Indian unicorn Flipkart’s top-level exodus snowballs, CFO Sanjay Baweja quits

India’s ecommerce leader Flipkart continues to leak top-level talent. Word just got out that Sanjay Baweja, Flipkart’s chief financial officer, has put in his resignation. This comes two years after Flipkart poached him from Tata Communications, where he was the CFO.

Sanjay, with around three decades’ experience in finance, was a big hire for the ecommerce startup. Flipkart confirmed the move, and said Sanjay’s last day in the company will be December 31. “The search for a new CFO is on,” a Flipkart spokesperson said. “He found another opportunity,” he added, on the circumstances of Sanjay’s exit.

But an hour or so after we published the report, social media was abuzz with possible reasons for the ouster.

Shifts in top-level management are to be expected in a fast-evolving environment but in the case of Flipkart, there have been a series of high profile exits. Google vice president Punit Soni left Mountain View, California, to join Flipkart as its chief product officer with much fanfare in February 2015. He quit in a little over a year. And has subsequently criticized the lack of empowerment of top professional managers at Flipkart.

“I think my understanding on how sophisticated and mature the Indian ecosystem was probably a little bit higher than reality,” Punit told Indian newspaper Hindu in an interview after leaving Flipkart. “The Indian ecosystem’s ability to absorb talent from other places might be lower than it is believed to be. It is not the right time. I can see other people also exiting around me. So, it is not just me.” His words have proved prophetic.

The exodus started with Flipkart’s ecommerce platform head Mukesh Bansal quitting Flipkart in February. Mukesh was the founder of Myntra, who joined Flipkart after the merger. Flipkart’s chief business officer Ankit Nagori also quit along with Mukesh.

Vice president and head of seller marketplace and ecosystem at Flipkart Manish Maheshwari quit in April this year, after a year’s stint, to join Web18 as its chief executive officer.

Legal head Rajinder Sharma quit in July, just 10 months after joining the company. Flipkart’s payments product lead Lalit Sarna and product lead for the marketplace division Sunil Gopinath quit around the same time.

See: The world’s best firms have Indian CEOs – but why not in Asia?

In the beginning of this year, Flipkart got a new CEO – its co-founder Binny Bansal who was COO until then. Sachin Bansal who was in the top exec chair moved to become the executive chairman of the company. Subsequently, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, MD of Flipkart’s main investor Tiger Global, took over as head of categories reporting directly to Binny Bansal, ostensibly for a clean-up at the troubled ecommerce company. It’s not clear if subsequent exits of top managers are related to this appointment.

See: Something doesn’t add up in Nikesh Arora’s sudden exit from SoftBank