bn to $ 11 bn. Retrieved from https://www.business-standard.
com/article/companies/morgan-stanley-marks-down-stake-value-in-flipkart-by-27-per-cent-116022700334_1.
html
Carter, K. (2018). India: Large, untapped market represents huge opportunity. Retrieved from https://seekingalpha.
com/article/4174303-india-large-untapped-market-represents-huge-opportunity
Chanchani, M. (2010). Flipkart raises up to $10M from tiger global. Retrieved from https://www.vccircle.com/
flipkart-raises-10m-tiger-global/
———. (2016). Flipkart says it has crossed 100 million registered customers. Retrieved from https://economictimes.
indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/flipkart-says-it-has-crossed-100-million-registered-customers/article
show/54439599.cms
14 Asian Journal of Management Cases

Chanchani, M. (2018). Tiger’s Fixel to remain on board Flipkart after Walmart deal. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/tigers-fixel-to-remain-on-board-flipkart-after-
walmart-deal/articleshow/64036841.cms
Chanchani, M., & Variyar, M. (2017). Flipkart buys eBay India as it raises $14Bn in its biggest ever funding round.
Retrieved from https://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/flipkart-buys-ebay-india-as-it-raises-
1-4bn-in-its-biggest-ever-funding-round/58119999
Chandran, A. (2015). Why Flipkart’s posterboy needed a refreshed brand identity now, answers Shoumyan Biswas.
Retrieved from https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/this-dream-is-beyond-numbers/113327/
Chathurvedula, S. (2016). Flipkart acquires UPI-based payments start-up PhonePe. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Companies/DbMTb2tDKuZoTfEa203XBL/Flipkart-acquires-UPIbased-payments-startup-
PhonePe.html
Choudhury, K. (2017). There’s no deal; Snapdeal, Flipkart call off merger talks. Retrieved from https://
www.business-standard.com/article/companies/there-s-no-deal-snapdeal-flipkart-merger-talks-just-fell-
apart-117073100331_1.html
Crabtree, J. (2015). India’s Flipkart to go app-only. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/b8deaa7c-2549-
11e5-9c4e-a775d2b173ca
Dalal, M . (2014). Flipkart enters strategic partnership with Jeeves Consumer. Retrieved from https://www.livemint.
com/Companies/NHrrYYszDGsHenizUKolWJ/Flipkart-enters-strategic-partnership-with-Jeeves-Consumer.
html
———. (2014a). Flipkart to shut its payment gateway PayZippy. Retrieved from https://www.livemint.com/
Companies/tPBg4IJluy4djMjXk5qq3O/Flipkart-to-shut-its-payment-gateway-PayZippy.html
Dalal, M. (2015). Companies Flipkart acquires payment services firm FX Mart. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Companies/vSkZoy2wN4psdUpqIV37TJ/Flipkart-buys-payment-services-firm-FX-Mart.html
———. (2016). Flipkart finally seems to have a blueprint of its business model. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Companies/kcNbpF89GYRnGbKHrWqG1H/Flipkart-finally-seems-to-have-a-blueprint-of-its-
business-m.html
———. (2017). How smartphone sales revived Flipkart’s fortunes. Retrieved from https://www.livemint.com/
Companies/AgpQ0QQSCWBW3v3oTnFcLL/How-smartphones-changed-Flipkarts-fortunes.html
———. (2017a). How Flipkart got back in the game. Retrieved from https://www.livemint.com/Companies/
kcNbpF89GYRnGbKHrWqG1H/Flipkart-finally-seems-to-have-a-blueprint-of-its-business-m.html
———. (2017b). Profitability not the highest priority today, says Flipkart’s Kalyan Krishnamurthy. Retrieved from
https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QQxY5zwqM1WlxQP43cmjON/Profitability-not-the-highest-priority-
today-says-Flipkart.html
Dalal, M., & Verma, S. (2014). Flipkart apologizes to customers for Big Billion Day sale glitches. Retrieved from
https://www.livemint.com/Industry/t5UDgJyzPcvF7vK7j7M62O/Flipkart-apologizes-to-customers-for-mega-
sale-glitches.html
———. (2018). Walmart may retain Flipkart top executives if deal goes through. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Companies/mhlzfKpmGCFA7kmL0HvaJI/Walmart-may-retain-Flipkart-top-executives-if-deal-
goes-thro.html
Dave, S. (2018). Flipkart dodges a `110 crore tax demand as ITAT rules in its favour. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/discounts-are-not-capital-expenditure-itat-rules-
in-favour-of-flipkart/articleshow/63909290.cms
Dharmakumar, R. (2018). Can Flipkart deliver? Retrieved from http://www.forbesindia.com/printcontent/33240
Dubey, T. (2018). These disruptions made by Flipkart over ten years helped it lead the e-commerce sector. Retrieved
from https://www.businessinsider.in/These-Disruptions-made-by-Flipkart-over-Ten-Years-Helped-it-Lead-the-
E-commerce-Sector/Easy-Return-Policy-2011/slideshow/58951494.cms
Financial Express. (2018). Flipkart’s accrued loss bigger than Modi’s allocation for 1 crore affordable houses.
Retrieved    from    https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/flipkarts-accrued-loss-bigger-than-modis-allocation-
for-1-crore-affordable-houses/1109719/
Rajan 15

Firstpost. (2016). Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal says he was removed because of ‘performance’. Retrieved from https://
www.firstpost.com/business/flipkarts-sachin-bansal-says-he-was-removed-because-of-performance-2970224.
html
Ganguly, P. (2017). Flipkart Ads sees $100 million from 3rd parties, digital products. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/money/flipkart-ads-sees-100-million-from-3rd-parties-digital-
products/articleshow/59028441.cms
Gharat, S. (2012). Happy creative services: The Flipkart agency. Retrieved from http://www.afaqs.com/news/
story/36329_Happy-Creative-Services-The-Flipkart-agency
Ghosh, M. (2015). Flipkart admits app-only mistake, brings back mobile browser website. Retrieved from http://
trak.in/tags/business/2015/11/10/flipkart-u-turn-mobile-app-browser-website/
Gupta, S. (2017). India’s e-commerce market to hit $200 billion by 2026: Morgan Stanley report. Retrieved from
https://www.livemint.com/Industry/9iUxlQZ4iHwPiXRKscx3LK/Indias-ecommerce-market-to-grow-30-to-
200-billion-by-202.html
Gupta, H., & Bhattacharyya, A. (2017). Flipkart valuation slashed to under $55 bn by Morgan Stanley. Retrieved from
https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/flipkart-valuation-slashed-to-under-5-5-bn-by-morgan-stanley/
570583/
Hindustan Times. (2015). Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale is glitchy the second year running. Retrieved from
https://www.hindustantimes.com/tech/flipkart-s-bigbillionday-sale-was-glitchy-the-second-year-running/story-
jWcviKodJOlnoUgAzDaiDL.html
Irani, D. (2015). Is Flipkart’s change in ad campaign an example of too much too soon? Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/brand-equity/is-flipkarts-change-in-ad-campaign-an-example-of-
too-much-too-soon/articleshow/47689884.cms
Khanna, S. (2016). India’s e-commerce start-ups are setting a dangerous precedent. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Opinion/rgOCDAf3T9Ll8hZHQ8kWAM/Indias-ecommerce-startups-are-setting-a-dangerous-
precede.html
Mishra, D. (2016). Flipkart’s exclusive brand deals to prop up appliance sales. Retrieved from https://timesofindia.
indiatimes.com/companies/Flipkarts-exclusive-brand-deals-to-prop-up-appliance-sales/articleshow/54357632.
cms
Mishra, D., & Pillai, S. (2015). Flipkart drops its plan to go app-only. Retrieved from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.
com/business/india-business/Flipkart-drops-its-plan-to-go-app-only/articleshow/49751060.cms
Mitra, M. (2014). Kal Raman, Groupon COO & mentor to Flipkart’s Bansals, loves being the underdog. [Online].
Retrieved    from    https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/kal-raman-groupon-coo-mentor-to-flipkarts-bansals-
loves-being-the-underdog/articleshow/39872455.cms
Modgil, S. (2018). Income Tax Department asks ecommerce giant Flipkart to reclassify discounts as capital
expenditure. Retrieved from https://inc42.com/buzz/income-tax-flipkart-discounts/
Nair, A. (2018). Flipkart devalued once again, now stands at $99B. Retrieved from https://yourstory.com/2017/01/
flipkart-devalued-to-9-9-billion/
———. (2018a). Sachin Bansal says goodbye to Flipkart as Binny Bansal stays on. Retrieved from https://yourstory.
com/2018/05/sachin-bansal-says-goodbye-flipkart-binny-bansal-stays/
Neogy, S. (2015). Flipkart promises to fulfil every wish in its New Digital Campaign. Retrieved from https://www.
exchange4media.com/Advertising/Flipkart-promises-to-fulfil-every-wish-in-its-new-digital-campaign_60274.
html
Pahwa, N. (2013). Why Flipkart shut down Flyte Music. Retrieved from https://www.medianama.com/2013/05/223-
why-flipkart-shut-flyte-music/
Panda, P. (2013). Flipkart shutting down Flyte Online Music Store. Retrieved from https://thetechpanda.com/
flipkart-shutting-down-flyte-online-music-store/10206/
Pani, P. (2014). Flipkart strengthens mobile payments service by investing in Ngpay. Retrieved from https://www.
thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/Flipkart-strengthens-mobile-payments-service-by-investing-in-Ngpay/
article20858051.ece
16 Asian Journal of Management Cases

Pani, P., & Kurup, R. (2014). Flipkart fumbles on the big day as server fails. Retrieved from https://www.
thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/flipkart-fumbles-on-the-big-day-as-server-fails/article23162509.ece
Parmar, H., & Metcalf, M. (2018). Tiger Global reaped $3 Billion from Flipkart investment. Retrieved from
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-09/tiger-global-is-said-to-reap-3-billion-from-flipkart-
investment
Peermohamed, A. (2016). T Rowe price cuts Flipkart value by 15%. Retrieved from https://www.business-standard.
com/article/companies/t-rowe-price-cuts-flipkart-value-by-15-116041600661_1.html
Peermohamed, A., & Choudhury, K. (2017). Can Flipkart 20 beat Amazon? Retrieved from http://www.rediff.com/
business/report/can-flipkart-20-beat-amazon/20170811.htm
Philipose, M. (2018). Why Walmart investors have started writing off the Flipkart investment. Retrieved from https://
www.livemint.com/Money/V0XaLZKECvjv0PHkUFwx0N/Why-Walmart-investors-have-started-writing-off-
the-Flipkart.html
Pitchiah, V. (2016). Sachin Bansal had to step down as CEO after Flipkart missed targets. Retrieved from https://
techcircle.vccircle.com/2016/08/22/sachin-bansal-had-to-step-down-as-ceo-after-flipkart-missed-targets/
Prasad, G. C. (2014). Ecommerce major, Flipkart gets clean chit from ED over FDI violation. Retrieved from
https://www.financialexpress.com/archive/ecommerce-major-flipkart-gets-clean-chit-from-ed-over-fdi-
violation/1298837/
Raghavan, P. (2015). Fashion retailers to shell out 30-40% margin to marketplaces for online sales. Retrieved from
https://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/apparel-fashion/apparel/fashion-retailers-to-shell-out-30-40-
margin-to-marketplaces-for-online-sales/49053878
Ranipeta, S. (2017). Can private labels finally drive profitability for Indian ecommerce? Retrieved from https://
www.thenewsminute.com/article/can-private-labels-finally-drive-profitablity-indian-ecommerce-72996
Rao, A. (2011). Flipkart.com gets on TV for the first time. Retrieved from http://www.campaignindia.in/article/
flipkart-com-gets-on-tv-for-the-first-time/413962/
Rao, R. (2018). How Binny Bansal’s surprise exit from Flipkart unfolded. Retrieved from https://www.businesstoday.
in/current/corporate/how-binny-bansal-surprise-exit-from-flipkart-unfolded/story/290629.html
Ray, S. (2014). ED finds FEMA violation against Flipkart, penalty likely to be around `1,000 crore. Retrieved from
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/ed-finds-fema-violation-against-flipkart-penalty-
likely-to-be-around-rs-1000-crore/articleshow/40283692.cms
Sachitanand, R., & Singh, R. (2017). Indian ecommerce turns into a two-horse race as smaller players face likely
wipeout. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/from-flipkart-vs-amazon-to-
makemytrip-vs-yatra-two-horse-races-in-the-online-world/articleshow/60135600.cms
Sareen, P. (2013). Flipkart launches its payment gateway service, Payzippy. Retrieved from http://www.iamwire.
com/2013/07/flipkart-launches-its-payment-gateway-service-payzippy/16605
Sathe, G. (2013). Flipkart closes Flyte MP3 store a year after launch. Retrieved from https://www.livemint.com/
Consumer/TJOoP9he0fq0EG7S8lRXYK/Flipkart-closes-Flyte-MP3-store-a-year-after-launch.html
Saxena, A. (2011). Updated: Flipkart acquires Bollywood Site Chakpak’s Digital Catalogue; In line with Digital
Downloads?   Retrieved   from   https://www.medianama.com/2011/11/223-flipkart-acquires-bollywood-site-
chakpak-inline-with-digital-downloads/
Sen, A. (2017). Flipkart may relaunch loyalty programme to take on Amazon Prime. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Industry/6Z2ueZHBRXQ3UxilTqaBhP/Flipkart-may-relaunch-loyalty-programme-against-
Amazon-Prime.html
———. (2019). Flipkart quashes Myntra CEO post as Ananth Narayanan resigns. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Companies/mlcpp9VedNy72NPFCy5dTK/Ananth-Narayana-resigns-as-Myntra-and-Jabong-
CEO.html
Sengupta, S. (2017). Not time yet to applaud Tiger Global’s partial exit from Flipkart. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Opinion/FFqNhFcyi4zheyJgqyAdTP/Not-time-yet-to-applaud-Tiger-Globals-partial-exit-from-
Fli.html
Shah, B. (2017). After shocking murder of delivery person, Flipkart creates SOS button for delivery personnel.
Retrieved from https://yourstory.com/2017/01/flipkart-sos-button-delivery-personnel/
Rajan 17

Sharma, S. (2018). Flipkart buys electronics retailer Letsbuy for $25m. Retrieved from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.
com/business/india-business/Flipkart-buys-electronics-retailer-Letsbuy-for-25m/articleshow/11831516.cms
———. (2019). Flipkart charts roadmap for US listing by 2022. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.
com/markets/ipos/fpos/flipkart-charts-roadmap-for-us-listing-by-2022/articleshow/69920934.cms
Shinde, S. (2013). Flipkart changes business model, launches Flipkart Marketplace. Retrieved from https://
www.business-standard.com/article/companies/flipkart-changes-business-model-launches-flipkart-
marketplace-113040600051_1.html
Shrivastava, A. (2016). Flipkart shuts image search, social shopping experiment Ping in less than a year. Retrieved
from    https://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/flipkart-shuts-image-search-and-ping-in-less-
than-a-year/52834862
———. (2016a). Flipkart looks to fill up cart with own brands. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.
com/industry/services/retail/flipkart-looks-to-fill-up-cart-with-own-brands/articleshow/52948212.cms
Shrivastava, A., & Chanchani, M. (2016). Flipkart to launch F-Assured; promises improved delivery service.
Retrieved    from    https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/flipkart-to-launch-f-assured-
promises-improved-delivery-service/articleshow/53275063.cms
Singhal, A. (2013). Art direction: Flipkart no kidding, no worries campaign. Retrieved from https://www.behance.
net/gallery/7403803/Art-Direction-Flipkart-No-Kidding-No-Worries-Campaign
Singh, J. (2011). Flipkart launches prepaid Wallet feature, lets users shop upto `10,000. Retrieved from http://www.
iamwire.com/2011/11/flipkart-launches-prepaid-wallet-feature-lets-users-shop-upto-rs-10000/2017
Soni, A. (2014). 7-yr-old Flipkart’s evolution through the eyes of Sachin Bansal. Retrieved from https://yourstory.
com/2014/08/sachin-bansal-flipkart-journey/
Srivatsava, S. (2014). Flipkart case: ED finds FEMA violation, `1,400 cr fine likely. Retrieved from http://
indianexpress.com/article/business/companies/flipkart-case-ed-finds-fema-violation-r1400-cr-fine-likely/
Srivastav, T. (2018). Flipkart CMO on the brand’s focus on marketing and localisation to become the fashion capital
of India. Retrieved from https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/07/18/flipkart-cmo-the-brands-focus-marketing-
and-localisation-become-the-fashion-capital
Statista. (2017). Mobile phone internet user penetration in India from 2015 to 2022. Retrieved from https://www.
statista.com/statistics/309019/india-mobile-phone-internet-user-penetration/
Tewari, S. (2018). Flipkart takes to new-age advertising to drive next phase of growth. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Consumer/UsP4l8hVdgue1ZyW8Bvg5K/Flipkart-takes-to-newage-advertising-to-drive-next-
phase-of.html
The Economic Times. (2014). Flipkart launches paid subscription service, Flipkart First. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/flipkart-launches-paid-subscription-service-flipkart-
first/articleshow/34788659.cms
———. (2015). Flipkart acquires mobile marketing firm Appiterate. Retrieved from https://economictimes.
indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/flipkart-acquires-mobile-marketing-firm-appiterate/articleshow/47098282.
cms
———. (2016). Love shopping online? Now, Flipkart introduces the ‘No Cost EMI’ option. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/love-shopping-online-now-flipkart-introduces-the-no-cost-
emi-option/articleshow/52519420.cms
———. (2016a). Flipkart-owned Myntra pips Snapdeal and Future Group, acquires Jabong for $70 million.
Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/flipkart-owned-myntra-pips-snapdeal-
and-future-group-acquires-jabong-for-70-million/articleshow/53390609.cms
———. (2018). Walmart acquires Flipkart for $16 billion in world’s largest ecommerce deal. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/walmart-acquires-flipkart-for-16-bn-worlds-
largest-ecommerce-deal/articleshow/64095145.cms
———. (2018a). SoftBank confirms sale of Flipkart stake to Walmart. Retrieved from https://economictimes.
indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/softbank-agrees-to-sell-flipkart-stake-to-walmart/articleshow/
64266098.cms
18 Asian Journal of Management Cases

The Economic Times. (2018b). Flipkart’s ecosystem true advantage to Walmart: Official. Retrieved from https://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/flipkarts-ecosystem-true-advantage-to-walmart-official/
articleshow/64528943.cms
———. (2018c). Ecommerce growth fell 26% in 2017: Forrester Research. Retrieved from https://economictimes.
indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/ecommerce-growth-fell-26-in-2017-forrester-research/
articleshow/62733708.cms
The Hindu. (2014). Sorry, say Flipkart founders. Retrieved from http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/
flipkart-accepts-shoddy-performance-apologises-for-glitches/article6478831.ece
The Hindu. (2014a). Flipkart acquires Myntra; to invest $100 mn in fashion business. Retrieved from http://
www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/flipkart-acquires-myntra-to-invest-100-mn-in-fashion-business/
article6036831.ece
———. (2017). Flipkart appoints Kalyan Krishnamurthy as new CEO. Retrieved from http://www.thehindu.com/
business/Industry/Flipkart-appoints-Kalyan-Krishnamurthy-as-new-CEO/article17014022.ece
The Indian Express. (2016). Amazon Prime is here: But didn’t we already have Flipkart First? Retrieved from http://
indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/amazon-prime-vs-flipkart-first-price-features-
deals-comparison-all-details-2935863/
The Times of India. (2018). Really sad to see Sachin leave Flipkart, says co-founder Binny Bansal. Retrieved from
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/really-sad-to-see-sachin-leave-flipkart-says-co-
founder-binny-bansal/articleshow/64108186.cms
The Tribune. (2018). Really sad to see Sachin leave Flipkart, says co-founder Binny. Retrieved from http://www.
tribuneindia.com/news/business/really-sad-to-see-sachin-leave-flipkart-says-co-founder-binny/587264.html
Utkarsh. (2013). Flipkart shifts to The Amazon’s Marketplace Model. Retrieved from https://inc42.com/buzz/
flipkart-shifts-to-the-amazons-marketplace-model/
Vardhan, J. (2014). Flipkart achieves $1 billion GMV sales a year before projection. Retrieved from https://
yourstory.com/2014/03/flipkart-achieves-1-billion-gmv/
Venkat, A. (2017). Flipkart rolls out ‘buy now pay later’ option for select users. Retrieved from https://www.
medianama.com/2017/06/223-flipkart-rolls-out-buy-now-pay-later/
Venugopal, B. (2017). How Happy and Flipkart birthed the Flipkart kids. Retrieved from https://stories.flipkart.
com/happy-flipkart-kids/
Verma, S. (2014). Inside Flipkart’s complex structure. Retrieved from https://www.livemint.com/Companies/
VXr8oJzNJ4daOYSO5wNETN/Inside-Flipkarts-complex-structure.html
———. (2016). Flipkart’s Myntra acquires Jabong in $70 million ‘discount’ deal. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Companies/iicvIYFijqp9VRAx0ON46I/Flipkarts-Myntra-acquires-Jabong.html
———. (2018). Flipkart ‘Complete Mobile Protection’: From broken screen to accidental damage, here’s what you
get covered at `999. Retrieved from https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/flipkart-complete-
mobile-protection-from-broken-screen-to-accidental-damage-heres-what-you-get-covered-at-rs-999/1142529/
Verma, S., & Dalal, M. (2015). Flipkart buys back logistics arm from WS Retail. Retrieved from https://www.
livemint.com/Companies/DadIlWWt07oLLh3rdS8YUN/Flipkart-buys-back-logistics-arm-from-WS-Retail.
html
Vignesh, J. (2017). Flipkart’s move to develop in-house brands may help it achieve overall profitability. Retrieved
from    https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/features/flipkarts-move-to-develop-in-house-
brands-may-help-it-achieve-overall-profitability/articleshow/62200104.cms
Vikas, S. N. (2016). Flipkart shuts down its hyperlocal delivery app Flipkart Nearby. Retrieved from https://tech.
economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/mobile/flipkart-nearby-app-shuts-down/51146086
Zee Business. (2018). Who is Kalyan Krishnamurthy, the man who revived Flipkart. Retrieved from http://www.
zeebiz.com/india/news-who-is-kalyan-krishnamurthy-the-man-who-revived-flipkart-46361