Sachin Bansal had earlier stepped down as the CEO.
By Dileep Thekkethil
The hunt is on in Flipkart to find replacements for Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori who are leaving India’s biggest e-commerce company later this year to become entrepreneurs.
Bansal, who heads the e-commerce platform, is planning to set up his own start-up in the coming months, but he said he will continue working for Flipkart for another two months. He added that after leaving Flipkart, he intends to take a break of two or three months before kick-starting the operations of his new company.
Bansal co-founded Myntra along with Ashutosh Lawania and Vineet Saxena in 2007. The company was acquired by Flipkart in 2014 for an estimated deal of $290 million. Even though Bansal is making an exit from both Flipkart and Myntra, he will remain as one of the major shareholders of the latter and as an Advisor for the former.
“Sachin, Binny and I have been discussing this change for the past two-three months as part of an org change after factoring everything, like state of business, momentum we have, the capable leadership team. I felt this is the right time personally to take a long break and figure out next steps. This will also enable Binny to work closely with the new leadership team and chart the course for Flipkart’s future,” said Bansal.
Bansal, who is yet to zero down on the business that he will start next, said that it will be in the technology realm.
Sachin Bansal, the CEO and the co-founder of Flipkart, said that Mukesh Bansal has made the company a healthier workplace.
He added, “When we acquired Myntra we were one-fifth the size of what we are today…Mukesh has been definitely one of the best leaders I have had the pleasure of working with. I have learnt a lot from Mukesh, especially on how to build a great organisation. This is a huge loss for the company and for me personally. Mukesh in the past nine years has been part of building two great companies and I wish him a very restful break and am sure his kids are very happy.”
On the other hand, Ankit Nagori, who is the Chief Business Officer of Flipkart, is leaving the company to start a sports talent development firm. He said in a statement that the founders of Flipkart, Sachin and Binny Bansal will be the first to invest in his start-up, which he plans to commence operations after his exit by the end of this quarter.
The announcements of the key people leaving Flipkart comes just a few weeks after the company’s co-founder Sachin Bansal stepped down as the CEO. In the absence of Mukesh, Binny Bansal, the current CEO of the company, will have the additional charge of the commerce and advertising department.
Binny said, “Ankit joined us six years back as a 24-year-old…He has been our go-to guy for all our biggest new initiatives. He is an entrepreneur at heart. He is also passionate about public service. His new venture is at the crossroads of entrepreneurship and public service in the sports talent development space.”
The new developments in Flipkart is happening during a time when the company is sailing through rough waters it reported a loss of about $294 million in the year ended March 2015. Adding to this, the company is facing stiff competition from rival e-commerce firms such as Snapdeal, Amazon, Paytm and others.
In contrary to the financial figure of the company, Mukesh Bansal said that he is making an exit at a time when Flipkart is stronger than what it was at the time he joined the firm.
He added “If you look at business, category by category, we’re building different capabilities in each one. In fashion we are very big now. In large appliances we have built capability, through Jeeves, to offer installation services than anyone else is able to offer. We are approaching 50% market share in large appliances in e-commerce. We have had a couple of versions of the seller’s app, which has made the seller’s life very easy. On consumer side, there are a lot of experiments. Flipkart Lite has started to get a lot of traction. Ping has built a robust communication infrastructure. We have now extended that to enable chat between buyers and sellers. We just launched initially version of FK Money, through which people are getting instant refunds in their wallet. Big focus was to enable scale,” he said.
Flipkart had hired two senior Google Executives Peeysh Ranjan and Punit Soni as its CTO and CPO, respectively, last year.
Flipkart, which tested the mobile-first model for e-commerce for the first time in India, is said to have gained profit, but it’s a daunting question whether they should completely do away with the web. Delivery network is another area where Flipkart has fared better than competitors. Flipkart has its own delivery service by the name e-kart whereas other companies still rely on other courier services for delivery. The company claims that it has set up large warehouses that will enable next-day delivery in 90% of the country.
Binny, CEO of Flipkart, said the company is making steady progress. He said, “E-commerce is the most intense business out there and India is the most competitive market. The bets that we wanted to take, we have done well. M-commerce, we are four times competition and 60% market share. In smartphones and fashion, we have 60% market share. These are the areas we want to win.
“When we look at e-commerce there are four pillars, which are commerce (the main Flipkart platform plus Myntra), supply chain(eKart), advertising, which we incubated last year, and payments. This year we will focus on our core businesses of commerce and supply chain and take our service to the next level. We want to be leaders in all these pillars in the next 10 years. We are taking a long-term view,” he added