After a year of leading Flipkart as its CEO, co-founder Binny Bansal is handing over the baton to Kalyan Krishnamurthy , a former Tiger Global executive, amid a continuous senior-level restructuring at the online retailer. On Monday evening, Flipkart said Krishnamurthy, 44, branded as the “turnaround man” at the e-commerce company, who had been heading critical functions like commerce, advertising, and products will now be designated as chief executive of the Bengaluru-based firm.
Bansal will be the group CEO, in a newly formed role.Krishnamurthy , Ananth Narayanan, CEO of Myntra-Jabong combine, and Sameer Nigam, PhonePe CEO, will all report to Bansal.
The development is significant as from here on both the co-founders (Binny and Sachin Bansal, not related) of the country’s most valued tech startup are not in operational roles and an outsider is now in charge of the online retailer, which started operations in 2007 as an e-bookstore.
In his one-year tenure as Flipkart’s CEO, Bansal got back the focus on execution at Flipkart after it slipped up in 2015, with moves such as going apponly and shift to a marketplace model slowing down growth even as Amazon gained ground with a gargantuan war chest.Verticals like supply chain and logistics became integral and the online retailer bought PhonePe with a commitment to push the payments business under his tenure.
While Bansal steered Flipkart, Krishnamurthy , who rejoined the company as head of category design organisation in June last year, saw his role expand extensively over the past six months. In his first me dia interaction ever last year, after the completion of the Big Billion Day sale, Krishnamurthy told TOI the CEO-ship of Flipkart was a decision that would be made by the management and the board, rebuffing any such elevation at the time.But the prevailing narrative since he returned was that he was on course to becoming CEO any time.
Known for being acutely media-shy but one with great execution skills, Krishnamurthy, a close aide of Tiger Global’s Lee Fixel, the largest investor in Flipkart, will now add engineering and supply chain to his portfolio. He will get full control of the profit and loss at the company . Ravi Garikapati, head of engineering at and Nitin Seth, who was the chief administrative officer, has been appointed COO and will be reporting to him. Saikiran Krishnamurthy, who was heading EKart, will now join Bansal’s team. The Flipkart Group is in the process of hiring a group CFO and general counsel.
