bringing back aggression within the firm to fight amazon he is leading the charge for the big billion days event one of krishnamurthys first moves was to ramp up the companys digital marketing budget he has been instrumental in flipkart getting back its edge in smartphone sales which account for at least half of the companys online commerce sales kalyan is very resultoriented when he sets targets he expects managers to either promise meeting them 100 even an 80 probability doesnt work with him a flipkart employee said we call him the closer since he has directly led all top business tieups for flipkart and brought us back even stronger flipkart has started making deeper cuts to reduce cash burn in may it deferred the joining dates of iim graduates and in july began laying off around 700 employees the companys culture has significantly changed as it gets into a streetfight mode to take on amazon at a recent meeting binny bansal drilled it down telling employees that flipkart was not a place for the lighthearted anymoreaffordability push with its push on affordability flipkart is trying to align itself with the reality of the consumption economy in india seen as very different from that of china indias urban middle defined as those earning about 11000 rs 7 lakh a year was estimated at about 27 million people as compared to chinas 157 million between 2002 and 2012 according to a goldman sachs report most of the new generation of indias youth will first fall into urban mass a cohort that is 129 million people today earning over 3200 on average the expansion of urban mass both in size and income level will be the key driver of indias consumption story in the coming 510 years goldman sachs said while flipkarts aim is to grow the market with affordability initiatives that can nullify any threat of it losing market share its past innovations both cod and flash sales have been adopted and executed well by rival amazon india the first senior executive mentioned above said that if flipkart was the one growing the market and its gross sales difference with amazon was about 10 the company wouldnt be bothered by it but if they are growing the market and we are not then i will be worried he added overall amazon is spending 34 times of flipkart even after spending this much there is no market growth amazon india is not as worried about growing the market at this point of time we are very focused on figuring out how to add selection add sellers and deliver things fast and reliably at scale country manager amit agarwal said in an interview this month these three elements have a disproportionate impact on how customers will adopt than many other innovations in my opinionwhats next going forward flipkart is looking to build its two other businesspayments and logistics flipkart has started converting digital wallets users across its platforms to phonepe to which its