Meet man who built India's first e-commerce startup FabMart but then lost everything, he is...

The journey of K Vaitheeswaran -- the man who set out to build India's first e-commerce empire -- has been a unique and incredible one. Inspired by the emergence and early success of Amazon, Vaitheeswaran decided to venture into the field with five partners in 1999. It was a time when internet had just come to India. In a recent interview with The Financial Express, the entrepreneur and author shared his journey, taking about how he saw the business come down to ruins and the process of rebuilding after failure.

Fabmart's rise and fall
Vaitheeswaran and his partners launched Fabmart -- India's first online marketplace with modern-day features like cash-on-delivery, PIN-based payments, e-wallets, and electronic gift cards. By 2001, they had launched one of India’s earliest online grocery stores.
The next year, they ventured offline with Fabmall, a supermarket chain. Fabmall gained momentum and became one of India’s largest supermarket chains by 2006. It was taken over by the Aditya Birla Group and rebranded as "More." Vaitheeswaran's co-founders shifted to offline ventures but he stuck with the online arm, rebranding it Indiaplaza. "I believed in the internet’s potential,” he said.
Surviving the 2008 financial crisis, he secured venture capital in 2011. But by 2012, the organisation was struggling big time.
Marred by low funding and rising competition in the e-commerce space, the company couldn't bounce back.

Personal blow
The failure of Indiaplaza dealt a big personal blow to Vaitheeswaran. "Society often fails to differentiate between the company and the individual," he said in the interview.
"When a startup succeeds, the founder gets all the credit, even though success is a collective effort. Conversely, when a startup fails, all the blame falls on the founder," he added.
And it all went downhill from there -- creditors, police, and angry vendors would show up and threaten him from time to time.

Building back
But things finally started to change when Mint published a piece, profiling 20 internet influencers, in which it included Vaitheeswaran. "This isn’t about the outcome...You were the first to pioneer e-commerce in India," the publication's journalists told him.

Today, Vaitheeswaran mentors startups and advises corporate biggies such as Tata and Deloitte. He is often invited to speak at events held by TEDx, IIMs, and other prestigious institutions. He is also the author of the acclaimed book Failing to Succeed.