Mukesh Bansal, head of commerce platform at India’s largest e-retail company Flipkart, and Ankit Nagori, the company’s chief business officer, have quit.
Mukesh, who joined Flipkart in 2014 after it acquired Myntra, the online fashion portal he co-founded in 2007, says he is taking a break. Nagori is leaving the company to start an entrepreneurial venture in the sports domain. While Mukesh is expected to continue till the end of March, Nagori will stay till May 2016.
Flipkart, in a media statement, said Mukesh will continue to play an advisory role in the company. “Mukesh has played a huge role in making Myntra the number one fashion destination and helped build a strong platform at Flipkart, including India’s strongest leadership team. Ankit Nagori, chief business officer, Flipkart, is also moving on from Flipkart to start an entrepreneurial venture in the sports domain. Ankit has played an instrumental role in introducing newer initiatives at Flipkart and building the marketplace model for the company,” it said.
The company said that Flipkart’s co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal will support Nagori as the first investors in his new business. The three Bansals at Flipkart are not related.
Mukesh, in an interview to Mint said, “We’ve been discussing (my departure) for a while, since October. I wanted to give Binny some time to come in and settle as new CEO. We also restructured the commerce platform into product groups. So I wanted to give some time to Binny to understand the commerce platform and build relationships with the leaders there. We have some great leaders coming in and this was the right time to leave. I really did want to take a break.”
Last month Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart and chief operating officer, was elevated to the top job of chief executive in the company, while the CEO Sachin Bansal moved to become executive chairman.
“The past two years or so I’ve been like a co-founder here. I’ve worked very closely with Sachin and Binny on all aspects including strategy and organisation. I got financially and emotionally vested in the success of the group. For me, it was about setting up the company for long-term success. And we are in that space today,” Mukesh told Mint.
Mukesh sold Myntra to Flipkart for a reported sum of $375 million. He founded Myntra in 2007 along with two other IIT engineers, Ashutosh Lawania and Vineet Saxena, as an on-demand gift personalization business that operated as a B2B (business to business) model and in 2011 expanded its business to become an online fashion store.
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