Second Top-Level Exit In Two Months: Flipkart’s SVP Adarsh Menon Quits

In another high-profile exit, ecommerce giant Flipkart’s senior vice president and head of verticals such as Cleartrip, Shopsy and recommerce business Adarsh Menon has reportedly resigned from the company.

Sources told The Economic Times that Menon quit the company to start his new venture. Coinciding with the exit has been the onboarding of Pranav Tiwari, who has joined the startup as a senior vice-president (SVP).

In an internal note to employees, Flipkart group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said that the ecommerce major will ‘restructure’ and delegate Menon’s portfolio of verticals to different leaders to build a specific focus on each segment.

Under the restructuring exercise, the recommerce vertical will now be allocated to Hemant Badri, while Amitesh Jha will head Shopsy. Alongside, Ajay Veer Yadav will take charge of its travel offering ClearTrip.

Following the rejig, Ashutosh Chandel will now work under Badri, while Kapil Thirani will report to Amitesh Jha. Additionally, ClearTrip CEO Ayyappan R will report to Ajay Veer Yadav. 

As per the note, the transition is expected to take place over the next few weeks and will see new leaders taking charge of the startup’s different products. As reported previously, Flipkart reshuffles its VP-level roles every three years to allow executives to spearhead multiple businesses. 

A Flipkart spokesperson confirmed the development to Inc42 but refused to offer further comments.

Menon’s exit comes nearly a year after he was elevated as the head of Flipkart’s new businesses in July 2022. His exit follows the departure of a slew of key executives from the ecommerce giant in the past few months. 

In March, SVP of supply chain Ravish Sinha left the company, while Flipkart Labs’ head Ajay Ponna Venkatesh departed the company in January 2023. Prior to that, head of product and innovation at Firedrops Sai Krishna VK also quit in December 2022.

Challenges Galore For Flipkart

The new round of reshuffle comes as Flipkart continues to grapple with mounting losses, even as it forays into multiple new categories. Flipkart’s marketplace arm reported a loss of INR 4,361 Cr in the financial year 2021-2022 (FY22), while its B2B vertical’s loss widened 1.4X YoY to INR 3,404.4 Cr during the same period. 

Flipkart has unveiled a slew of new products in the recent past and also has ambitious expansion plans for some of the verticals. It forayed into after-sales services with Jeeves in December last year, while it is also eyeing a pan-India expansion of its epharmacy business Flipkart Health+. The ecommerce giant is also looking to shore up the travel segment, while it has also spent heavily on scaling its Web3 vertical to spur the adoption of the new technology in the country. 

Amid the ongoing funding winter, the ecommerce player has cut corners this year by stopping the salary hikes of 4,500 senior executives. It also scaled down the operations of its quick-commerce vertical Flipkart Quick. 

However, parent company Walmart continues to be optimistic about the country. Earlier this year, Walmart said it expects India to surpass China as its largest international market this year, led largely by its ecommerce (Flipkart) and digital payments arms (PhonePe).

The ecommerce giant enjoys a lion’s share of the Indian ecommerce market and seems to be unfazed by ongoing market turbulence. As internet and smartphone penetration grows, Flipkart is well poised to capture this growth as the country’s total addressable ecommerce market is expected to soar to $400 Bn by 2030.