Flipkart: Realizing the India Opportunity from a humble beginning

The news that Walmart will pay approximately $16 billion for a stake of approximately 75 percent in Flipkart is, to put it mildly, monumental.

The investment is one of the largest-ever acquisitions of a private, venture-backed company, and it’s a remarkable testament to what the Flipkart team has accomplished.

More broadly, it’s just the latest example of ground-breaking global technology companies emerging from around the world.

As always in successful investment case, I like to understand more about the initial vision of the company founders and their beginning.

Below, you can find a chart of the original investment Deck of the company back in 2008.

The company started small, just focusing on online sale of books, was self-funded and get traction and to the break-even point fast.

In those early days, Flipkart founders worked out of a makeshift office as they put together the beginnings of one of India’s first eCommerce businesses. One room was their warehouse, the second housed the tech team, and the third was customer support (source: Accel).

This is a lesson for all the founders that before to get any traction and often just with a Power Point presentation want to raise a seed round of £500,000 (and I meet many of them). My message is: start lean, show what you can do by your-self, and just after you got some traction go to meet investors.