Yoga, music breaks help Flipsters pull off first virtual BBD sales

While the teams were working from home since March, the question on top of their minds was how they would pull off the BBD sale, if it were to happen virtually

Manjari Singhal, director (brand marketing) of Flipkart, did not sleep for more than 3 hours a day during the past week, while the company’s Big Billion Days (BBD) sale unfolded.  Never did she, however, feel a burn-out or lack of spirit, she claims. 

“We were given breaks for 15 minutes four times a day, which were meant to refuel and re-energise the employees,” says Singhal.  

During a regular BBD sale, if one visits the Bellandur campus of the e-commerce major, it looks like a carnival with people buzzing on floors, and music and art sessions happening in huddles.

However, during the seventh edition, there was a lull as the entire programme was handled remotely with thousands of employees logging in from their homes. However, the carnival-like feeling was no less for all who moved online. 

The event began with a stand-up comedy session, followed by easy chair yoga, guided meditation, laughter therapy, and breathing exercises. There were also virtual music hours and jamming sessions where teams took a break from the frenzy.   

Perhaps, this is the first time that families of Flipsters were also a part of the BBD sale in such an intimate way. “During this virtual event, I have become a lot more closer to my team as I am more familiar about the families standing tall behind them. We cracked jokes, interacted with children that brought in a sense of belongingness,” says Utkarsh B, chief architect at Flipkart. Food became a thread of union for several teams that not only shared recipes during evening tea breaks but also swapped home-cooked food with families on several occasions. 

“It’s always best to have the meetings in person but there are many learnings from this virtual phase. We should carry forward the goodness such as fixing certain hours when families could be invited to the BBD set-up when it happens on campus next,” says Utkarsh.

While the teams were working from home since March, the question on top of their minds was how would they pull off the BBD sale if it were to happen virtually. The uncertainties were put to rest in July when it was decided that it had to be done remotely. Over 80 virtual war rooms were created in a matter of days for various verticals running from supply chain, marketing and payments, among others. These could be accessed by all employees. Anyone could drop into any of these war rooms, simulating the actual office experience.

But before these war rooms could go live, there were dummy war rooms and ‘what if’ situations created to solve issues in these dry runs, assigning roles to people if something went wrong. 

Special ‘Swat’ teams were created, comprising people having deep knowledge of echnical matters and a broad stroke knowledge of each.

Google’s interactive whiteboards, called Jamboards, were used to crack deals with banking and payments partners. During the last BBD, Smrithi Ravichandran, head of business for fintech & payments group at Flipkart, had made 10 visits in a month to Mumbai to discuss the specific deals that the company brings in for customers. 

“It takes multiple closed-door meetings to finalise these deals. All our partners this year have adopted the virtual medium and problem solving was done through Zoom and Jamboards,” says Ravichandran.

Leaders, including CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, held at least three meetings every day to solve problems in real time.

For marketing and communications, while the teams did not have access to studios to a full extent, everyone was glued to zoom calls that were connected to the main studio to give feedback to directors in real time about ad campaigns. 

While more than 100 unique launches were done exclusively for BBD that cut across several segments, Flipkart also partnered over 10 companies such as Zomato, Curefit and Google Duo for special offers.