Top talent leaving Flipkart in search of greener pastures

NEW DELHI: Nishant Verman and Anurag Verma join the list of senior exits at Walmart-owned Flipkart in the past six months. Verman was vice president and Verma was senior director. Kirti Varun Avasarala, Vikash Jalan and Samrat Dogra, all of whom were directors, have also quit. At Flipkart-run Myntra, Bindu Mendonsa has stepped down as senior vice president.

After having been on an aggressive hiring spree for some time, Flipkart is going slow on recruitment, especially at the leadership level despite the exits.

“The hiring at Flipkart is on a freeze since December now. The company wants to go slow on leadership hiring and for very critical and key roles the company is looking internally,” said a person with knowledge of the matter.

The company didn’t comment directly on the matter.

“At Flipkart, we believe that our success as a company depends on our people, and we are proud of our strong talent pool who form the backbone of our organisation,” a Flipkart spokesperson told ET in an email. “Many of our leaders have grown with Flipkart and have been nurtured to take on larger roles and responsibilities within the organisation.”

Unicorns Going Slow on Hiring
Several other unicorns are slowing down on recruitment, said BTI Consultants managing director James Agrawal.

“Most of these companies are putting a cap on hiring as of now,” he said.

Flipkart CXOs are eager to move out and have been exploring options outside the company in the past three months, according to recruitment experts. Other recent exits at Flipkart, as reported earlier by ET, include Rishi Vasudev, group head of fashion, human resources head Smriti Singh and CTO Ravi Garikipati.

“The top talent in the big ecommerce companies is willing to explore options in upcoming new startups. This is primarily as a younger company offers more room for growth,” Agrawal said.

At Transearch India, the number of resumes from top talent at the unicorns has doubled, while for Insist, a boutique search and consulting firm, the number has gone up by 40% in the past few months.

To be sure, “the jump in CVs is not in line with the supply of new job opportunities, hence many executives are waiting for the right opportunities,” said Ashish Sanganeria, partner at Transearch India.

Some of this rush could be on account of funds getting harder to come by.

“Flow of queries from senior executives from unicorns has increased in the last few weeks. This could be due to the fact that this year is going to be tough to raise follow-on funds with a lot of pressure on profitability and positive unit economics,” said R Suresh, managing director, Insist.

Flipkart CFO Dipanjan Basu and Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan left in the past year. Flipkart had earlier confirmed Vasudev’s departure and said he will stay with the group until March 2020.