FLIPKART

THE BIG BILLION DAY SALE

BY
GROUP B7

FLIPKART

Indias largest e-commerce company

Founded in 2007 by Sachin and Binny Bansal

Operates exclusively in India

Current m-cap : $ 11 billion ( post the recent $700 million funding in

Dec 2014)

On average, the company sells 10 products per minute

Aims to generate Rs 50 billion in revenues by 2015

Operates on the marketplace model

Major competitors: Snapdeal, Jabong, Amazon

ARCHITECTURE OF FLIPKART.COM
Database

Load
Balancer

Web Servers

Session store

Cache

Requirements of Big Billion Sale

Required 700,000 man hours over six months

Challenge was to scale up the IT infrastructure to match 25 times

increase in traffic expected on the day

Controlling the mobile application and rolling out the new features
across all platforms was a huge challenge

Flipkart added 4500 servers permanently to create an internal hybrid

cloud to manage the traffic

Preparation for the Big Billion Sale

Additional capacity created for the event was higher than the
capacity created through seven years of the companys launch

In excess of 2000 systems, 3500 scanners, 1200 printers,300 routers,

300 firewalls and 300 switches were in use

50 tonnes of copper was moved across 800 km throughout the

country to be ready for the sale

Additional 50 km of fibre optic cable(including 30 km imported) was

laid across various Flipkart facilities to be ready for the sale

Additionally subscribed to roughly 350 MB of Multi-Protocol Label

Switching bandwidth

1200 high speed data cards were used to ensure no site was cutoff
from the system

Preparation

Preparations had started two and a half months before the D-day

Scale up the IT infrastructure to match the 20-25 times spike in the traffic

New features were added to the mobile application to create a new experience

4500 servers were added to manage the traffic

1000 engineers were hired to handle the technical difficulties

10000 employees working 12-hour shifts in the weekend

Extended delivery to 40 more cities

Contingency Plan

Created a separate team for digital security

In a case of an error
A team of engineers were dedicated to ensure the services remain live
Another team focused on fixing the bug

What Went Wrong?

A lot of hype was built up through TV

commercials, newspaper and online
advertising

However, Flipkart failed to anticipate the

response this event would generate.

Poor estimation of the duration of spike in

the traffic

Testing mechanism for the IT services not

up to the mark - flipkart mobile app was
not functioning as expected

Couldnt convert prospective customers

into satisfied ones

Lost credibility and hurt their brand as sore

customers lashed out their anger on social
media

Big Side Effects of Poor Planning

Accused of Pricing Scam , ie

the prices were inflated and
hence the discounts were
not genuine

Site crashed several times

Order placements were

marred by glitches

Products went Out of Stock

within minutes of
commencement of sale.

Lack of product variety

Product available for

cheaper on competitors
site

Ratings and reviews were

hidden

No option of refund or
cancellations

Ordered products were

cancelled automatically

Deals advertised were not

available

PEOPLE

In the category of mistakes made by people, the most common

reason is the negative effect of undermined motivation on
productivity and quality

The individual capabilities of team members and the nature of

working relationships of the team members is the next largest
influencer

Failure to take timely action against a problem employee is one of

the most often repeated reasons for a IT project failure

Adding people late to a project is another classic mistake.

In the case of Flipkart, based on public data, the Big Billion Day sale
failed due to Flipkarts idea of speeding up the implementation by
adding additional manpower to achieve the required number of
manhours. Recruiting additional workforce coupled with adding
new systems is a classic recipe for disaster, as seen again in the case
of Flipkart

TECHNOLOGY

SCALING

Scaling the Flipkart website is required to handle large amounts of

traffic

Ensure high availability(reduce downtime of website)

Ensure Good Response Times

How Flipkart Scales

Flipkart.com uses the following methods to scale and handle large
amounts of traffic:

Logging and measuring

High availability setup

Web server optimizations

Caching

Horizontal scaling

Load balancing

HTTP ERROR 500

General HTTP status code that means the web server running the
website encountered a certain unexpected condition that did not
allow access to the specified URL

Not a client side problem

To resolve, fix needs to be implemented to the web server software

In case of Flipkart, the error was most likely caused as a result of PHP
coding timeout

HTTP ERROR 502

The 502 error is an HTTP status code which implies one server
received an invalid response from another server while attempting
to load the webpage

Usually a network error between servers on the Internet

Outdated or corrupted files that are being stored by your browser

could be causing 502 Bad Gateway issues

HTTP ERROR 504

No response to the gateway- Usually means that the upstream

server is down

Problem is entirely caused due to slow IP communication between

back-end computers, possibly including the Web server

Caused due to increase use of proxies and caching on the Web

RECOMMENDATIONS

Sufficient Planning

Flipkart spent 2.5 months in planning and executing the Big Billion Sale.
An unprecented event of this magnitude deserved more planning

Avoid Poor Estimating and Scheduling

Flipkart grossly underestimated the load on its website and the time that
load was expected to stay, leading to a major load on its newly added
and untested systems.

It is recommended that Flipkart go for timebox development because

shorter projects are easier to test and implement

Flipkart should dedicate more resources to forecast demand and be

proactive in guessing its competitors reactions.

RECOMMENDATIONS(contd.)

Avoid Ineffective Stakeholder Management

Flipkart grossly underestimated the demand for certain SKUs, leading to stockouts in 5
seconds for certain items

Being an online marketplace, it failed to adequately equip its stakeholders, the sellers
or the upcoming rush of orders

Flipkart should have used technology to auto-exclude all sold-out items from its page
so that the customer dont experience the loss of an unmatchable deal.

Avoid Insufficient Risk Management

Flipkart decided to provide a new experience across all its Web and mobile platforms.
This put unnecessary load on its engineers and exposed the company to a myriad
variety of risks

RECOMMENDATIONS(contd.)

Relook core software algorithms

The largely untested software and hardware infrastructure was not

able to scale to the unforecasted sudden spike in traffic.

Flipkart needs to quickly invest in scalable infrastructure which

ensures sudden spike such as this would not cause there sites to be
unresponsive or show errors as well as be ready not only for present
demand but also to tackle the explosive growth e-commerce is
expected to see in India, as the industry moves to second and third
tier towns and broadband penetration increases

The technology at the core of their software algorithms should be

equipped and made robust enough to handle all future spikes,
however sudden or unpredicted they maybe

REFERENCES

http://www.slideshare.net/sids/how-flipkart-scales-php

http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/05/06/the-5-most-common-httperrors-according-to-google/

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/technews/big-billion-day-sale-flipkart-site-crashes-on-heavydemand/article6475295.ece

http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-did-amazon-try-tocleverly-hijack-flipkart-s-big-billion-day-sale-2023959

http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E502.html

THANK YOU