Flipkart loses yet another top exec in blow to growth strategies

Photo by Samrat Mazumdar

Flipkart’s chief product officer Punit Soni – the company’s most celebrated hire – has quit, putting an end to persistent rumors about his tenure at the company.

Punit joined Flipkart in February last year, before which he had been a vice president at Google at its Motorola Mobility division.

His departure has raised fresh doubts about the Indian ecommerce king’s recent strategies .

Flipkart’s mobile strategy – one pushed by Punit – has been under fire from a number of quarters for a long time now, despite the many measures later taken by the ecommerce giant to placate users.

“There is some misinformation on my role in our mobile strategy though. I have always supported being open on all channels. We need to have a mobile only mindset and in fact, my team has been responsible for turning the desktop and mobile website back on,” Punit had said in a February email to Tech in Asia.

However, one fall-out of the many perceived flip-flops by the company has been rising questions about Punit’s contribution to the company’s growth, various sources told Tech in Asia. An expensive hire, Punit was reportedly left with an undefined role after Flipkart recently rejigged its top level management.

Photo credit: Dinesh Cyanam.

“Startups in general were throwing money left, right, and center last year, hiring from very big places and posts. However, as they grow they have realized not all of those hires have been a good fit, and now they are rationalizing,” said Kris Lakshmikanth, chairman and managing director at executive search firm The Head Hunters India.

Punit’s exit comes on the heels of an entire lot of Flipkart’s top leadership quitting in recent months. – Mukesh Bansal, who was the head of its commerce platform, and Ankit Nagori was Flipkart’s chief business officer, left earlier this year. In March, the head of its seller and marketplace platform, Manish Maheshwari, quit after just a little over a year with the company.

Sources say these exits were triggered by the reshuffle which saw Binny Bansal become CEO.

Flipkart did not respond to emails seeking comments.

The changes come at a time when Flipkart has just seen a knockdown of its valuation, and is reportedly struggling to raise more funds.

In denial

Photo credit: Pixabay

The company has repeatedly denied Punit’s move till now, but multiple sources told Tech in Asia that the change was a result of the various missteps the company took while chasing its aggressive mobile strategies, many of which fell flat.

“The past year has been very interesting and I need time to absorb and reflect first,” Punit said in an email on Wednesday.

A Flipkart spokesperson confirmed the move, but did not give any other details.

“Punit is not a desktop guy. He knows mobile, and he was the one that briefed us on Flipkart going ‘mobile-first’,” a former employee who worked with Punit said.

That strategy did not go down well for the company, with Flipkart having to go back to its mobile website, and its social shopping feature Ping, Punit’s brainchild, not taking off at all.

Flipkart launched Flipkart Lite, a redesigned mobile site which the company called a “progressive web app,” late last year.

“The mobile website was taken off briefly because the users did not have a good mobile browsing experience. We came up with Flipkart Lite that brought in the best of the browser and richness of a native app. Our motto is simple – provide the best customer experience on the mobile,” a company spokesperson had said, denying that there was any change in plans.

But semantics aside, the relaunch was viewed by industry watchers as a reversal of strategy, and was compounded when data showed that the company’s app-only experiment with Myntra was a failure.