by gaurav dalmia the recent 16 billion acquisition of flipkart by walmart is a watershed not just for the indian technology sector but also for indian business as a whole its the largest deal walmart has done till date its the largest ecommerce acquisition in the world early investors such as accel and tiger global made 400 times their investment this is significant even by silicon valleys atmospheric standards though flipkarts numbers are impressive even more impressive are the lessons learnt the first lesson is insight when flipkart started in 2007 ecommerce was very small and most of it was travel related ticketing flipkarts bet on ecommerce growth had multiple legs improving connectivity increased consumption by indias youth and better logistics infrastructure in hindsight these bets look obvious but it was not the case then flipkarts astuteness made it bet on electronics and fashion today the two top categories after travel the second lesson is trust flipkarts heady growth would not have happened if managers were not empowered to make decisions it was a twoway trust for the company it was faith in its army of techies and marketers that they could deliver in the high stakes game for managers it was the confidence that wrong decisions inevitable in any business would not be held against them personally political commentator francis fukuyamas pioneering study on culture shows that prosperous countries tend to be those where business relations between people can be conducted informally and flexibly on the basis of trust related to this is the third lesson of ambition flipkart had crossed 3 billion in revenues on its 10th anniversary its clipping a growth rate of 30 companies like flipkart consciously plan for a tenfold growth in business this exercise is both invigorating and humbling companies have to learn new skills every day and unlearn a few along the way all six aspects of galbraiths star model strategy structure people decision making reward systems and symbols have to evolve in synch for the new incarnation most businesses falter here a byproduct of such ambition is the fourth lesson of tenacity almost every great business i have seen has had an existential dilemma sometime or the other as recently as early 2017 flipkart faced markdowns in valuation from some of its blue chip shareholders such as morgan stanley vanguard and fidelity investments that was the fifth consecutive quarter of valuation markdowns many questioned flipkarts staggering losses of 12 billion that year the company was seeing top level exits sachin and binny bansal moved from running daytoday operations of the company kalyan krishnamurthy was brought in to stabilise operations after a series of transition hiccups in the face of amazons aggressive onslaught he did not make a tentative or conservative detour his aggressive strategy was a classic playtowin gameplan boost spending on promotions and dominate indias festivalseason shopping it worked the fifth lesson is alchemy in mythology alchemy is the art of turning ordinary metal into gold in