Having given away the day-to-day responsibilities of a CEO to co-founder Binny Bansal, Sachin Bansal, founder of e-talier Flipkart is now on a new mission. He is making the blueprint of taking Flipkart to the next level of growth.

“I am looking at new categories which can be introduced going ahead and also acquisitions. That apart, the key focus area at the moment for us is logistics and payments. We will be doubling our warehousing capacity,” said Bansal without giving out any timeframe. However, the Bengaluru-based company had earlier announced that it will invest $2.5 billion over five years on logistics and warehousing. This comes even as its arch rival Amazon is busy doubling its warehouses and delivery team in the country.

Asked at a ‘fireside chat’ — with former CEO and founder of Housing.com Rahul Yadav at IIT-Bombay — if his role will be restricted to that of a mentor, Bansal said: “Not at all. I have not retired yet ...I am just 34 and have lot more to do."

Bansal, probably one of India’s youngest self-made billionaires, said he has a very key role at Flipkart and that he is working on strategising expansion areas for the company. Logistics is critical to e-commerce and is very broken in India, a market where e-commerce is still at 1.5 per cent of the total retail market compared to 10 per cent in the developed markets.

Bansal said that post the entry of Amazon into the Indian market, Flipkart’s annual growth zoomed to 200 per cent from 100 per cent in just a year. On growth versus profitability, he said: “India is at a hypergrowth stage in terms of e-commerce and in such a scenario growth comes above profitability.”

However, Flipkart, which started with selling books online, has become a one-stop destination for shoppers and in future wants to sell everything that a customer wants. Over the decade, it has changed its model from being an inventory-led one to an asset-light marketplace one.

“The market is big, and we’ll continue to grow the business. It still requires more investment. We are not worried about profitability at this moment,” he added.

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