Bloodbath is the word for all the rejig that has suddenly erupted among Flipkart’s management team. After the recent, unceremonious exit of Flipkart co-founder and group CEO Binny Bansal from the company due to ‘personal misconduct’ early this week, another top-level executive is reportedly leaving the company.
According to multiple media reports, Ananth Narayanan, who is heading Flipkart’s fashion retail portals Myntra and Jabong as the CEO has put in papers. Along with him, the company’s CFO Dipanjan Basu is also leaving the firm.
Reports indicate that the reason behind senior executives leaving the company is the newly introduced reporting structure following the exit of Binny Bansal on Tuesday.
After the exit of Binny Bansal from Flipkart, Walmart issued a statement, which said:
Going forward, Kalyan Krishnamurthy will continue to be the CEO of Flipkart, which will now include Myntra and Jabong, continuing to operate as separate platforms within the Flipkart business. Ananth Narayanan will continue providing great leadership as the CEO of Myntra and Jabong and will report into Kalyan. Sameer Nigam will continue leading PhonePe as CEO. Both Kalyan and Sameer will report directly into the board.
Under the new company structure, Kalyan Krishnamurthy is the new overall boss of the group companies, and CEOs from Myntra, Jabong, and PhonePe will report to him. As per the reports, Narayanan was close to Binny Bansal, and now things would not be the same with Kalyan at the helm of affairs of the Flipkart group.
Kalyan Krishnamurthy has his own working style, and reports suggest both he and Narayanan don’t see “eye to eye” on several issues, including Kalyan’s push for the integration of both independent fashion portals with Flipkart’s fashion vertical, Flipkart Fashion.
In an email response to the Times of India regarding the senior-level exits, Kalyan Krishnamurthy said, without denying it:
The Flipkart group is committed to the success of Myntra and growing the business, now more than ever. The Myntra team has been doing innovative work to grow the company and create India’s leading online platforms for fashion and lifestyle. We want to empower the Myntra team to continue to operate independently to achieve even greater success.
Both Ananth and Kalyan have differences regarding the preferential treatment given to Flipkart Fashion instead of Myntra and Jabong. In 2017, all three entities claimed 80 percent market share during the annual sale. However, this year, half of the sales were claimed by Flipkart Fashion, while Myntra and Jabong didn’t even participate.
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