Advaith Mohan’s career at Flipkart went by in a whizz. He joined the company’s Flyte digital music unit after graduating from IIT-Madras in June 2012. Flyte was shuttered six months after and Mohan moved to work with the digital marketing team. Two years later, at 23, he was heading a four-member search engine marketing team. “There was a hunger in people (at Flipkart) to learn more, much faster. There wasn’t anyone who was just comfortable with the status quo,” reminisces Mohan, now 26 and co-founder of Wagr, a startup making wearables for dogs to make dog-parenting easier.Over the past few years, an increasing number of Flipkart employees are treading similar entrepreneurial paths, finding launchpads in the company: Ankit Nagori, previously chief business officer, cofounded fitness startup CureFit this year; Akshay Lal started micro task crowd sourcing platform Playment; Arpit Dave co-runs food ordering startup Runnr; Preeti Jain founded logistics company InLogg.At a time when Flipkart is fending itself against a hyper-aggressive Amazon India, valuation markdowns and exits of senior employees while also having to let go of hundreds of employees, this so-called ‘Flipkart Gang,’ as the its former employees-turned-entrepreneurs have come to be known, is offering the online marketplace much-needed succour.Sure, this means losing some bright minds but as in the case of PayPal InMobi and MakeMyTrip that have brewed similar drives toward entrepreneurship, Flipkart gains validation for its business and culture. That in turn could potentially attract more smart, young people to the company.Of course, none of the Indian ‘gangs’ can yet match up to the reputable ‘PayPal Mafia,’ which boasts of, among others, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX; Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn; and Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim who started YouTube.The ‘Flipkart Gang’ could be as large as 40-50 former employees, as per the company’s human resources department. The actual number could be higher since Flipkart doesn’t keep a formal record of those who left to start up. Sameer Nigam , who was Mohan’s boss at the Flyte unit, talks about a maniacal obsession with customers and a drive to get things done at Flipkart. Nigam quit as the head of product engineering last year to start PhonePe Internet, which Flipkart bought this year and made the centerpiece of its re-launched payments business.Mohan cites Flipkart’s emphasis on merit over experience—“ It didn’t matter how old you were.” And Nagori credits Flipkart’s culture of thinking big and scaling fast. Other former Flipkart employees-turned-entrepreneurs acknowledge the management’s encouragement allowing them to take independent decisions.“We are a very, very meritocratic organisation and we give opportunities to people on merit and not based on their age or tenure. This gives a lot of exposure to some people who rise to the challenge they are given and then they want to do more,” said Sachin Bansal , executive chairman of Flipkart.The highincidence of starting up is also because of the company’s ability to attract people with entrepreneurial capabilities, he said. “A high bias towards action and creating impact is a big plus for us.” Bansal doesn’t see the trend as unique, though. “It is a natural thing that happens. Even if you see globally, there are companies started by ex-employees of bigger companies. The founder of Quora (Adam D’Angelo) was an ex-CTO of Facebook.”For several, their entrepreneurial dreams coupled with their learnings at Flipkart served as a great launchpad. “People saw tough times and good times together and that is what held them together for a very long time, after which they started thinking of other opportunities,” said Nagori, who joined Flipkart in early 2010 and lasted until earlier this year.“I think it has to do with the journey itself. I switched four roles—joined as vice president of the digital business, then for a year I was vice president-marketing, then was vice president of technology, and then I finally left as senior vice president of product engineering,” said Nigam, who joined Flipkart along with Rahul Chari when the company bought their startup Mime360 in 2011.But “ultimately, those four years of hyper growth led to some sort of burn out and honestly we did not know what we were going to do next,” said Nigam, who, of course, started PhonePe.“This is great news. You are witnessing the rapid evolution of India’s tech industry, the best thing that could happen to India’s entrepreneurship ecosystem,” Vivek Wadhwa, professor at Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering in Silicon Valley, said of the ‘Flipkart Gang’. “One of the secrets of Silicon Valley’s success is the high rate of job hopping. This leads to even more competition and improved technologies. It is a virtuous cycle for innovation.”While that is one line of thought in favour of the industry as a whole, job-hopping can’t be good for the company. Flipkart’s thrust on a breakneck speed of growth is something ‘Flipsters’-turned-entrepreneurs need to unlearn in their new ventures, said Mekin Maheshwari, an early Flipkart employee who resigned as chief people officer last year to focus on the non-profit education space. “We were running too hard and for most people it was a really, really hard journey. Just the achievement itself is not recognition. One needs to take it easy, celebrate with people and spend more time with them.”Maheshwari estimates that the number of Flipkart employees who quit to pursue their ambitions could be as high as hundred, including those who left to join other early-stage startups as second or third employees.Rush for growth could also obscure sight of market opportunities, leaving employees frustrated. Says Robert Siegel, lecturer in management at Stanford Graduate School of Business: “When cultures become too constrained or restrictive of innovation, such that individuals are not getting personal growth or challenges, and/or a firm is not taking advantage of potential market opportunities due to existing businesses, this is when individuals seek to start their own companies. It is usually due to a combination of individual desire and seeing a market opportunity.”Bansal, who left Amazon Web Services to successfully replicate its parent’s ecommerce business model in India, admits he is left with mixed feeling when a high-performer decides to leave to start a venture. “It is a bit disappointing but at some level it’s a great validation for the company culture if some of these people go out and become successful at their ventures.”In some instances, the company has tried retaining employees but hasn’t been successful. If it thought an idea could be implemented within Flipkart, it has made offers, “but again, largely we have not been very successful with such attempts,” said Bansal.That’s when it is time to go back to the drawing board. “We use it as a learning experience to ask ourselves why did this person feel that either he was not growing or they were not being challenged enough,” Bansal said. “We learn and change ourselves.”