'80-100 hours a week, no WFH': Sachin Bansal on building fintech startup Navi after Flipkart

Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal, who is now building the fintech startup Navi, on Tuesday said that he is putting in 80 to 100 hours a week and can even be found working on the weekends quite often.

"Sometimes people hate me. First is there is no work from home and then you must come on weekends also, but yeah, I am spending like 80-100 hours a week," Bansal told Moneycontrol in an interview. 

The Navi founder further said that sometimes, his employees hate him for this but then he does not expect others to do the same. He added that he is devoting so much time because developing a business requires attention to a lot of small details. 

He added that an arrangement like work from home was a temporary one for him during the coronavirus pandemic and his startup does not have any place for remote work now. 

"We were very clear that we want to be work-from-office. Work from home was a temporary phenomenon in my mind. It was never a permanent one. We are 100 per cent work from office. Zero work from home," Bansal said. 

He also said that he is so invested in developing Navi as a successful business that he has stopped working as an angel investor altogether. Bansal also said that Navi will revive its plans for an IPO in the coming few months. 

"We tried a year ago. The timing was bad, I think. So, I am hoping that in a few months, once we are ready, we will...," he said. Apart from sharing his philosophy as a founder and reviving IPO plans, Bansal also said that the company's home loans business accounts for around 10 per cent of the total books.

He added the strategy is to go slow as the company's cost of capital is slightly higher. He said that there are plans in place to reduce the cost of capital to grow the segment, making the offering more competitive. 

He said that Navi is building the home loans business for the long term. Sachin Bansal founded fintech startup Navi in 2018, months after quitting Flipkart. Navi deals in providing personal and home loans, UPI, insurance, mutual funds and gold.