Binny Bansal: It was clear his days were numbered at Flipkart

Walmart chose Binny over Sachin because he was considered a team player and more level-headed

Until 2016, Binny Bansal was seen as the quintessential back office guy, a co-owner who did not care to make his presence felt outside the company. It was co-founder Sachin Bansal who emerged as the external face of the company and was considered the company’s strategic manager.

But when Walmart bought a majority stake in India’s largest home-grown e-commerce company, the US giant chose Binny over Sachin, because he was considered a team player, unassuming and more level-headed.

Yet when the US retail giant acquired a 77 per cent stake in the Bengaluru-based company for $16 billion almost everybody knew that Binny’s days at Flipkart were numbered. The new majority owner would want to run the company in a certain manner rather than on the whims and fancies or intuitions of the founders. But nobody, not even those who are in Binny’s inner circle, had any inkling that he would exit quite so soon, or that his tenure would end in a manner that was beyond anyone’s imagination. After the news broke Tuesday evening and the reason for Binny’s exit became public, most of his friends, colleagues and senior leaders in India’s startup universe were in a state of disbelief.

“Even though I don’t know much about his private life, he is certainly not one of those people who are impulsive and get carried away by hearsay. He was actually Flipkart’s go-to man, and his contribution to the growth of the company is clearly undebated,” said the founder of one of the tech startups in Bengaluru where Binny is an investor in his personal capacity, though he hesitated to state with certainty that Binny had an affair with a former colleague that went sour.

Private life aside, Binny was known for his uncanny ability to gel with anybody, a key ingredient of leadership that comes to him naturally, which made him successful as a key execution person even as Sachin was busy looking for investors during Flipkart’s intense battle with deep-pocketed rival Amazon. His inclination to be a team player is evident from a 2016 interview he gave to this paper. “I think, it (Flipkart) is neither run by Binny nor Kalyan (Kalyan Krishnamurthy, who in 2017 returned to the company as the CEO and continues to hold the position), it is a lot of team work. A lot of things we run is because of the technology we have built and we are a strong technology organisation,” he said.

Born and brought up in Chandigarh and an IIT-Delhi alumnus, Binny started his working life with a company called Sarnoff Corporation, which built driver assistance system for cars. After spending one and half years with the company, he moved to Amazon where he met Sachin, a year senior in IIT-Delhi. This is where the idea of Flipkart was germinated and the duo eventually left the US retailer to build a digital commerce business in India.

Until January 2016, when Binny took over as the CEO, he crafted the backbone of the company, building E-Kart, the logistics and supply chain unit, while focusing on enhancing customer experience. “He is always quick to respond to any situation, a business idea that is vying for execution or an emerging issue before it escalates to a bigger one. If given a task, he was quick enough to put together a team and get into an execution mode,” said a former colleague who worked with Binny until a couple of years ago.

Behind the shy and reserved exterior, however, was an adventurous streak, evident in the long rides he took on his superbikes. Unlike his co-founder, Sachin, Binny was considered more a family man, who rarely missed an opportunity to go on a vacation or spend time with family. In 2010, he married his long-time girlfriend Trisha Vasudeva, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, and the couple has since been living in Bengaluru. When Sachin stepped down as CEO in January 2016 because of domestic issues, Binny become the “reluctant leader” at Flipkart.

“When Sachin left Flipkart, we thought he got a raw deal. But looking at how things have unfolded now, it seems he made a gracious exit,” said a former senior employee who worked with the founders.

Details of the personal crisis that forced his resignation are still being revealed, but Binny, 37, say sources close to him, is not a person who will idly while away his time. He has already invested in a host of startups in his personal capacity and is expected to step it up in the coming days. At a recent event, Binny had also said that he would like to spend a lot more time learning how philanthropy works and investing in things that matter to him. There will certainly be a second innings from Binny, said numerous people who have worked with him in the past.