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Introduction
Online Retail Industry
Management Team
Sachin spent his early years in Chandigarh. He graduated from IIT-Delhi with a degree in Computer Engineering. In 2006 he joined Amazon.com in India which he later left to set-up Flipkart. As CEO, Sachin oversees all the customer facing activities of the company ranging from technology to marketing. He is also in charge of Flipkart's corporate divisions which include the finance and legal departments. An avid gaming enthusiast, Sachin likes to spend most of his free time with his family. Sachin Bansal CEO and Co-founder
Born and raised in Chandigarh, Binny went on to get a degree in Computer Engineering from IIT Delhi. He had a brief stint at Amazon before taking the entrepreneurial plunge with Flipkart. At Flipkart, Binny oversees all operational activities that come into play from the time the customer places an order till the time of delivery. This spans across divisions like warehousing, logistics and customer support. Binny is also passionate about soccer and NBA. An active sportsman, he used to captain his school basketball and soccer teams.
Management Team
Mekin completed his B.E. from PESIT Bangalore in 2002. He started his career with Yahoo! and then went on to join Ugenie where he created weRead, a successful social network around books. At Flipkart, Mekin is responsible for overseeing the companys technological operations. These include innovation and application of technology in areas starting from supply chain to website management. Mekin is an avid sports fan and was actively involved in badminton, table tennis and cricket during his school and college days.
Sujeet completed his engineering from IIT Delhi. He worked in the KPO industry and orchestrated several freelance projects before joining Flipkart in 2008. At Flipkart he is responsible for overseeing supply-chain, warehousing and logistics. He is also in charge of business development for all categories. Sujeet loves playing bridge and poker.
Company History
Flipkart was established in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, both alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
They worked for Amazon.com before quitting and founding their own company.
Initially they used word of mouth marketing to popularize their company. A few months later, the company sold its first book on flipkart.com - John Woods' Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. Today, as per Alexa traffic rankings, Flipkart is among the top 30 Indian web sites and has been credited with being India's largest online bookseller with over 11 million titles on offer. Flipkart broke even in March 2010 and claims to have had at least 100% growth every quarter since its founding. The store started with selling books and in 2010 branched out to selling CDs, DVDs, mobile phones & accessories, cameras, computers, computer accessories and peripherals, pens & office supplies, other electronic items such as home appliances, kitchen appliances, personal care gadgets, health care products etc.
Funding
Initially funded by the Bansals themselves with 4 Lakhs(INR).
Flipkart has since then raised two rounds of funding from venture capital funds Accel India (in 2009) and Tiger Global Management (up to the tune of US$10 million) (in 2010).
Private equity firms Carlyle and General Atlantic are in talks to jointly invest about $150 million to $200 million in Flipkart, according to sources.
Acquisitions
2010: WEREAD, a social book discovery tool.The stated goal was to give Flipkart a social recommendation platform for buyers to make informed decisions based on recommendations from people within their social network. 2011: Mime360, a digital content platform company. 2011: Chakpak.com is a Bollywood news site that offers updates, news, photos and videos. Flipkart acquired the rights to Chakpaks digital catalogue which includes 40,000 filmographies, 10,000 movies and close to 50,000 ratings. Flipkart has categorically said that it will not be involved with the original site and will not use the brand name. 2012: Letsbuy.com is India's second largest e-retailer in electronics. Flipkart has bought the company for an estimated US$ 25 million.
Screenshot
Research Questions
How did Flipkart get on to the top of Indias e-shopping market in just 4 years? What were the strategies implemented by Flipkart to create online business in India? There are millions of retail websites and not many have achieved even a fraction of the attention that Flipkart has. What is it that makes Flipkart standout?
Order Lifecycle
Attract users to the site Family, Friends, SEO, SEM,WoM, Brand Building Provide selection Make it easy to Find & Discover products Provide details to evaluate a product Description, Specifications, UGC.
Confirm payment
This acquisition fits in to their strategy of building dominant shares in all the categories they operate in.
The price they paid for this opportunity was very attractive. This will now, allow them to accelerate faster and to get to a share similar to what they enjoy in online books category. This will strengthen the position of Flipkart in Indian market in light of the quiet entry of Amazon in Indian e-commerce industry through jungle.com.
In India, its amazing Logistics that prove to be the game-changer and thats exactly what the folks at Flipkart have done.
Handling customer complaints, without having a face to our customer service proves to be bit of a challenge at times.
Not having the display advantage, the browsing feature and not being able to carry out promotional activities are some other obvious challenges.
The discomfort of paying by cards, on account of security fears is another challenge. They have now tried to address that by introducing the cash-ondelivery option.
The fact that highest number of orders and sales get registered during weekends proves to be tough at times for logistics and customer service. The fact that we have to work 24 / 7 and the customer perceptions around it also bring some difficulty (For example, the customer places an order at 12 am and counts the number of hours for delivery right from then!)
Marketing Strategy
Flipkart has been mostly marketed by word of mouth advertising. Customer satisfaction has been their best marketing medium. Flipkart very wisely used SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Google Ad-words as the marketing tools to have a far reach in the online world. Flipkart.com official Face book page has close to 9 lac 'likes'. Flipkart recently launched a series of 3 ads with the tag line - "No Kidding No worries"
Kids were used to create the adverts to send out the message - if a kid can do it, you can also do it.
All in all to create a great customer experience.
Advertisements By Flipkart
Hiring or rather right hiring is one of the critical factors contributing to a startups success, So some of the key criteria that the Flipkart team looks at while hiring are : They typically dont look at specialists to come on board rather they look out for generalists with the attitude to learn and adapt to the fast pace of growth . Everyone in the team on a collective and individual level needs to have a high sense of ownership. This is something which clearly differentiates a high performing organization from the others.
Your hiring process is the best brand campaign for you Transparency in hiring is one of the best ways to attract the right kind of talent
But again Indian market is growing at a rapid pace as access to internet increases and people become more aware of e-commerce sites and start trusting the same. Hence Indian market is sufficiently big at-least for these two giants to co-exist beneficially.
They will look at bigger investments in their supply chain and technology.
Investment will be made in large warehouses and increased automation of their process, so that the product is not delayed. They intend to enter in to various new categories and expand their current categories as well. Everything except for groceries and automobiles will be available on Flipkart in future. To go further in the value chain, Flipkart is looking at associations with a larger number of suppliers and partners, both nationally and internationally.
Conclusion
Flipkart, the first billion dollar Internet company from India(going by 2015 estimates )is by far the leading online store in the nation. Now that Amazon is reportedly entering India in early 2012, this news becomes even more significant, considering that Amazon has previously, and unsuccessfully, tried acquiring the company, with Flipkart demanding a very high buyout price. With online retail industry in India pegged to reach $1.5 billion (2015), sources suggest that e-commerce is just hotting up in India and we may soon seen many more Internet companies achieving similar success
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