Walmart Senior Executives To Join Flipkart Group

While Walmart is trying to speed up the completion of its tax liabilities around its $16 Bn acquistion of Flipkart, the US-based retail giant is reportedly bringing four of its executives to the team of Indian ecommerce unicorn.

Emily McNeal who is the current Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Head at the Walmart will be joining Flipkart as senior vice president and group chief financial officer. Other senior executives like Walmart’s chief ethics & compliance officer  Daniel De La Garza will join as vice president and chief ethics & compliance officer at Flipkart.

Further, Grant Coad who has been handling regulatory compliance at the Walmart Canada will join as general counsel and Dawn Ptak from Walmart China as vice president and group controller on the Flipkart team.

An email sent to Flipkart did not elicit any response till the time of publication.

According to media reports,  McNeal, Garza and Coad will be reporting to Flipkart Group CEO Binny Bansal while Ptak will report to McNeal.

The new Flipkart members will mainly be focusing on group strategy, mergers and acquisitions, IPO preparation, accounting and controls, US GAAP, among others.

In August 2018, Walmart had announced that it had acquired 77% of Flipkart for $16 Bn, valuing the company at $22 Bn which is reportedly one of the largest ecommerce deals in the world. Post acquisition the retail giant has also stated that Flipkart’s existing management team will continue to lead the business.

Flipkart has gone through several leadership changes in past, mostly making the company achieve its vision in a better manner.

For instance:

Jan 2016: Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal steps down and was replaced by co-founder Binny Bansal

Jan 2017: In another structure change, Binny Bansal steps down from the position of company CEO and was replaced by  Kalyan Krishnamurthy

• Binny Bansal took up the responsibilities as Group CEO of Flipkart

Flipkart is currently gearing up to launch more offline retail stores in India to promote private labels in segments such as fashion and electronics. The company is also looking to reap in huge share of GMV from its upcoming festive season sale – Big Billion Days- starting from October 8.

Will the addition of Walmart executives can pave way towards more success in near term, will be an interesting watch.

[The development was reported by ET]