Saturday, February 05, 2022

Book Review - Big Billion Startup (Flipkart Story)

Finished this book on audible recently - Big Billion Startup by Mihir Dalal. Its actually is like an action packed thriller!

If you are interested in indian startup space and want to go down memory lane on how 2 young IITians built this behemoth, its a must read. And it has lot of learnings to pick from.

Listing some of my key takeaways -

1. Never trash a sounding unrealistic idea (because its against conventional wisdom) - When one of the senior folks at Flipkart floated the idea of exclusivity (as a marketplace); it was laughed at. But later it became a mega trend with Motorola and Xiaomis where phones got sold in lakhs in minutes!

2. Self-belief and confidence of positive feedback from customers can give immense power to founders in this case to not exit early! Bansals were given cheap exit offers (though good prices) but they stuck thier guns.

3. Vision enables you to take bold bets. Due to Sachin's vision and trend spotting in data (that bulk of shopping will move to app) led him to declare an app only strategy which was ridiculed at that time.

4. Having one day as a non-operations day where thinktank just debates future is a plus. Else, most days and nights in a startup goes in firefighting.

and many more. 

I thoroughly loved it.Recommend!

#flipkart #ecommerce #book

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