Binny Bansal Steps Down; Kalyan Krishnamurthy Becomes New CEO Of Flipkart

In a rather shocking move, Flipkart has again announced a change in its organisation structure with Binny Bansal stepping down from his position of company CEO. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, currently heading the Category Design Organisation will become the new CEO of Flipkart. He will be responsible for operationally driving Flipkart and will be responsible for Flipkart’s P&L.

Recently Kalyan has been in the limelight due to his statement against Amazon, that it has allegedly been copying Flipkart’s business moves.

Several other structural changes were also announced, chief among them being a new Flipkart Group Organization that has been formed, which will be headed by Binny.

Nitin Seth, presently the Chief Administrative Officer, will be the COO for Flipkart. In his new role, Nitin will be responsible for Ekart and Customer Experience, in addition to his existing role leading HR, strategy to execution capabilities and corporate functions for Flipkart. Nitin will report to Kalyan. Categories, Marketplace, Customer shopping experience, private label and marketing will continue to report to Kalyan. In addition, the engineering org led by Ravi Garikapati will now report to Kalyan.

As part of the Flipkart Group Org, Ananth Narayanan will continue to be the CEO of Myntra-Jabong and Sameer Nigam will continue to the CEO of PhonePe. Kalyan, Ananth and Sameer will work under Binny. Flipkart Group is also reportedly in the process of hiring a Group CFO and General Counsel, both of whom will report to Binny. Saikiran Krishnamurthy will transition from his role as Head of Supply Chain to lead the efforts to set up the Group CEO’s office and help Binny deliver his new charter.

Sachin Bansal will continue to be the Executive Chairman, providing strategic direction for existing businesses, mentoring senior leadership, and will work closely with Binny on the new business portfolio.

Benny’s other key responsibility 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.

“2016 has been truly an extraordinary year for Flipkart,” said Binny, Group CEO of Flipkart.  “We effected a complete turnaround of the business and consolidated our leadership position in ecommerce. We are now ready to build the Flipkart of the future as we continue on our journey of transforming commerce in India through technology. I am confident that this new organisation structure will deliver further value for Flipkart group,” he added.

According to an official statement, this newly formed Group Org aims to create a future value through a portfolio of new, high growth businesses, manage capital allocation across group companies, and ensure each business has a strong CEO in place.

One of the focus areas of the Group Org will be to build a portfolio of new, high value-creating businesses that are disruptive and will transform commerce in India. To evaluate these opportunities and construct this portfolio of new businesses, Flipkart Group Org will have a Group Strategy function as well as M&As.

While it may be a coincidence, it was exactly a year back that Flipkart’s then CEO Sachin Bansal was replaced by Binny Bansal. The move came in as the result of a downfall in Flipkart’s sales when Sachin decided to focus on an ‘app-only’ strategy. This drove Flipkart’s potential desktop customers to other platforms.

In a year that was marked down by fluctuating valuations and rumours of Chinese investment, Flipkart has struggled to consolidate its lead in the non-profit making vertical of ecommerce, with competitors Snapdeal, Amazon and ShopClues nipping closely at its heels.

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