Flipkart’s other Bansal takes charge – On Monday, Flipkart announced Binny as its new chief executive officer (CEO), replacing his long-time friend and business partner Sachin Bansal, who has taken the role of executive chairman of the company.
The move comes as a surprise especially since Flipkart took on a massive management restructuring less than a year ago.
Binny takes over at Flipkart when it is facing its toughest test. Flipkart is involved in a high-stake market share war with the local unit of Amazon.com Inc. and Snapdeal, the outcome of which will help form the future of India’s entire start-up ecosystem.
Binny, a Chandigarh boy, studied software programming at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. After college, he was employed at research and development firm Sarnoff Corp. before he joined Amazon as a software engineer in January 2007. Within nine months, he left Amazon to start Flipkart with Sachin, his college classmate and Amazon colleague.
The Flipkart of today sells all kinds of products including smartphones, shoes, apparel, furniture and large appliances. Last year, it began including fundamental changes in its business model. Flipkart decided it would transfer to the marketplace model from an inventory-led business. At the same time, it is trying to shift to an ads-driven model. It remains unclear whether these complex shifts will return the profits that have dodged Flipkart for so long.