Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal to focus on the big picture

Following the reorganisation at the country’s largest e-commerce retailer, Flipkart, its co-founder and CEO Sachin Bansal is set to assume a larger mentor like strategic role in the company.

Insiders in the company say Sachin and co-founder Binny Bansal have taken a conscious decision to maintain a low profile and focus on driving strategic growth for the company, freeing themselves from handling day-to-day management of the company and driving new disruptive initiatives that will change the consumer experience.

The Bansals have in an earlier interaction with

BusinessLine maintained that while it was easier to turn the company profitable, it was a conscious decision to focus on long-term growth first and scaling up operations, which requires continuous investments to be made in technology, supply chain, logistics, warehouses and talent. The company apparently is growing at 300 per cent and is at $3-billion GMV (gross merchandise value) as per current estimates.

This year, the focus will be on strengthening processes, said Bansal.

To go public soon

The company, which looks to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba as its role model, is preparing to go public over the next 18-24 months before which it is looking to cut down its losses, a move that could bring much cheer to offline retailers that are bearing the brunt of Flipkart’s predatory pricing online.

Earlier this week, Flipkart announced that it has reorganised itself on vertical lines, a month after fashion and lifestyle e-tailer Myntra, a company Flipkart acquired last May, went through a top management reshuffle.

The company has reorganised itself into three distinct units with Sachin continuing to be its CEO but will take on the additional role of heading new initiatives for the company. COO Binny Bansal will also look after supply chain and logistics while Mukesh Bansal who is CEO of Myntra and Head of Fashion, Flipkart will also be looking after marketing, retail and marketplace.

A spokesperson from Myntra said, while Mukesh was handling marketing all along, his role has now been formalised. While Ganesh Subramanian, COO at Myntra, was given a new role of heading new initiatives and relieved of the task of day-to-day operations to disrupt the current way in which the fashion business is run.

Division of labour

The company is also dividing its engineering team into two, with Senior VP Sameer Nigam heading engineering and CTO, Amod Malviya looking after R&D and innovation.

The decision to reorganise roles for a sharper focus was taken at a company board meeting last week, which was later announced to its employees.

Flipkart has so far been maintaining its lead over Amazon and Snapdeal and has until now raised $2.5 billion in 11 rounds from 17 investors. Of that, nearly $2 billion was raised in 2014 raising its valuation to $11 billion. Some of its investors include, DST Global, Steadview Capital, Accel Partners, Singapore GIC and Naspers.