Welcome to Episode 38 of First Principles!

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In this episode, you will hear Vaibhav Gupta, the CEO and co-founder of Udaan, an online trade platform whose mission is to “transform India”.

It hopes to achieve that lofty goal by bringing tens of thousands of shopkeepers and grocery store owners closer to their suppliers and offering them competitive pricing, guarantees on quality, and easy deliveries and returns.

Vaibhav and his co-founders—Amod Malaviya and Sujeet Kumar—were all senior Flipkart leaders before starting Udaan. And yet, he insists Udaan isn’t merely a “Flipkart for businesses”.

Since 2016, when it first began operations, Udaan has raised over a billion dollars in venture capital. It was one of the fastest startups to achieve the coveted “unicorn tag”.

It has also gone through its ups and downs in terms of valuations and headcount.

In this episode—Part 1 of our conversation with Vaibhav Gupta, we discuss:

–> Why Udaan evolved from a marketplace to a first-party business

–> Why the firm instituted a formal CEO position after five years of its existence

–> The five pillars of Udaan’s culture

–> What daily conversations inside Udaan’s leadership team look like

This is episode 38 of First Principles—The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast.

Full Episode Transcript:

Rohin Dharmakumar  

Vaibhav, Udaan (B2B trade platform) was started in 2016. Your vision was to, and I quote: “Transform the trade ecosystem in India by leveraging technology.” (In) some other places it says your vision was to make business easy in India. What do these mean?  

Vaibhav Gupta  

See, I think it kind of goes back to my journey.   

Prior to Flipkart, I spent some time in… I went to the US for my business school and spent some time in the US after that, in a job.    

Rohin Dharmakumar  

You were at Trilogy if I’m not mistaken?  

Vaibhav Gupta  

Yeah, so Trilogy was after my undergrad. So, I was just here in Bangalore and then went for my business school after Trilogy.  

Rohin Dharmakumar 

You were a consultant? 

Vaibhav Gupta  

Yeah, I was at McKinsey after my business school. So, a few things I got very kind of into when I was at business school: economic theory, how economies work, how countries work, financial theories, how capital markets work.  

And while obviously, I won’t appreciate the detail just in a business school, but you could easily see how powerful economies and markets, if done well, can do to a country, right?