Exclusive: Playing it Hard - Flipkart CPO Punit Soni

1. Your biggest contribution to Flipkart.
It’s probably too early to say, but my hope is to help guide the efforts of the extraordinary team at Flipkart to build the best products and technology company in India. With the right talent, mission and company we can generate positive change for India through commerce and technology. Building something that will be able to keep innovating and helping people would be incredible.

2. How have your best ideas worked out for the company?
A key part of leadership is to know when to lead from the front, back and middle depending on the situation. I believe we are in a good place with respect to cadence and ability to execute. We have an extraordinary team of some of the world’s best product leads showing up from across the globe. I believe my best idea has yet to come to fruition - Thoughtfulness.

Great products are built with love and thoughtfulness. If I can imbue our work with empathy and understanding, we will be destined to win. That idea is still working itself out.

3. How is the Indian e-commerce industry different from China and US?
India is a unique place that has its own challenges that countries like China and the US probably don’t have. Unlike China and the US, India is still far from smartphone saturation. There is also much work to be done around infrastructure to support 1B people with smartphones and digital payments. These challenges are a work in progress and our products must evolve and help progress alongside.

Indian consumers are incredibly demanding and the infrastructure has a lot of inefficiencies to be overcome. Building a world class experience while dealing with exploding scale, demanding consumers, and under-works infrastructure is an extraordinary challenge that is unique to India.

4. The most important lessons you’ve learnt from your time at Flipkart.

• Flipkart introduced the concept of service in a way that’s unheard of in a country like India
• This place is younger than any place I have ever worked at. It allows you to rethink everything
• Unlearn everything you knew from your valley days, this is India and its special
• Just because someone is price conscious does not imply they don’t care for quality
• Indian consumers have been treated badly over the decades, they have very little patience for mistakes
• Live very very close to work. Bangalore has the most broken infrastructure among all major cities in India

5. Your mentors, and how have they influenced your life?
You can learn from anything. My mentors include a volcanic mountain in Ecuador that I climbed, a camping trip to Antarctica, some of the great engineering and product leaders at Google, books from all over the world, my wife, my parents, and especially my three year old.
Also the Stevens Creek Trail that runs behind my house in Mountain View. Every time I walk it, I learn something new.

6. If given a free hand, what would you change in Flipkart?
I have a very free hand. Just keep watching Flipkart closely.

7. How do you de-stress?

• Playing with my kid and dog
• Reading. I am in the middle of “Kafka on the Shore” from Murakami right now
• Driving around aimlessly trying to discover that magical coffee shop in the middle of nothing
• Partying hard with friends

8. Do you see India’s policy restrictions as a hindrance to technological innovation?
India is getting overhauled by the tech movement that’s happening. Something like 13% of all startups worldwide are founded here in Bangalore. As a government it’s difficult to cope with all this change at once. On the other hand, there’s been good precedence of tech movements in other countries from which we can learn.

The question will become if the government can keep up, at a reasonable pace, with the rate of change being brought by the startups. More and more Indians are being exposed to a life helped by technology in deep and meaningful ways developing an expectation for more. The policies will have to be nimble enough to meet this expectation going forward.

9. Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
Hard to say. I have never planned my life that well. About 8 months ago, I had no idea I would be in India. I want to do whatever the heart desires at that point of time. Today it is helping build India’s greatest product company.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” - Hunter S. Thompson