Movers And Shakers Of The Week [20 March – 25 March]

Snapdeal Undergoes Three Major Leadership Changes

Snapdeal’s Bengaluru-based digital payment subsidiary FreeCharge has appointed Jason Kothari as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). This appointment comes within a month of FreeCharge’s earlier CEO Govind Rajan quitting the company. CEO Govind Rajan had replaced Kunal Shah as the CEO in May 2016.

Kothari had joined Snapdeal in January this year as its Chief Strategy & Investment Officer and will continue to hold that role. Additionally, he will also join the Board of Directors of FreeCharge.

Next up, FreeCharge has elevated its Chief Product Officer (CPO) Ankit Khanna to the position of Chief Operating Officer (COO). In his new role, Ankit will be managing product, user growth, user experience, and business development at Freecharge.

Prior to joining FreeCharge, he was the Senior Vice President, Product at Snapdeal. He has been with Snapdeal since the company’s inception in 2010, where he joined as the Product Head.

Ankit holds a Bachelors in Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Before joining Snapdeal, Ankit also co-founded Itasveer in 2006, an online solution for photo printing which was later acquired by a Pune-based IT services company.

In another development, Snapdeal’s major investor Softbank has appointed ecommerce veteran Kabir Mishra to the company’s Board. Kabir is known for his anchor role in managing Softbank’s investment in Indonesian ecommerce major Tokopedia. Also, he was majorly involved in Softbank’s $1 Bn investment deal with South Korean firm Coupang.

Alibaba’s Danfeng Li Joins Data Analytics Startup Unihalt

Vishakhapatnam-based data analytics startup Unihalt has appointed Danfeng Li as an Advisor on its Board.  Li is currently working as a Director and the Chief Data Officer at Chinese ecommerce conglomerate Alibaba Group. He has been associated with Alibaba Group since 2014 and will continue to be based in China.

Li will help the data science and analytics team of the company.  Li is an industry expert in data science, data analytics and startups. In his earlier stints, he has also worked with Microsoft, Opera and Yahoo.

Li holds an engineering degree from Tsinghua University along with a PhD. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Snapdeal’s Anindya Sharma Joins Cyware Labs

Bengaluru-based Cyware Labs has appointed Anindya Sharma as Chief Technology Officer.

Anindya, an IIM Lucknow graduate, was previously working with the ecommerce giant Snapdeal as Director Engineering, leading their seller technology team.

Anindya specialises in creating highly scalable platforms. At Snapdeal, Anindya played a key role in creating platforms and products for Snapdeal’s three Lakh sellers.

Prior to Snapdeal, Anindya had worked with Adobe India where he was leading Flash and Reader distribution platform engineering.