Our first order was a book called "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World." We were leaving Amazon to change India. The irony wasn't lost on us.
In America, you build an e-commerce company. In India, you build an e-commerce company, a logistics company, a payments company, and an internet adoption company — all at the same time.
Cash-on-delivery was 80% of our orders in the early days. People didn't trust online payments, so we literally collected cash at the door. That's how you build e-commerce in a country without credit cards.
Amazon spent a decade building logistics in the US. We had to build it in two years because Amazon was coming to India and they weren't going to wait for us.
Big Billion Days proved that Indian consumers will shop online if you give them a reason. We did $1.4 billion in five days. India wasn't an e-commerce desert — it was an e-commerce dam waiting to break.
Walmart paid $16 billion for a company that had never made a profit. They weren't buying our P&L. They were buying access to 1.4 billion consumers.