Online Bookstore To India’s 2nd Unicorn, The Story Of Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal’s Flipkart – News18

Flipkart is considered one of the most popular e-commerce websites in India. From fashion to electronics, the online shopping platform offers a wide range of products to its customers. It was founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007 when the online market was still a very distinct and smaller concept, and many still preferred offline shopping. However, these two software engineers from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT Delhi) believed in the power of e-commerce and knew that the coming years would see an increased number of smartphone users. So, let’s look at the success story of the two founding members of Flipkart.

Their journey began after Sachin and Binny met each other during their college days. Later, they started working as software engineers for a company in Bangalore. However, they both recognised that India’s e-commerce market was on the verge of growth, so they chose to establish a comparison search engine and started as an online bookstore. They both made a funding deposit of Rs 2,71,000, and this is how Flipkart started. It is important to know that another e-commerce giant, Amazon, also started similarly and later started selling everything.

Flipkart was founded in a 2BHK flat in Bangalore in 2007. Sachin began working as the CEO of Flipkart, and Binny, on the other hand, was appointed as the COO of a rapidly expanding e-commerce website. Flipkart quickly became India’s second unicorn firm after a tech company invested USD 150 million in 2012.

However, Sachin and Binny soon left the popular e-commerce site after Walmart acquired more than 77 percent of the company’s shares for USD 16 billion. According to reports, it turned out to be the biggest deal for a firm that was formed on the Internet. Despite leaving the companies, they are both still billionaires. Sachin’s total assets are worth almost USD 1.3 billion, while Binny has assets worth almost USD 1.4 billion.