Flipkart's 1st employee was hired at Rs 8,000 a month. Today, he's a multi-millionaire

Walmart is buying a 77% stake in Flipkart for a whopping $16 billion, pushing the the Indian e-tailer to the forefront of the great Indian startup dream — set up a company, the sell it for big bucks.

Preferably dollars.

The company though started, in 2007, small. It was run then out of a modest two-bedroom apartment in Koramangala, Bengaluru.

The idea was simple. Consumers could shop online and get books delivered to their doorstep.Flipkart got some 20 orders in its first year.

Flipkart's first employee — Ambur Iyappa — was hired two years after the company started up. (Flipkart now has multiple offices across the country. Its Bengaluru headquarters alone houses some 6,800 employees.)

Ambur's first salary was a lowly Rs 8,000.

Today, thanks to ESOPs — Employee Stock Ownership Plans — Ambur is a multi-millionaire.

(Ambur with Sachin and Binny Bansal. Image courtesy: Flipkart.com)

Ambur had before joining Flipkart been a delivery manager with First Flight Couriers.

In the four years he was with them, he rose to handling all incoming mails for south Bengaluru.

He then decided he needed to do a three-month course to further his prospects. But when he came back to First Flight, they told him they no longer had a job for him.

First Flight however happened to be one of Flipkart's courier partners.

Ambur heard from the delivery boy who managed the Flipkart account that they were looking for an in-house logistics person.

So Ambur went to Flipkart's office and met Sachin and Binny Bansal. (The Bansals — they're not related — had met at IIT-Delhi in 2005.)

Ambur got the job.

His offer letter however he got almost a year later since Flipkart at the time had no human resources team.

(With inputs from PTI)