SUCCESS STORIES OF INDIANS FROM THE FIELD OF TECHNOLOGY

BINNY BANSAL AND SACHIN BANSAL – MEN BEHIND FLIPKART

 

Binny Bansal is an Indian technology entrepreneur and the co-founder of Flipkart, India’s favourite shopping website. He was born in 1981 in Chandigarh. He currently resides in Bangalore. His father is a retired chief manager at a bank and his mother is in the government sector. He has no siblings and is married to a homemaker. 

He got a graduation in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi where he met his friend Sachin Bansal. After being rejected by Google twice, Binny had worked with Sarnoff Corporation for a year and a half. Later he worked for Amazon and resigned after nine months along with Sachin Bansal to start their own venture.

 In October 2007, they started Flipkart as an online bookselling website with an initial capital of 400,000 rupees. They launched the website from an apartment in Koramangala, in Bangalore, India. For 10 days, the site did not see even a single sale until a customer from Andhra Pradesh placed the first order for the book, ‘Leaving Microsoft to Change the World’ by John Wood.  In the early days, Sachin and Binny used to deliver books on their own scooters. They used to give away pamphlets of their company outside bookstores to target their actual customers. Later,they expanded the website into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, and lifestyle products. Gradually Flipkart slowly grew in prominence.

 In 2016, Bansal became the CEO of Flipkart, where he worked on strategic development, direction and business management. In 2018, Walmart acquired a 77% stake in Flipkart group. After the acquisition, Bansal assumed the role of chairman and continued as Group CEO. His 5.5% stake in Flipkart was valued at $1 billion after the acquisition. He resigned from Flipkart in November 2018 on allegations of personal misconduct. He started to invest into new projects like image processing startup Terraview in 2019.

In September 2015 along with Sachin Bansal, he was named the 86th richest person in India with a net worth of $1.3 billion by Forbes India Rich List. India Today ranked them 26th in India's 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list. 

SUCCESS STORIES OF INDIANS FROM THE FIELD OF TECHNOLOGY

SACHIN BANSAL AND BINNY BANSAL – MEN BEHIND FLIPKART

Sachin Bansal is the co-founder of Flipkart that changed India’s shopping style. He is an Indian technology entrepreneur and a passionate gamer.

He was born on 5th August 1981 in Chandigarh. His father was a businessman and mother was a homemaker. He had completed his schooling from Saint Anne’s Convent School. He pursued 49^th rank in All India JEE rankings and got into Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

After graduation, Bansal worked at Techspan for a few months and later in 2006 he joined Amazon Web Services as a Senior Software Engineer. Later, his friend Binny Bansal also started working in Amazon. In 2007, both of them decided to quit their job to start his own venture.

 In October 2007, they started Flipkart as an online bookselling website with an initial capital of 400,000 rupees . They launched the website from an apartment in Koramangala, in Bangalore, India. For 10 days, the site did not see even a single sale until a customer from Andhra Pradesh placed the first order for the book, ‘Leaving Microsoft to Change the World’ by John Wood.  In the early days, Sachin and Binny used to deliver books on their own scooters. They used to give away pamphlets of their company outside bookstores to target their actual customers. Later,they expanded the website into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, and lifestyle products. Gradually Flipkart slowly grew in prominence.

From inception until 2016, Bansal held the position of Chief Executive Officer and from 2016 until 2018, he held the position of Executive Chairman. In 2018, he exited Flipkart along with the Walmart deal that acquired  77 percent stakes of the company at $16 billion. The non-compete clause restricted Bansal from starting any business that directly or indirectly competed with Flipkart for 18 months and in making any investments in businesses competing with Flipkart for 36 months from his departure.

Bansal wanted focus on his pending personal projects, gaming and brushing up his coding skills. Later , he founded BAC Acquisitions Private Limited, a venture that focused on building and acquiring technology-driven businesses . In 2019, he had investments in Ola, Grey Orange, Ather Energy, SigTuple, Inshorts, Unacademy , CRIDS and TeamIndus.