Flipkart's Entrepreneurial Success: A Case Study of Sachin Bansal

This case study delves into the entrepreneurial journey of Sachin Bansal, the founder of Flipkart, highlighting his vision, risk-taking ability, and innovative strategies that led to the creation of one of India's most successful e-commerce platforms. It examines his background, the initial challenges faced in establishing an online shopping culture in India, and the key decisions that contributed to Flipkart's growth, such as focusing on customer satisfaction through efficient delivery and introducing the Cash on Delivery option. The study further elaborates on Sachin Bansal's core principles for entrepreneurs, including proactive fundraising, focusing on business quality, team building, and continuous market analysis, while emphasizing the importance of teamwork, innovation, and risk management in achieving entrepreneurial success. It also touches upon the healthy competition within the team and the importance of learning from competitors and the ability to take criticism in a positive way.

RUNNING HEAD: Entrepreneurship 1
Name of the student
Topic-Entrepreneurship
University Name

Entrepreneurship 2
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
About Sachin Bansal........................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

Entrepreneurship 3
Introduction
Entrepreneurship is a very wide terminology that has been used a lot nowadays. An
entrepreneur is a person who has a willingness to develop, organize and manage and start a new
business without any fear. It refers to a person who can take the risk without thinking about
profits. He is called as an innovator as with the help of brainstorming, he tries to find out good
and innovative ideas that he can apply in his business. Entrepreneurs play an important role in
the economy of the country as they have skills and talent to develop new ideas and take initiative
to apply those ideas in real life scenarios. It is necessary to develop and bring new ideas to the
market for the growth of the economy. Everyone knows the name of Flipkart today and Sachin
Bansal is the man behind that organization. He has a great mind and he applied the same to his
new business (Wahee, & Bhardwaj, 2014).
An entrepreneur is a person who provides goods or services by combining land, labor,
and capital. They create plans for business and then hire labor, acquire different resources and
finances and provide leadership and management for the same. (Mawere, 2018) There are
various challenges which are found in the entrepreneurship like to obtain finances, hire talented
human resources and to overcome bureaucracy (Agarwal, 2014).
India has started online shopping a lot and Flipkart is one of the most amazing
destinations for the same. The person who started this was one of the first people who started
online shopping website in India is Sachin Bansal. He is an IIT graduate and a reputed
businessman who has created a revolution in internet shopping. He is born at brought up in
Chandigarh and did his software engineering from IIT Delhi. He has worked in Amazon as a
senior software engineer. Afterward he and his colleague Binny Bansal left Amazon to start their
own company ‘Flipkart' He has the vision to take the business by using proper cyber computing
system gave the chance to the people in India to do online shopping (Hughes, 2014)
He with his team started their website to run the online business. They started their
website in October 2007, with two lakhs investment each, that they got from their family. In the
starting, the only sold books. That time software industry was on the boom but that online
shopping culture was not developed. People were not so much open to browsing products and
shop them online. But they have created trust as well as a new culture of checking goods online
and buy them. They faced all the challenges related to their business line. Sachin Bansal is an
entrepreneur as he took the risk and left a well-paid job to start something on his own (Amudha,
2013). He was a type of entrepreneur who wants to do something at the highest level of
perfection and start something new that involves a lot of risks. There is much strength that made
him successful. He was very clear in his mind that what he wants to do and he has given a lot of
flexibility to his employees so that they can easily come up with new innovative ideas. One of
the major reasons for their success was to focus on the delivery of the products. They thoughts
that every customer wants to get their product delivered as soon as possible and they can get an

Entrepreneurship 4
advantage if they can do so. They have launched their own supply chain management to deliver
products in a faster way. Flipkart was the first to provide Cash on Delivery option in India. Their
priceless efforts made them successful. Sachin was so much clear about the goals and objectives
and he knows where he needs to focus to satisfy the needs of the customers. Increasing customer
base was the things that have motivated him always and create an enthusiasm within him to work
more hard.
There are some basic things that he believed on or these are the necessary rules for him-
1. Raise funds when available- According to him, it is important for an entrepreneur to raise fund
whenever they are available rather than to wait for a suitable situation. It can be the reason for
the success and failure of a business.
2. Concentrate on good times- He believes in focusing on the business more when it's going well.
According to him, an entrepreneur should always focus on capital issues and the quality of the
business. He always thought that improvements should take place whenever things are really
good. He follows a mantra ‘Customer is King’. He says that an entrepreneur should never get
emotionally attached to solutions; he should get emotionally attached to the problem.”
3. Main focus aspects- According to him, for an entrepreneur, the main focus should be on team
building and the conditions of the market. There are a lot of changes in a business life cycle so
there should be a continuous focus on the market opportunities and grab them when there is a
crucial time (Wahee, & Bhardwaj, (2014).
4. Importance of boundaries- Some people said that there are no boundaries for entrepreneurs but
according to Sachin, it is good to have some boundaries as it helps a new startup from
committing big mistakes (Koteswari, & Savitha, 2013).
5. Take criticism in a positive way- Flipkart faced many issues regarding Big Billion day in 2014
due to server issues and the website was not working properly. In that situation, the company
came out of it and focused on the improvements. Afterward, they took some necessary steps to
not to face the same problem in future. Sachin believes that criticism and feedbacks are good for
every organization as it gives an opportunity to become better.
6. Keep your personal and professional life separate- There are a lot of things to do in the life of an
Entrepreneur like meeting investors, decision making, and management. He accomplished this
entire requirement with managing his personal like too in the best way. He has a son and a well
family. He is a healthy human being and loves his family a lot.
7. Keep an eye on the competitors- Every entrepreneurship organization focuses on its objectives
but it is necessary to keep an eye on the competitors also as it can teach many things that we are
doing wrong or we can learn a better way of doing things by that. Sachin Bansal uses to shop
from all the other E-Commerce sites and grasp all the positive points of the same and sends to his
team for improvements.
8. Think Big- Sachin Bansal believes in thinking big and having the biggest dreams. He always
dreamt of success and big achievements and he got the same. Big thinking creates a lot of
differences in life.

Entrepreneurship 5
Sachin always considered teamwork as an important thing in the success of the
organization. He observed that if all the employees could work in a team then they could easily
mitigate the issue and problems which they would face while doing individual work. The
collective efforts of team members will also increase the overall output and create the synergy in
the business. He believes in working in a team and gives equal importance to each team member.
(Mawere, 2018) According to him, the importance of teamwork is (Jha, 2016)
1. The efficiency of teamwork- When a teamwork for a specific purpose then its automatically
increases the efficiency of the team as they start working faster. It also develops new skills in
employees. Teamwork helps an organization to complete the work in the best possible way.
2. Self- Monitor- When a single person is responsible to do a task then sometimes he gets bored
and start working slowly but if there are numerous people who have the responsibility to
accomplish a task then they basically depend upon the quality of the work done by other
employees. When one employee's performance takes a slow pace then automatically other
employees start improving them by applying appropriate knowledge and skills. (Marletto, 2012)
3. Innovation- According to Sachin, for a single problem, there are so many solutions. When a
person works individually then he can find out the best possible solution by applying his
knowledge only but when a group of people works together then knowledge of many people
applies to a single problem. This is the reason that so many innovative solutions can be generated
by working in a team. (Wilcox and Beckstrand, n.d.)
4. Learning perspective- When people work in a team, they come up with the new things and the
new set of knowledge. In organizations, where people work in a team, it has been observed that
they are more knowledgeable in comparison to the employees who do not work in a team. They
can correct each other’s mistakes and performance will automatically get improved.
5. Healthy competition- Teamwork results in a healthy competition as everyone wants to prove
their performance and capabilities. When people work in a team, they always want to perform
better than each other to get a good promotion. (Hjorth and Stewart, 2008) To promote a healthy
competition, there should be a rewards and recognition policy that creates a motivation within
the team.
6. Strong work relations- Employees working in a team usually creates a good bond with each other
as when they succeed in a common goal then the bond turns into a good friendship. It is the
strength for an organization if employees are friends with each other and they trust each other.
They will support and co-operate each other at the time of need. (Schoonhoven and Romanelli,
2001)
There are some basic features of entrepreneurship which needs to be engraved by the
persons while running the business. Sachin Bansal has explained the same with some of his
viewpoints as follows-

Entrepreneurship 6
1. An economic activity- Entrepreneurship is an important activity as it involves activities related
to optimum utilization of resources in order to create value or money. (Coates, 2001) The
business environment is so dynamic so it is important to perform economic activities at the same
pace.
2. It consists of innovation- An entrepreneur needs to do brainstorming and continuously find out
new ideas. They always motivate their employees to find out new innovative business models
and compare them to the existing one. This makes them unable to find out the most effective and
efficient way to grow. (Alvarez, Agarwal and Sorenson, 2005)
3. The potential for profit- Profit refer to the return or basically the compensation that an
entrepreneur gets out of all the efforts and taking a risk. It can be earned by converting an idea
into the real business venture. Without the profit motive, an entrepreneur never wants to spend so
much of time (Banerjee, 2013).
4. Risk-taking- Risk taking is a major part of entrepreneurship. No business venture can run
without taking risks. New ideas are always risky as no one knows the success of the same after
the applicability of ideas in real life situations. There can be the positive or negative result of the
new ideas and no one can predict the same. There is always a requirement of being patient. The
risk is equal to return as we all know; there are no returns without risk-taking.
After assessing these features, it is inferred that if the entrepreneur fails to have these
intents then he will also fail to run his business. He needs to assess all the internal and external
factors before starting of new business such as capital, human resources and business process
(Gokhale, 2016).
Sachin has used networking in his business as he needs some sellers to rely upon him and
sell their products via Flipkart. He approached many business houses and creates trust in their
minds for Flipkart (Hisrich, Peters and Shepherd, 2017). The trust he had for his employees was
the pioneer of his success. He was accompanied by the best supporting team who were always
there to take care of all the issues starting from the minor cases to major cases.
With the help of this study, I have learned a lot about entrepreneurship as it is an
important part of the economy of the country. Entrepreneurs play an important role in the growth
of the economy. They develop new ideas, take risks, and apply those ideas to the real-life
situations. They innovate and they succeed. Not everybody has the same courage to take risks
and start a new and innovative business venture. Some people have fear not to take risks and they
are the ones who just spoil their dreams. Entrepreneurship is really a broad term. It involves
many things. (Hughes, 2014) Sachin Bansal has left a really good job just because he wants to
turn all his thinking, dreams and imaginations into real plans. (Fernie, 2005) He took really a big
risk but he was always confident enough about his plan and him always and trust in himself. He
thought out of the box and started different approaches to attract the customers in India as India
was not very much used to online shopping websites. He started cash on delivery option that
seems to be a very flexible way of shopping for households. Flipkart has created a good image in
the eyes of customers. (Royer, 2013) People started shopping from the same without any

Entrepreneurship 7
hesitation. Today it is one of the reputed online shopping websites. Now, everyone knows Sachin
Bansal and his great achievements. People can learn a lot from him how his courage made him a
big successful man. I have learned two main important things after reading his career. I came to
realized that if a person wants to achieve something then firstly he to see the vision and with the
help of team he could covert that vision into reality. Sachin Bansal was the person who trusted
himself and his friend to achieve extraordinary results. He broke through the shell again and
again whenever he had to confront the impossible issues and problems in his life. He came with
the new ideas and encountered all the possible problems to run his business effectively
(Koteswari, & Savitha, 2013).

Entrepreneurship 8
Conclusion
Entrepreneurship really plays an important role in the economic development. They are
the people who directly contribute to the economy of the country. They develop new ideas with
their skills and knowledge and bring the same to the market. There are many big Entrepreneurs
who are really doing well just because they took the risk without thinking about the profits and
fear. It is not so easy to invest money in a new idea without fear but people like Sachin Bansal
use their courage to take such initiatives and now they are the owners of big companies. He has
also faced many challenges but ultimately he is successful and his business is growing at a good
pace. Entrepreneurship can help a person to learn so many things that are very important to grow
in life or get success. It also makes a person learn that how to take risks in life and learn a lot
from it.

Entrepreneurship 9
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