In 2007, two software engineers from IIT Delhi quit their jobs at Amazon to build something that would change the course of Indian internet history. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (not related) started Flipkart with a humble vision: to sell books online in India.

But little did they know, what they started from a small two-bedroom apartment in Bangalore would lay the foundation for what would become India’s most iconic e-commerce giant, eventually acquired by Walmart for a staggering $16 billion in 2018.

Behind that success was a scrappy, overworked, and absurdly talented group of about 10 engineers who made it all possible. This is their story, how they didn’t just build a company, but an engineering culture that defined an industry.

Let’s rewind to the late 2000s. India was still figuring out what online shopping was. Mobile data was patchy. Payment gateways were unreliable. COD (Cash on Delivery) was a radical idea. Amazon hadn’t entered India. And buying something online? That felt like a gamble.

So how did Flipkart thrive in such an environment?

A lot of it came down to probably those first 10 engineers.

They weren’t hired to manage teams or architect fancy, scalable platforms. They were hired to make sure the website didn’t crash when three people tried to place an order at the same time. They were hired to solve real problems, fast.

From building the shopping cart in PHP to writing backend scripts in Perl, this team of engineers was working with what today would be considered almost ancient tech. But they were laser-focused on one thing: making the customer experience work.

The first version of Flipkart was built on PHP, with MySQL as the database and Apache servers hosted on rented machines. There was no AWS or cloud infrastructure in place. Most of the time, scaling meant physically adding more servers and praying things didn’t break during a festival sale.

Scripts were written in Perl for backend automation. A bunch of cron jobs were strung together to manage order tracking, payment confirmations, and basic inventory logic. And yes, when servers went down, engineers would rush to the server room to manually restart them.

This raw and real approach to engineering created a culture where every line of code had consequences. There was no hiding behind abstraction. If you wrote buggy code, you were the one getting the call at 3 a.m.

Flipkart’s first 10 engineers weren’t just coders. They were likely product thinkers, support staff, and sometimes even delivery partners.

Imagine this: You write code for the order placement system. The next day, a bug leads to double orders being placed. Customers are irate. Guess who’s calling them to apologise? You.

This direct exposure to consequences created a level of ownership that's hard to replicate in today’s hyper-specialized teams.

Engineers were deeply plugged into logistics, customer support, and even seller onboarding because no one else was there to handle it.

This tight loop between building and impact is what allowed Flipkart to iterate insanely fast. If something broke, it got fixed that night. If a feature was needed, it went live next week.

By 2011, Flipkart wasn’t just surviving. It was thriving. Orders were pouring in. The team had expanded beyond 100 employees. Categories were expanding rapidly from books to electronics, fashion, and lifestyle.

But scaling the tech stack? That was a different beast.

Databases were starting to choke. Pages loaded slowly during peak traffic. New sellers meant new inventory complexities. So what did the engineers do?

They began rewriting core services in Java. They likely implemented caching strategies, added CDN layers, and started modularizing the codebase. The shift from monolithic architecture to service-oriented design didn’t happen overnight, but the foundations were laid by this original crew.

They were the ones who understood what had been duct-taped in version 1.0 and where it needed to go for version 3.0 and beyond.

One of the most underrated traits of Flipkart’s early engineers? They didn’t just think in code. They thought in systems.

They weren’t optimizing just for database queries. They were thinking: “How does this query delay affect warehouse dispatch?”

They weren’t just writing algorithms for product recommendations. They were asking: “What happens if we recommend out-of-stock items?”

This systems thinking laid the groundwork for what we now call full-stack ownership. Engineers weren’t just writing code. They were building the feedback loops, operations layers, and escalation protocols that would one day support 10 million daily page visits and over 8 million shipments a month.

By the time Flipkart crossed $1 billion in valuation in 2014, it had already become the gold standard for engineering-first startups in India.

Many of its early engineers went on to lead or co-found other companies in India’s digital economy, from Swiggy and Udaan to Zepto and Groww.

They carried with them a DNA of:

• Building with ownership
• Shipping fast and iterating
• Thinking in systems, not just features
• Balancing scale with empathy for users

This wasn’t just an engineering team. It was a finishing school for India’s next wave of product and tech leaders.

In 2018, Walmart acquired a 77% stake in Flipkart for $16 billion, the largest acquisition in e-commerce history at the time. It was validation not just of Flipkart’s market size or brand equity, but also its operational and technical prowess.

The systems those early engineers built, from payment gateways and inventory management to logistics and returns, weren’t just scalable. They were battle-tested for Indian complexity: cash-driven economies, addressing ambiguity, and network outages.

Walmart didn’t just buy a marketplace. They bought an engineering engine that knew how to win in India.

Flipkart today has 100,000+ sellers, 160 million+ users, over 33,000 employees, and an expanding portfolio that includes Shopsy, Flipkart Health+, and Flipkart Wholesale.

But it all began in a Bangalore apartment with:

• 10 engineers
• ₹4 lakh in seed money
• 1 whiteboard
• A relentless obsession with making online shopping work in India

That early team laid the groundwork for what would become India’s biggest digital commerce ecosystem.

They didn’t have unicorn dreams or billion-dollar decks. They had code to write, bugs to fix, and customers to delight.

At Intervue, we help fast-scaling startups solve tech hiring. One of the biggest lessons we pass on from stories like Flipkart is this:

Your first 10 engineers matter more than your first 100.

They shape your culture. They decide whether you build systems or silos. They determine if your company grows like a duct-taped machine or a scalable product engine.

Founders, take note: Hire engineers who don’t just think in code. Hire those who think like company-builders. Who asks questions beyond their Jira ticket? Who debugs the product, not just the program?

Because somewhere, your version of a Flipkart apartment is waiting to become a billion-dollar story.