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.
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.
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.
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.
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.