Flipkart hires experts from Amazon, Google, Microsoft

Indian online retailer Flipkart has announced three major appointments to its senior management today as it plans to be a global company. 

The Bangalore-based company has hired Dan Rawson as Head of Customer Logistics and Supply Chain Ecosystem. Dawson joins from Amazon.

It has also appointed Ravi Byakod as Director of Engineering – Accounting, and Anand Lakshminarayanan as Head of Product Management for Digital Goods and Services.

The three executives, with significant experience at Amazon, Google, Microsoft and eBay, are the latest in a series of senior technology experts from the world’s best technology companies to join Flipkart’s rapidly growing enterprise in Bangalore, the company said in a statement.

Dan Rawson will oversee all aspects of customer delivery solutions, leading product, business, and operations teams to advance the way Flipkart uses technology to expand delivery while maintaining a consistently excellent experience for consumers.

“Dan has proven his leadership skills in an array of situations,” said Punit Soni, Chief Product Officer. “His operational expertise and passion for tackling big challenges will be an asset as Flipkart’s rapid expansion continues. I look forward to working with him to deliver great service for millions of Flipkart customers in the months and years to come.”

A former Captain in the US Marines, Rawson joins Flipkart from Amazon in Seattle, where he was General Manager of Fulfilment in North America. In that role he led a team responsible for managing all aspects of an operation that annually moves tens of billions of dollars’ worth of goods from third-party sellers to Amazon customers. Prior to Amazon, Rawson managed strategy and business development teams at Dell, including as Director of Worldwide Public Segment Mobility Solutions and Director of Global Transformation Strategy.

Rawson holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from Northwestern University.

As Director of Engineering – Accounting, Ravi Byakod will lead accounting technology for Flipkart. This role is crucial as his team is charged with building a scalable and flexible accounting platform for both existing and new Flipkart businesses that will provide an accurate picture of the company’s finances.

“Ravi’s background in building large-scale distributed systems will enable us to develop a flexible accounting platform on new architecture at scale,” said Peeyush Ranjan, CTO and Head of Engineering.

“This role is crucial given Flipkart’s rapid growth and the complexity and multitude of large-number systems involved and the amount of data the company handles.”

Byakod spent more than nine years at Google before joining Flipkart. Most recently, he served as Head of Engineering for Google for the Work’s Technology and Solutions team, developing data warehouses, customer relationship management programmes, and partner engineering solutions out of its Mountain View, California, headquarters. He also led the creation of a variety of large-scale backend systems, including the Google Payment Gateway and Apps hosting platform. During the course of his tenure at Google, he managed engineering teams in the company’s Ads, AdSense, Billing/Payments, Apps and Chrome divisions, and has experience leading remote teams, including in India.

Byakod holds an MS in Computer Architecture from the University of Alabama.

Anand Lakshminarayanan will lead the expansion of Flipkart’s digital product offerings, following the company’s success as the leading online marketplace for physical goods. 

“We are excited to have Anand join us in Bangalore,” Soni said. “We believe that over the next few years the consumption of digital goods and services in India will become mainstream, and Anand’s experience creating high-value digital products in both the US and India will be extremely valuable.”

Prior to joining Flipkart, Lakshminarayanan spent a year working for Microsoft in Hyderabad, India, as Principal Group Programme Manager of Applications and Services, leading the product team responsible for MSN Sports, MSN Money and MSN Health & Fitness for mobile devices and the web worldwide. Prior to that, he served as a Group Product Manager at eBay in Seattle, Washington, and also spent 13 years working in senior managerial and engineering roles at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters.

Lakshminarayanan holds six US patent applications, and MS degrees in Computer Science and Engineering.