India’s leading e-commerce startup Flipkart has hired five senior executives at the level of Vice Presidents (VPs), in a bid to strengthen its senior management. With the induction of new VPs in the company, the total number of VPs now stands at 28.
Since the US-based retail giant Walmart acquired a 77% stake in Flipkart, it has been trimming the senior management over the past two years, after Kalyan Krishnamurthy took over as the CEO of Flipkart.
VPs have been hired across corporate functions including fashion, corporate strategy, engineering, risk management, shared technology & services group.
New VPs and their functions include Dev Iyer (VP-Fashion), Srinivasulu Grandhi (VP-Shared technology and services group), Phanimohan Kalagara (VP-Engineering), Naren Ravula (VP-Corporate Strategy), Vineet Sethi (VP-Risk Management).
Dev Iyer, who has previously had a stint with Reckitt Benckiser and ITC, will be reporting directly to Rishi Vasudev (VP-Fashion, Home & Furniture). Vineet Sethi, who has previously worked with companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, will be reporting to Pramod Jain (VP-Risk Management, Compliance and Assurance). While the other newly appointed VPs will be reporting to Kalyan Krishnamurthy (CEO).
Looking at the past experiences of other VPs, Srinivasulu Grandhi has earlier worked with Amazon and Microsoft. Phanimohan Kalagara will be joining the Flipkart team after working with Paypal for 12 years. Naren Ravula has worked with prominent companies like Salesforce and NetApp in the past.
Kalyan Krishnamurthy has always tried to keep the organisational structure less top heavy. Currently, Flipkart has 5 SVPs (Senior Vice Presidents), compared to 14 SVPs in 2015.
With the new team in place, Flipkart is all set to focus on business as it looks to tackle its rival Amazon, in the e-commerce battle. Flipkart is set to face Amazon in the battle of sales, as Amazon will launch its Freedom Sale from 9th-12th August and Flipkart will be launching its Big Freedom Sale from 10th-12th August.