ACCEL-ERATOR

THE LOCAL ARM OF THE 39-YEAR-OLD GLOBAL VENTURE CAPITAL MAJOR ENGAGES DEEPLY WITH EARLY- STAGE START-UPS AND STAYS INVEST- ED WITH THEM FROM IDEA TO IPO

- BINU PAUL

LONG BEFORE HE JOINED Accel as its first Associate in India, Abhishek Goyal was working as a software developer at Amazon Development Centre (India). Working for an online retailer that has become one of the biggest globally, Goyal understood the concept of e-commerce long before it was a thing in India. The experience of working with Amazon came in handy when, two months after joining venture capital (VC) major Accel, Goyal met Sachin and Binny Bansal in March 2008 at an Open Coffee Club event in Bengaluru, which is an informal gathering of start-up founders, wannabe entrepreneurs, angel investors and VCs to meet and talk shop on weekends.

Goyal’s interaction with the two Bansals (not related) informed him that they were building an online bookstore, which immediately reminded him of Amazon that had started out similarly. The short but in-depth conversation with the Bansals was enough to convince Goyal of the potential of what they were creating, and where it could go.

Although early days for Accel in India, Goyal brought the Co-founders and their then obscure company, Flipkart, to the notice of Subrata Mitra, Prashanth Prakash, Mahendran Balachandran and Gagan Kumar. The quartet became Partners at the rebranded entity in 2008 when their $10-million early-stage fund called Erasmic Venture Fund came under the aegis of the global VC giant, that was looking to have a presence in India’s nascent start-up ecosystem.

Following a string of meetings at Accel’s office in Bengaluru, and the Bansals’ two-bedroom apartment turned-office-space, Accel wrote an $800,000 seed cheque for the company in October 2009. And the rest, as they say, is history.