Just like the PayPal mafia transformed 

Silicon Valley after the dot-com bust of 2001,  

giving rise to some of America’s most innovative 

startups, the Flipkart Mafia, comprised of  

enterprising former Flipkart employees, has 

transformed India’s startup ecosystem - and  

full disclosure here, we did not come up with that 

term, just Google Flipkart Mafia and you’ll see  

that people have been talking about this group 

for years. In fact, as of 2017, more than 200  

companies had been created by Flipsters, and that 

number is likely significantly higher at the time  

of us filming this video in 2021, which is why we 

wanted to highlight some of the most noteworthy  

and successful startups that have been created by 

the Flipkart Mafia, coming up right after this. 

Starting things off at #10 we have the only 

startup on this list that isn't Indian, although  

it was created by Indians in California - Suki. 

Founded by former Flipkart Chief Product Officer  

Punit Soni along with Anshu Sharma and Karthik 

Rajan in 2017, Suki is an AI-powered voice-enabled  

digital assistant that helps doctors to expedite 

the process of completing administrative tasks  

so that they have more time for their patients. 

Doctors in the United States spend twice as much  

time filling out Electronic Health Records than 

they do with their patients, and so Suki’s primary  

goal is to change that. This digital assistant 

takes notes, fills out electronic health records,  

schedules appointments, retrieves patient medical 

history, and even recommends medicine dosages  

and refills. The startup was featured in Fast 

Company’s list of the 10 most innovative health  

companies of 2020, and so far, they’ve raised 40 

million dollars (₹298 crore) from their investors  

(Flare Capital Partners, First Round Capital, 

Venrock and Breyer Capital) in order to continue  

making American healthcare more patient-oriented.

Next up at #9 we have a Bengaluru-based  
bookkeeping app called OkCredit, which was 
founded by former Flipkart employees Gaurav Kumar  

and Harsh Pokharna, along with their college 

friend Aditya Prasad, and before founding the  

company, they were regularly buying groceries 

at their local kirana shop on credit - these  

accounts were recorded in a physical notebook, 

which they realised was a very popular and also  

very antiquated way of bookkeeping that was ripe 

for disruption. In 2016 they onboarded their local  

kirana shopkeeper as their first customer, and 

their user base has been growing ever since.  

OkCredit is now used by 23 million (2.3 crore) 

small and medium-sized businesses across India,  

and has expanded their offerings to include 

a digital storefront builder and a staff  

attendance and salary tracker. They’ve been able 

to build these additions, in part, thanks to the  

help of their investors, (Y Combinator, Tiger 

Global, and Lightspeed India Partners) who so  

far have pumped 84.2 million dollars 

(₹627 crore) into the startup. 

Moving on to #8 now we have Bengaluru-based 

dockless scooter rental startup Vogo,  

which was founded by Flipster Anand Ayyadurai, 

along with Padmanabhan Balakrishnan and Sanchit  

Mittal in 2015, but Anand’s entrepreneurial 

journey actually began while he was working  

at Flipkart - he was put in charge of launching 

televisions on the platform, despite the fact that  

he knew nothing about televisions, or e-commerce 

for that matter – by working hard and thinking  

outside of the box though, he was able to do it 

successfully, and this experience gave him the  

confidence to start Vogo with his co-founders 

in 2015, with the goal of providing Indians  

with affordable, accessible, and convenient 

self-transportation. Today, Vogo scooters  

have completed 10 million (1 crore) rides, and the 

company is now working on electrifying their fleet  

with the help of their investors (Matrix Partners 

India, Stellaris Venture Partners, Kalaari Capital  

and Lightrock) who have pumped a 180 million 

dollars (₹1,340 crore) into the startup so far. 

Coming in at #7 now we have Bengaluru-based 

fintech startup Slice, which was founded by  

former Flipkart employee Rajan Bajaj, along 

with Deepak Malhotra in 2016. See, in India,  

you usually need to be employed before the bank 

will trust you enough to give you a credit card,  

but the problem is that by that point, the 

years which you should have spent learning  

how to use a credit card responsibly under the 

supervision of your parents has been wasted,  

which is why Slice launched a credit card for 

millennials in 2019 with no annual charges,  

no joining fees, and no hidden costs, 

which has enabled them to onboard more than  

350,000 (3.5 lakh) customers and they plan to 

increase that number to 1 million (1 crore)  

customers by the end of this financial year. To 

do this, they’ve embraced the support of investors  

(Blume Ventures, Das Capital, Simile Venture 

Partners and Gunosy Capital) who have pumped 73.7  

million dollars (₹549 crore) into Slice so far.

Next up at #6 we have a Gurugram-based omnichannel  

used car retail platform Spinny, which was founded 

by Flipster Mohit Gupta along with Niraj Singh  

and Ramanshu Mahaur in 2015, and one way in which 

Spinny stands out is their next-day shipping,  

which isn’t a big deal for small items like 

electronics or clothing but we’re talking  

about cars here. Many used car marketplaces 

deemed this kind of delivery speed impossible  

before Spinny showed up, but because Mohit Gupta’s 

was the Associate Director of Delivery Operations  

at Flipkart, where he handled same day and 

next day shipping, Spinny is able to do this  
flawlessly. Spinny is currently operating 
across eight Indian cities and they plan  

to expand to seven more in the next couple of 

months using the funds that they’ve raised from  

their investors (Tiger Global, General Catalyst, 

and Fundamentum), who so far, have pumped 230.5  

million dollars (₹1,717 crore) into the startup.

Moving on to #5 now we have Bengaluru-based  

fintech startup Navi Technologies. After selling 

his 5.5% stake in Flipkart for a billion dollars,  

Sachin Bansal, one of the company’s founders, 

decided to start something new with former Bank  

of America director Ankit Agarwal in 2018. The 

goal of Navi Technologies is to revolutionise  

India’s banking, financial services and 

insurance industry, and they’re doing this  

very quickly through an inorganic growth strategy 

that heavily relies on acquisitions. Since 2018,  

they’ve acquired four different companies, 

(1. Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development  

Services 2. DHFL General Insurance 3. Mavenhive 

Technologies 4. Essel Mutual Fund), mainly by  

tapping Sachin Bansal’s personal 

fortune, and these acquisitions  

have enabled them to rapidly launch lending 

and insurance products like Navi Finserv,  

Navi General Insurance, and Navi Mutual Fund. 

So far, Navi Technologies has raised 583 million  

dollars (₹4,338 crore), some of which has come 

directly out of Sachin’s pocket, and some of  

which has been raised from external investors.

Coming in at #4 now we have Bengaluru-based online  

investment platform Groww. All of Groww’s founders 

are former Flipkart employees: there’s Harsh Jain,  

Ishan Bansal, Lalit Keshre, and Neeraj Singh and 

in 2016 they identified a massive opportunity  

in the fact that only about a tenth of the people 

in India who had investable income were actually  

investing it (20 million (2 crore) out of 200 

million (20 crore)). To change that, they launched  
a mutual funds awareness campaign, and embraced 
technology like UPI and eKYC to make investing  

easy and stress-free for their customers. And 

these innovations payed off: Groww now has 15  

million (1.5 crore) customers and became a unicorn 

in 2021. They also recently bought 21-year-old  

financial services company Indiabulls, which is 

an acquisition they were able to afford thanks  

to their investors, who so far have pumped a 140 

million dollars (₹1,043 crore) into the startup. 

Next up at #3 we have Bengaluru-based health and 

fitness startup Cure.fit. Flipkart’s former Chief  

Business Officer Ankit Nagori started Cure.fit 

along with serial entrepreneur and former Flipkart  

Head of Commerce & Advertising Mukesh Bansal. 

Ankit and Mukesh both share a passion for fitness,  

and they felt that in 2016, this was a passion 

that they could turn into a brand and sell to  

Indian people in the form of clean, professional, 

well-equipped fitness centres. Of course, when the  

COVID-19 pandemic hit, all of Cure.fit’s more 

than 130 centres were shut down, which resulted  

in the company adopting an omnichannel model where 

they offer personalised online fitness training.  

Now, as a loss-making company, the pandemic may 

have been the end of Cure.fit if it weren’t for  

their investors (Tata Digital, Temasek Holdings, 

and Epiq Capital) who so far have pumped $480  

million (₹3,575 crore) into the startup.

Moving on to #2 now we have Bengaluru-based  

digital payments platform PhonePe. Back in 2011, 

Flipkart acquired a startup that connected music  

publishers with music producers called Mime360 

in an effort to build Flyte, Flipkart’s own  

music streaming service similar to iTunes. 

Mime360’s founders, Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari,  

and Burzin Engineer, were aquihired in this 

deal, but unfortunately, Flipkart shut Flyte down  

in 2015, prompting Mime360’s founders to start 

something new: PhonePe, a UPI-based payments  

platform that Flipkart actually acquired before 

it was even launched. See, Flipkart had also  

unsuccessfully tried to launch a payment gateway 

called PayZippy, and they felt that PhonePe  

succeeded where PayZippy had failed. Since its 

launch in 2016, PhonePe has become India’s market  

leader in UPI transactions, and as a separate 

entity from Flipkart, it's currently valued at  

5.5 billion dollars (₹40,960 crore).

And finally, coming in at #1,  

we have Bengaluru-based B2B e-commerce unicorn 

Udaan, which is another one of those startups  

where all of the founders are ex-Flipkart. 

There’s Amod Malviya, Flipkart’s former CTO,  

Sujeet Kumar who handled operations, and Vaibhav 

Gupta who was in charge of products, business  

finance and analytics. Together, they decided to 

do in the B2B space what Flipkart had done in the  

B2C space by launching an e-commerce platform 

for traders, wholesalers and retailers in 2017.  

Just one year later, Udaan had achieved unicorn 

status, and today, Udaan offers a catalogue of  

500,000 (5 lakh) products, and they facilitate 

more than 4.5 million (45 lakh) transactions  

every month. Of course, one of the reasons why 

they’ve been able to build such an extensive  

network in such a short span of time is because of 

their investors who so far have pumped 1.2 billion  

dollars (₹8,942 crore) into Udaan so far.

All right, those were our picks for top 10  

startups that were created by the Flipkart 

Mafia. I hope you enjoyed the video. And  

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