In February 2010, a fresh-faced engineering graduate cold-called India’s hottest e-commerce startup at the New Delhi World Book Fair. Ankit Nagori had heard of Flipkart, a Bengaluru-based startup that had broken new ground by selling books online ever since it acquired its first customer in October 2007. Compared to the heavyweight brick-and-mortar booksellers and publishing houses that participated in the fair, which is held every year at Pragati Maidan in the national capital, Flipkart was among the smaller exhibitors.
“Flipkart was a small company but it was one of the largest startups in the country,” recalls Ankit, then a Delhi lad of 24 who had completed his engineering from IIT-Guwahati in 2007. “Any entrepreneur would have loved to become something like Flipkart, even at that sm...
