A winning chapter

Entrepreneurs Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal have a bestseller on their hands with their online book store, says Aarti Dua

It’s been described as one of the country’s hottest start-ups, and even called India’s Amazon. Indeed, if you’ve searched for any India-related book online, chances are that you’ve already been given cyber- directions to Flipkart.com. For, in just over two years since it launched online, Flipkart has emerged as one of India’s leading online booksellers.

Undoubtedly, IIT-Delhi classmates and Flipkart’s co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal — they aren’t related — couldn’t have written a better preface. And they’re confident they’ve got a bestseller on their hands. Flipkart has already grabbed market share from e-commerce veterans like rediff.com in the books category, and even edged out early Amazon wannabes like firstandsecond.com.

This is only the opening chapter. The founders recently raised funding from Accel India, the Indian arm of Accel Ventures, which has funded start-ups like Facebook. Now they’re busy scaling up. They plan to expand their booklist, open more distribution centres and, yes, go beyond books to become a full e-commerce play too.

Full report here Telegraph