Flipkart sees another high profile exit, COO Nitin Seth resigns shortly after Jan promotion

Flipkart may be India’s number one e-commerce company, but number of key executives leaving the organisation continues unabated. Nitin Seth, Flipkart’s chief operating officer, is the latest to put in his papers, The Economic Times report said.

Seth was in charge of handling logistics arm Ekart and corporate functions like strategy and human resources (HR), the report said.

“Ekart and corporate functions, that Seth was in charge of, will now report to Kalyan,” the ET report said citing sources. Kalyan Krishnamurthy was elevated as Chief Executive Officer of Flipkart in January while co-founder Binny Bansal was elevated as Group Chief Executive Officer in a major restructuring exercise in January.  Sachin Bansal, co-founder continues in his role as executive chairman.

Seth joined the company in February 2016 as chief people officer and was quickly promoted to the post of chief administrative officer in the middle of 2016. In January this year, Seth was designated as COO. This was at the same time when Krishnamaurthy took over as Flipkart CEO from cofounder Binny Bansal, who took over as group CEO.

The ET report says Seth’s decision to quit will further strengthen Krishnamurthy’s position, who will be in charge of key functions.

Just fourth months ago, Flipkart had witnessed mass exodus of top executives. Two senior executives along with engineering heads Hari Vasudev and Ashish Agrawal had resigned in late January. The company had already seen three senior leaders quitting in the early part of that month.

“The upheaval at Flipkart is a consequence of the company’s missteps of 2015, which caused it to cede ground to arch-rival Amazon India,” a Mint report said then.

In December last year, Sharad Agarwal, vice president and distinguished engineer at Flipkart, heading data strategy, and Raghuram Talluri, vice president and head of customer experience at Myntra, had left the company, a VCCircle report said.

The latest exit in the form of Nitin Seth’s resignation comes at a time when the Bengaluru-based company is in talks to acquire rival firm Snapdeal to strengthen its numero uno position. Last month, the company said it raised $1.4 billion from software giant Microsoft and China’s Tencent Holdings besides its decision to merge eBay’s operations with itself.