CHENNAI: Homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart on Monday saw another rejig of its top-level management, with former Tiger Global executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy replacing co-founder Binny Bansal as Chief Executive Officer. Bansal has been named the Group Chief Executive. Nitin Seth, presently the Chief Administrative officer, will become the Chief Operating Officer.
In January last year, the Flipkart board had replaced Sachin Bansal with Binny Bansal as CEO, with the former becoming Executive Chairman, a post he still occupies.
The top-level shuffle puts Krishnamurthy in effective control of the day-to-day operations of the firm. The move does not come as a surprise, say analysts, since Flipkart had brought in Krishnamurthy to set things back on track in June this year, when he was appointed the head of the category division.
“Krishnamurthy also seems to have played a vital role in Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale this year. That was important because the company was able to fend off rival Amazon’s attack on its market,” said a senior e-commerce analyst, who did not wish to be named. The shake-up at Flipkart also raises questions on whether the board is happy with the performances of the founders having reassigned their roles twice in two years. According to the company, one of the focus areas of the Flipkart Group Org will be to build a portfolio of new, high value-creating businesses that are disruptive.
“To evaluate these opportunities and construct this portfolio of new businesses, Flipkart Group Org will have a Group Strategy function as well as M&A (mergers and acquisitions). The other key responsibility of Binny as Group CEO will be to oversee capital allocation across all the group companies, CEO selection and CEO compensation as well as to ensure each business is led by a strong CEO,” Flipkart said.
Consequently, Krishnamurthy will be responsible for operationally driving Flipkart and will be responsible for the company’s profit and loss. Sources say this means that Krishnamurthy will be the driving force behind the firm’s strategy to expand market share, increase profitability and take on competitors.