Flipkart: More top-level churn, job cuts likely, says report

Online retail company Flipkart has been of late witnessing constant restructuring at its top deck, as the home-grown e-commerce major battles stiff competition from its US counterpart Amazon and also not-so-friendly government policies that seek to put an end to deep discounts. As part of the latest rejig, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, an executive from the company’s largest investor Tiger Global, has added a few responsibilities while group CEO Binny Bansal has been relieved of some of his. However, Krishnamurthy will report o Binny. Krishnamurthy was earlier a chief financial officer with the company. This is his second stint and now is head of marketing, advertising, marketplace, customer experience and category design management. According to a report in The Hindu BusinessLine, the changes that happened last week is not the last. More are likely after the the Big Billion Sale in October. The company, which has already seen many high-profile exits in the recent past, may see its chief technology officer Peeyush Ranjan going in the next churn, says the report citing sources. [caption id=“attachment_2798472” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] In an internal note, Flipkart has said the goal of the reorganisation is to “increase focus on Flipkart Group, consolidate to simplify organisation and creation of top-team with clear accountabilities”, media reports said. The new structure will help the company better manage its functions and operations of the marketplace as well those of Myntra (and Jabong), Ekart (logistics) and PhonePe (wallet). Krishnamurthy, who is widely respected by Flipkart’s management executives, has earlier worked in operations and finance, and brings in efficiencies and optimisations in the marketplace categories, said a report in The Economic Times. “In the last few months, Flipkart has made considerable progress in creating the foundation of an e-commerce conglomerate… Flipkart is now in a position to combine its strengths,” the note said. Among other changes, Samardeep Subandh, who joined Flipkart as chief marketing officer from Marico last October, will now report to Krishnamurthy. Other top-level management officials who will report to Krishnamurthy are Hari Vasudev, Senior Vice-President for Engineering, IT and Supply Chain Analytics, Surojit Chatterjee, Senior Vice-President and Head of Product Management and Consumer Shopping Experience and Ashish Agarwal, Senior Vice-President, Engineering, the BusinessLine report said. The report also says the company is likely to go for a second set of job cuts. It had laid off about 400 non-performing employees recently. Co-founder Sachin Bansal at a town hall meeting recently said every employee is treated with the same yardstick, and cited his performance as the reason for his being removed from the post of CEO in January this year. A recent report also suggested that Flipkart could be facing severe funds crunch this year due to the discount offers and acquisition of companies. A Flipkart executive had recently admitted that there is indeed pressure to cut costs.