Flipkart-owned online fashion retailer Myntra has appointed former Amazon executive Jeyandran Venugopal as its new chief technology officer. He is replacing Ajit Narayanan, who resigned from the company last week.
With his appointment, Jeyandran Venugopal becomes the company’s third CTO in less than a year. Before Ajit Narayanan took over the role in November last year, Shamik Sharma was Myntra’s chief technology officer.
Commenting on appointment of a new CEO, Ananth Narayanan, CEO of the company, said,
Jeyandran joins us at a crucial phase when Myntra is treading firmly on its path to profitability. We have always laid emphasis on having a strong leadership and his appointment brings that to the fore. Jeyandran has to his credit, years of experience in the field of technology, with a proven track record that further reinforces our commitment to provide unmatched service to our customers.
Further, the company has also announced that it had hired five senior engineers recently, including an architect, from companies such as Ola and Intuit, in order to strengthen its core technology team.
Myntra has appointed Mohan Sunkara of Intuit as vice-president and distinguished architect Arun Samudrala as principal architect. The company has also hired former senior engineer at Ola, Sriram Iyer as vice-president of engineering.
The appointments come at a time when Myntra is looking to accelerate its pace of growth, while also driving towards it target of achieving profitability by the end of the 2017-18 financial year. It also comes at a time when Myntra is betting big on technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve and further personalize the shopping experience for consumers.
Before joining Myntra as CTO, Jeyandran Venugopal was working at his own start-up called Eclinic247, which helps consumers find and consult doctors online. He is also one of the founding members of Amazon’s first offshore development centre in India that was set up in Bengaluru in 2004. He had briefly worked at Snapdeal as a technology advisor and as a senior engineering leader at Yahoo.
Flipkart’s fashion arm is targeting profitability for fiscal 2018 and closed FY 2016-17 at a GMV of $1 billion for Myntra-Jabong combine with 30% of the sales coming from Jabong — a fashion portal it acquired in 2016 for $70 million.
