Flipkart ropes in industry veteran, re-jigs top management to push mobile phone sales

Former MobileStore COO Ajay Veer Yadav has joined Flipkart as VP of mobiles category. There have also been some reshuffling in the top management roles. Samardeep Subandh is now the head of categories. Subandh joined Flipkart as its marketing head in December last year. The appointment and the updated role were confirmed by the Times of India. This move comes in just months after another big change which saw Sachin Bansal moving to the role of chairman, making way for Binny Bansal to take over as CEO. The report adds that Subandh’s key focus will also be to help drive up sales for mobiles and appliances - areas which it faces stiff competition from rival Amazon. While the company sees bursts in sale of mobile phones in its special discount days like the ‘Big Billion Day’ sale, et al, the company needs to keep up with the pace of competition. For instance, Moto smartphones were exclusive to Flipkart but Motorola chose to partner with Amazon for the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus. Speaking in a separate interview, CEO Binny Bansal mentioned how critical it was for the brand to focus on wide product selection, low prices and fast product delivery - key areas where Amazon is eating away into the success pie. He admitted Flipkart’s brand image and service levels suffered last year as the company shifted to a marketplace model where it looked to exponentially increase the number of sellers to generate business on its platform. Bansal stated that the company is now consolidating supply of products among a few sellers, especially in its mobile phones and large appliances categories and working on making its logistics more efficient for heightened service levels. Just last week, Flipkart’s logistics arm Ekart launched a courier service to deliver parcels to its customers and streamline the fragmented courier market across the country.