Another High Profile Exit from Flipkart, COO Nitin Seth Resigns
Online marketplace Flipkart’s chief operating officer Nitin Seth has quit the firm as per media reports. Seth has reportedly resigned from Flipkart due to personal reasons.
He was also in charge of the e-commerce major’s in-house logistics firm Ekart, supply chain, and customer experience. His exit will give Flipkart’s chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy full control of top functions at the firm. It is not clear at this moment who will replace Seth.
Seth, former managing director and country head of investment firm Fidelity International in India, had joined Flipkart as chief people officer in February last year. He had replaced Mekin Maheshwari, one of the highest-paid executives at Flipkart at the time.
Seth became COO in January this year after a major reshuffle of the top management, when Krishnamurthy, a former Tiger Global executive, was appointed CEO.
Last week, it was reported that Krishnamurthy would be overseeing the human resources function, finance, category design management, private label, customer shopping, engineering and marketing.
Between last year and early this year, Flipkart has seen a number of top-level exits, including Saikiran Krishnamurthy, head of Ekart; chief marketing officer Samardeep Subandh; and senior vice president of product management Surojit Chatterjee. In October last year, the firm’s chief financial officer Sanjay Baweja resigned and, in April 2016, chief product officer Punit Soni had resigned without specifying any reason, just after a year of joining.
However, that trend seems to have changed in the past few months with Seth playing an instrumental role in bringing back talent to Flipkart.
Last month, Flipkart raised $1.5 billion from Tencent, Microsoft, and eBay as it moves closer to sealing its merger with rival firm Snapdeal. Soon after the e-commerce firm signed the term sheet for the merger and will be conducting due diligence on the merger deal.
