Flipkart's silent soldiers: Men who will lead the firm in its next innings

Several of these leaders have moved up the ranks as 'Flipkart has grown, others have been roped in from global giants Google, Amazon and Microsoft

During the past two years and more, the baton of leadership at Flipkart saw quick change of hands. There were times when access to capital was considered the biggest constraint, as rival Amazon was continuing to splurge to march ahead. But Flipkart stay focused on to its core belief and execution capability, and the results are quite visible today, as it not only continues stay ahead in the race in almost every category, but global investors are also now more than willing than before to put their bet here.

The credit for this seemingly impossible feat could be given to a single man, but it’s better deserved by the team of top leaders who have worked relentlessly in the background to make this happen. In spite of its ups and downs, Flipkart has created a strong leadership pipeline as the country’s most valuable startup readies for the future with around 75-80 leaders who are now steering different key businesses and categories that have been instrumental to retain its leadership. Several of them have moved up the ranks as the company has grown, while others have been roped in from global giants Google, Amazon and Microsoft apart from large FMCG and consulting firms over the years.

Utkarsh B, Principal Architect, Flipkart

Take the example of Utkarsh B, who joined the company as a senior technical lead back in 2010 when it was still a book-seller. In his eight years at Flipkart, he’s grown to become the principal architect at the company, overseeing the development of the entire technology stack and playing an instrumental role in helping scale it as the company grew.

A conversation with Binny Bansal in 2016 after he became the CEO led Utkarsh on his latest and most ambitious project so far. ‘Continuous Platformization’, a term with Utkarsh coined himself, is a complete rethink of how Flipkart’s various technology teams functioned and set a mandate to build scalable solutions rather than scaling solutions as the business outgrew them.

“We can’t do everything by hacking our way around things. We need to platformise a lot of things for the simple reason that we’re taking longer term bets. You cannot reshape technological systems in retrospect, you need to continuously platformize them,” says Utkarksh.

Unlike many of his counterparts, Utkarsh likes working solo, calling himself a floater whom CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy calls upon every time a certain technology team needs help or is coming up against a brick wall.

There are many such examples of senior leaders who have grown as the company has matured. Take for example, Anil Goteti who joined the ecommerce company in 2012 as a category head and is now heading the marketplace and eBay India unit as a VP. Amar Nagaram who is a VP of a critical unit like engineering joined the company as an engineering manager in 2012. Amitesh Jha, joined the company in 2010 as category head for Mobiles and now heads of Ekart, the crucial logistics arm.

Mayur Datar, Chief Data Scientist, Flipkart

Similarly among those who have joined from global majors and leading key businesses include Anand Lakshminarayan, a former Microsoft veteran of 15 years who worked at its headquarters in Redmond before joining Flipkart in 2015 where he is heading the Big Data group as a VP.  Mayur Datar, currently the Chief Data Scientist at Flipkart worked for Google as a Research Scientist for over 12 years before switching gear to Flipkart in 2015 as a principal data scientist.

Moreover, despite the top-management churn at Flipkart which saw over 12 people in senior positions quit the company in the past two years, a lot of work being done by second level managers has gone unhindered. Rishi Vasudev, who joined Flipkart in late 2014 to head the company’s fashion unit, says his work and goals have hardly changed despite having to report to four different people in the past four years.

“I came in at a time when Mukesh (Bansal) came in, so I’ve seen quite a lot of changes. In these three and a half years, whatever has happened in my team, it has been very consistent. Things I came in thinking I’d do, have been happening. There have not been too many changes in that field, because of which we’ve been able to build our leadership in fashion category,” adds Vasudev.

Today, fashion is the largest category in terms of units sold on Flipkart and despite having grown by four times in the last four years, the pace of growth continues, adds Vasudev. This is in keeping with one of the company’s mottos ‘being audacious’ which Ajay Yadav, Vice President of smartphones and large appliances, says he too knows all about.

In his categories, Yadav says 90 per cent of the decisions are not taken by him or the people directly reporting to him, but by the key account managers. This distributed model of leadership is present across Flipkart and not only frees up the top management to look at the bigger picture rather than micromanage things but also grooms future leaders for the company.

Rishi Vasudev, VP (Fashion, Home, Furniture), Flipkart

“Between the gentleman that’s going to make the decision and the CEO, there are only four levels, and the maximum power actually sits with the key account managers who take 90 per cent of the decisions. Even if a mistake happens, it doesn't matter, but wasting time is not an option,” adds Yadav.

Yadav, who joined the company in April 2016, brought some 20 plus years of experience and served as the COO of the Mobile Store before joining Flipkart, believes in leading by example to keep some of the younger members of his 200 odd member team focused and motivated. Since the start of 2018, he hadn’t spent three consecutive days in Bengaluru, where he is based, saying it puts moral pressure on his team to go the extra mile as well.

This mimics the structure CEO Krishnamurthy has built since he took up the position last January. After a brief exodus, he clamped down on attrition in his top management team, and while overlooking more of what the company was doing, he ensured ownership of categories and businesses. One of his biggest contributions since taking up the position he says has been taking entrepreneurship to the masses at Flipkart.

“We are in a market creation mode. E-commerce in India is still hugely underpenetrated and is still in low single digits. The charter for certain people at Flipkart is to grow that, which means a huge amount of innovation goes in, a huge amount of risk taking happens,” says Krishnamurthy. “These are the things which our leaders are dealing with at a regular basis.”

Armed with his band of 75-80 leaders who are among the very few people in the country who have witnessed and understood the e-commerce growth scale, Krishnamurthy has been able to hold off Amazon for now, a feat by itself considering how ruthless the American company is known to be. He’s quick to retort that the way he’s done is by stopping to worry about competition when building a business. 

Flipkart's new brigade
Homegrown			Lateral Hires
Name	Comes as	Current role	Name	Previous role	Current role
Utkarsh B	Senior Technical Lead	Principal Architect	Anand Lakshminarayan	Group Programme Manager, Microsoft	VP (Big Data Group)
Anil Goteti	Category Lead	Head of Marketplace	Ajay Yadav	COO, Mobile Store	VP (Mobile and Large Appliances)
Amar Nagaram	Engineering Manager	VP (Engineering)	Rishi Vasudev	CEO, Calvin Klein India	VP (Fashion, Home, Furniture)
Krishna Raghavan	GM (Marketplace Engineering)	SVP (Engineering)	Mayur Datar	Sr. Staff Research Scientist, Google	Chief Data Scientist
Manish Kumar	Category Manager	VP (Grocery)	Sriram Venkataraman	GM Finance, HUL	CFO
Ranjith Boyanapalli	Director (Business Development)	VP (Customer Experience)	Rajnish Baweja	CFO (Africa Region), Airtel	Group Finance Controller & Group Legal Head
Amitesh Jha	Associate Director (Mobiles)	Head of eKart