Flipkart plans to depend on experimentation and learning

Rejig likely every few years to make company flexible to the changing needs of business

Leading e-commerce player Flipkart has been aggressively hiring top-level talent for the past several months. With nine senior vice-presidents and 14 vice-presidents in place, the Bengaluru-based company appears to have built a strong foundation to tackle the rapid growth in the sector, but it wants to do more.

Flipkart will continue to modify and evolve its organisational structure in line with the changes in the domestic e-commerce industry, according to officials. With no established example to follow in the sector, Flipkart plans to depend on experimentation and learning.

“The organisational structure of Flipkart will continue to evolve, and you could see a new structure every few years, or possibly even sooner. The rate of change that technology is driving in our lives is very rapid,” Mekin Maheshwari, chief people officer at Flipkart, told Business Standard. “This change would mean that businesses and companies will need to remain agile and change rapidly in line with the need of the day. If an organisational structure is far from the reality of what the business is or what the world is, it will get outdated.”

In the past, Flipkart has made several organisational changes. For example, the firm moved from being a hierarchically-flat start-up to a company with around 2,000 employees. Through this process, it brought in layers of senior vice-presidents, vice-presidents, senior directors, directors, and managers. Maheshwari also said the company made a transition when it moved its focus from website to mobile.

Through this year, Flipkart has inorganically added to its senior leadership and also promoted several insiders to leadership roles. Among others, Sanjay Baweja joined Flipkart as its chief financial officer (CFO) after heading finance at Tata Communications for several years. The company also brought on board Rishi Vasudev, who was heading Calvin Klein India, as its head of fashion retail earlier this month. Internally, Flipkart promoted Ankit Nagori, Vaibhav Gupta, Sameer Nigam and Rajnish Bawejaas as senior vice-presidents.