BENGALURU: Flipkart is shuffling its top deck, hiring senior professionals and engaging with management consultants as the seven-year-old company sheds its startup skin. These moves that have gained pace in recent weeks are aimed at creating a new organisational structure for India's largest online retailer while bringing in new talent to manage its phenomenal growth.
"The organisation is reflecting what we believe about our business and our strategy in terms of preparing ourselves for rapid and massive growth," said Mekin Maheshwari, Flipkart's chief people officer, who has previously held positions like head of payments and head of technology. "There is going to be a lot of experimentation from the business model and business point of view and also in terms of how we attack business problems from an organisation point of view."
Sharad Agarwal, head of tech platforms at mobile advertising firm In-Mobi, is likely to join the online retailer in the coming weeks, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
The company declined to comment on Agarwal joining the company. If he does, that will be Flipkart's fifth big hire in recent weeks, following other high-profile ones such as its chief financial officer Sanjay Baweja from Tata Communications and Rishi Vasudev from Calvin Klein India. The Bengaluru company has also promoted four people as senior vice presidents Ankit Nagori, Vaibhav Gupta, Sameer Nigam and Rajnish Baweja.
Flipkart is realigning responsibilities, even as it is creating new verticals like "own brands" and expanding product categories and supply-chain operations. Maheshwari confirmed that Ravi Vora, as ET reported first on November 4, has moved from the head of marketing role and will build a team to create a range of Flipkart's own consumer brands.
The company has also hired consultants McKinsey & Company and PricewaterhouseCoopers to shape its strategy and organisational structure. PwC has been tasked with designing the people structure within Flipkart. "They are playing an advisory role in terms of how we can operate better," said Maheshwari, declining to provide further details.
"They are looking at how a professional organisation should be created within ecommerce," said a person who is directly involved in the process. The lack of an Indian ecommerce benchmark in terms of people structure is also resulting in this struggle. "Flipkart is trying to build on the learnings of companies like Google, Facebook and even an Infosys."
Another person, who has knowledge of the company's hiring plans, said Flipkart will add at least two more senior vice presidents and at least 10 more vice presidents in the next three months. In six months, it will add at least another 30 vice presidents.
Maheshwari declined to provide numbers, but said more hires at senior level will be made in verticals like supply chain, retail, marketing, product and technology.
Flipkart is on track to reach between $3 billion and $4 billion (Rs 18,630 crore and Rs 24,840 crore) of sales in the current fiscal year through March, according to multiple people ET spoke with. Flipkart Internet, which manages the portal, had a total income of Rs 179 crore last fiscal year, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies.
Its wholesale arm Flipkart India Pvt Ltd posted sales of Rs 2,846 crore, more than double the Rs 1,180 crore of sales a year earlier. As it has grown, Flipkart has also bulked up in terms of staff strength. When the company announced its $1 billion fundraise in late-July, its employee strength was 14,000; today it is 20,000.
While it has got legions of mid-to junior-level employees, it is at the topmost levels that the company had gaps, some glaring. It took the company over a year to fill up its chief financial officer position. As reported first by ET on September 5, Tata Communication CFO Baweja joined Flipkart in November. It hired Vasudev, previously head of Clavin Klein India, as vice president of fashion, a post that was vacant for almost a year. These hires are yet more signs of Flipkart's continuing efforts to get experienced professionals to fill up its top posts. At the senior vice president level the team that reports to the founders its past senior hires have not stayed on. Last year saw the exits of then CFO Karandeep Singh and HR head Aparna Ballukar, both leaving around a year after joining. Singh, who was previously VP finance at Sapient India, and Ballukar who had joined from Yahoo India where she was VP of human resources, were Flipkart's first high-profile hires.
It is Flipkart's lesser-experienced pre-2012 hires that the company has heavily relied on to handle new requirements.
Even the promotions this year, from VP to SVP, are dominated by this pre-2012 class. Rajnish Baweja, who was hired as Flipkart's finance controller just in July and now promoted to the SVP level, is the only post-2012 hire to be elevated to this level this year.
"The long-term vision is to fulfill a lot of our talent needs internally," said Maheshwari. "But for the next two to three years, I see us hiring a lot."
This is a struggle most fast-growing young companies face. "There comes a time, within startups that have scaled, when there is a shift in strategy from getting a potential hire to a proven hire," said Anuj Roy, partner at recruitment search firm TRANSEARCH India.
"The organisation is reflecting what we believe about our business and our strategy in terms of preparing ourselves for rapid and massive growth," said Mekin Maheshwari, Flipkart's chief people officer, who has previously held positions like head of payments and head of technology. "There is going to be a lot of experimentation from the business model and business point of view and also in terms of how we attack business problems from an organisation point of view."
Sharad Agarwal, head of tech platforms at mobile advertising firm In-Mobi, is likely to join the online retailer in the coming weeks, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
The company declined to comment on Agarwal joining the company. If he does, that will be Flipkart's fifth big hire in recent weeks, following other high-profile ones such as its chief financial officer Sanjay Baweja from Tata Communications and Rishi Vasudev from Calvin Klein India. The Bengaluru company has also promoted four people as senior vice presidents Ankit Nagori, Vaibhav Gupta, Sameer Nigam and Rajnish Baweja.
Flipkart is realigning responsibilities, even as it is creating new verticals like "own brands" and expanding product categories and supply-chain operations. Maheshwari confirmed that Ravi Vora, as ET reported first on November 4, has moved from the head of marketing role and will build a team to create a range of Flipkart's own consumer brands.
The company has also hired consultants McKinsey & Company and PricewaterhouseCoopers to shape its strategy and organisational structure. PwC has been tasked with designing the people structure within Flipkart. "They are playing an advisory role in terms of how we can operate better," said Maheshwari, declining to provide further details.
"They are looking at how a professional organisation should be created within ecommerce," said a person who is directly involved in the process. The lack of an Indian ecommerce benchmark in terms of people structure is also resulting in this struggle. "Flipkart is trying to build on the learnings of companies like Google, Facebook and even an Infosys."
Another person, who has knowledge of the company's hiring plans, said Flipkart will add at least two more senior vice presidents and at least 10 more vice presidents in the next three months. In six months, it will add at least another 30 vice presidents.
Maheshwari declined to provide numbers, but said more hires at senior level will be made in verticals like supply chain, retail, marketing, product and technology.
Flipkart is on track to reach between $3 billion and $4 billion (Rs 18,630 crore and Rs 24,840 crore) of sales in the current fiscal year through March, according to multiple people ET spoke with. Flipkart Internet, which manages the portal, had a total income of Rs 179 crore last fiscal year, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies.
Its wholesale arm Flipkart India Pvt Ltd posted sales of Rs 2,846 crore, more than double the Rs 1,180 crore of sales a year earlier. As it has grown, Flipkart has also bulked up in terms of staff strength. When the company announced its $1 billion fundraise in late-July, its employee strength was 14,000; today it is 20,000.
While it has got legions of mid-to junior-level employees, it is at the topmost levels that the company had gaps, some glaring. It took the company over a year to fill up its chief financial officer position. As reported first by ET on September 5, Tata Communication CFO Baweja joined Flipkart in November. It hired Vasudev, previously head of Clavin Klein India, as vice president of fashion, a post that was vacant for almost a year. These hires are yet more signs of Flipkart's continuing efforts to get experienced professionals to fill up its top posts. At the senior vice president level the team that reports to the founders its past senior hires have not stayed on. Last year saw the exits of then CFO Karandeep Singh and HR head Aparna Ballukar, both leaving around a year after joining. Singh, who was previously VP finance at Sapient India, and Ballukar who had joined from Yahoo India where she was VP of human resources, were Flipkart's first high-profile hires.
It is Flipkart's lesser-experienced pre-2012 hires that the company has heavily relied on to handle new requirements.
Even the promotions this year, from VP to SVP, are dominated by this pre-2012 class. Rajnish Baweja, who was hired as Flipkart's finance controller just in July and now promoted to the SVP level, is the only post-2012 hire to be elevated to this level this year.
"The long-term vision is to fulfill a lot of our talent needs internally," said Maheshwari. "But for the next two to three years, I see us hiring a lot."
This is a struggle most fast-growing young companies face. "There comes a time, within startups that have scaled, when there is a shift in strategy from getting a potential hire to a proven hire," said Anuj Roy, partner at recruitment search firm TRANSEARCH India.
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