Techcircle Startup Walkabout Pit Stop III Snapdeal, Okhla

After Sequoia, we fought heavy traffic to reach our next stop that was the office of e-commerce major Snapdeal.com. This time around we were greeted by Amitabh Misra, senior VP- engineering at Snapdeal who took us to the conference room for an interactive session.

The presentation covered a number of areas like how Snapdeal started in the Indian market and how difficult the sector was for them at that point in time. It also touched upon how the company tackled issues regarding logistics etc. Misra further told the participants that an informal culture was more productive than a formal one.

"We do not put in any formal process. Everyone functions in a very informal way and when you do things in an informal way, it can be chaotic but will have a hyper speed," he said.

Post the presentation, the participants bombarded him with questions such as how Snapdeal convinced him to be a part of the company and if the e-commerce market was a bubble ready to burst.

Misra replied very candidly. "When I came back to India, I wanted to be in a company which was basically a technology company. Finally it was all about the kind of people you would want to work with. I met Snapdeal guys, liked them and thus accepted the offer."

On e-commerce being a bubble, he mentioned that it's only the finance people who talk about things like a bubble. The business case in the e-commerce sector is very real and is set to grow. "Bubble or no bubble is just a business evaluation," he said.

Talking about the do's and don'ts for a startup, Misra said that at an early stage a person is not sure what is going to work and what's not. So he suggested startups to try out hundreds of things. "We were a deal site when we started, then we pivoted to become a products company," he said.

Post the interactive session, the participants were given a guided tour of the Snapdeal office.

After Snapdeal, we moved to our last pit stop for the day, which happened to be the office of mobile internet company One97. Stay tuned for more.

You can also check out our Twitter handle @techcirclein for updated pictures of the TC Walkabout.