At 11:58pm on October 13, 2015, Flipkart’s product and engineering teams were assembled in a series of war rooms. It was the eve of ‘The Big Billion Days,’ the Indian e-commerce giant’s annual blockbuster event. Mobile phones were about to go on sale, and the stakes were incredibly high — the team knew that this event that could bring in many months worth of revenue in a span of five days.
At the stroke of midnight, however, the site promptly crashed. With traffic dropping precipitously, each second that ticked by meant thousands of dollars lost. As stress skyrocketed and panic set in, Punit Soni was in the proverbial hot seat. As Flipkart’s Chief Product Officer, the team was looking to him and his engineering counterpart, Peeyush Ranjan, for their marching orders.
