 "Punit Soni, Flipkart's star hire from Google, quits")
Flipkart's most high profile hire Punit Soni, who came from Google as the e-commerce firm's chief product officer quit the firm on Wednesday ending speculation of his exit after co-founder Binny Bansal took up the CEO role.
Soni informed colleagues of his exit in an email on Wednesday. He joins other top executives such as Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori, to quit the online retailer after its planned restructuring in January. Since then, Soni did not have a clear roadmap for his role in the e-commerce marketplace.
Flipkart confirmed the news of Soni's exit. Tasked with transforming Flipkart into a mobile-only platform, Soni led the shutting down of subsidiary Myntra's website last year. The experiment, which is seen to have cost Myntra the loss of users and revenue was scrapped when Myntra relaunched its mobile website in February.
He was brought in by chairman Sachin Bansal, a move which kicked off the trend of hiring top silicon valley executives by India's e-commerce firms. Soni was credited to have revived the Motorola brand under Google ownership.
