How Vaibhav Gupta of Udaan builds, scales and improves execution playbooks

First Principles

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.