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These top level changes have come soon after Flipkart co-founder and Group CEO Binny Bansal resigned over allegations of serious personal misconduct in November.
Walmart-backed e-commerce giant Flipkart has made a slew of changes to its top management, including the appointment of a chief operating officer (COO), a position which has been vacant for nearly 18 months.
According to an internal communique to employees which has been reviewed by Business Standard, Sriram Venkataraman, who currently serves as Flipkart’s chief financial officer, would take up the additional role of COO and also oversee crucial supply chain unit EKart. The ‘marketplace’ and ‘retail’ teams will report to him.
Venkataraman, who joined Flipkart as the chief financial officer (CFO) in 2015, would report to both CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Emily McNeal, the global head of mergers and acquisitions at Walmart and Group CFO at Flipkart.
Flipkart also elevated vice president Ranjith Boyanapalli to head the company’s engineering teams and its fintech business, filling the void left by departing chief technology officer (CTO) Ravi Garikipati.
Additionally, Myntra CTO Jeyandran Venugopal has been promoted to the senior vice president level and will head Flipkart’s applied science and technology (AST) group.
These top level changes have come soon after Flipkart co-founder and Group CEO Binny Bansal resigned over allegations of serious personal misconduct in November.
While the position of Group CEO was been filled after the shock exit, CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy was handed additional responsibility of overseeing fashion subsidiary Myntra-Jabong.
“At Flipkart, we’re committed to creating an empowered culture centered on the needs of our customers.
"And one of the hallmarks of that culture is to constantly look at ways to expand our leadership pool and bandwidth, by ensuring great opportunities exist for our talent to grow and acquire cross-functional skill sets,” Krishnamurthy wrote in a mail to employees on Tuesday.
“In line with this, we are making a few significant changes to the organisational structure, effective immediately.
"These changes are part of a planned restructuring that will enable agile decision making, while also putting us on the path to developing more independent, yet collaborative teams,” he wrote.
At Myntra, Ramesh Bafna, who had been heading the lifestyle and home business finances, has been promoted as head of finance, a position that fell vacant when Dipanjan Basu put in his papers last month.
Bafna would report to Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan, even as reports suggest Narayanan could well be on his way out.
Utkarsh B, the principal architect of Flipkart who has been with the company since the beginning, will now also serve as Technology Advisor to the CEO’s office.
“In the coming days, leaders will be hosting town halls to address any questions you may have related to these changes,” Kalyan added in his mail.
In May this year, US retail giant Walmart Inc acquired 77 per cent stake in Flipkart for $16 billion, making it the biggest ecommerce deal in the world.
Besides several investors who sold their stakes in the e-tailer, co-founder Sachin Bansal had also quit when the deal was struck.
Photograph: Abhishek N Chinnappa/Reuters
