There is no way predicting when the period of continuous valuation markdowns and executive exits will come to an end for Flipkart. With regards to the same, the homegrown e-commerce behemoth is today facing another three unexpected departures. This further adds to their already high number of senior level exits — with shortest tenures among tech giants.
This development, reported initially by ET, comes on the heels of the major reshuffling at the highest levels of the company. As Tiger Global executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy takes the reigns of the e-commerce behemoth, he has been thrown a curve ball in the form of these exits. It will now be important to see how he goes about structuring teams to match his ambitions for the next phase of growth for Flipkart. Former Flipkart CEO Binny Bansal has now assumed a similar role at the newly created Group entity of the company.
The three executives who’ve decided to call it quits at Flipkart and move on to explore new opportunities include – logistics company Ekart’s head Saikiran Krishnamurthy, Senior VP of Product development Surojit Chatterjee and CMO Samardeep Subandh.
All three of these execs have joined Flipkart in 2015 when it was aggressively roping in talent from outside to bolster its management. There is currently no info on the reason for their sudden departure. These individuals were most likely courted in by Myntra co-founder Mukesh Bansal, who himself departed from the e-commerce behemoth to start his own new venture.
Flipkart had brought in former McKinsey executive Saikiran Krishnamurthy in 2014 as COO of its commerce unit. But it was not until later in March last year that he was appointed to lead the company’s logistic arm Ekart. His primary aim being the improvement of the supply chain and coordination between commerce and logistics businesses. Later, in August, Flipkart reorganized its top tiers and Krishnamurthy was additionally handed over the supply side of the company’s marketplace and retail business as well.
In addition, Chatterjee had joined Flipkart towards the end of 2015. His appointment had brought over nearly a decade of experience from Google, and Symantec. He was responsible for fine-tuning the end-to-end customer shopping experience across the complete platform at Flipkart. Whereas Subandh was brought in to lead the company’s marketing and sales efforts. He had previously spent more than a decade at FMCG giant Hindustan Uniliver.
The previous year has been extremely turbulent for the homegrown e-commerce behemoth Flipkart. On one hand, the company was facing multiple valuation markdowns from investment banks. While on the other hand, a cohort of its senior level executives have also moved out from the company in the past year. The company has not only been plagued with the said issues but also the lack of capital investment that’ll further help them stay afloat. And also compete with its arch-rival Amazon, who is eating up its market share rapidly.
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