Flipkart, Tiger Global’s unlikely burden

Late last October, Sandeep Singhal, a co-founder at Mumbai-based venture capital firm Nexus Venture Partners, unwittingly pronounced e-commerce company Flipkart’s epitaph. At the close of a panel discussion in Bengaluru, Singhal remarked, in jest: “Effectively what we (venture capital investors) did is collectively spend $2-3 billion on educating the Indian consumer on how to use Amazon…” This week, the Flipkart that started up a decade ago in a two-bedroom apartment in Bengaluru and became the flag-bearer of the current generation of homegrown Internet start-ups, died.