New Delhi: Precisely a year after Flipkart hired the high-profile Google executive from Silicon Valley, Chief product executive at the e-commerce giant, Punit Soni, has resigned from the company. This is the latest in the string of top-level exits that Flipkart has witnessed over the past year.
"Soni has put in his papers," the source told IANS after the company's official spokesman failed to respond to calls and messages for confirmation.
Soni was followed by other top hires, including chief technology officer Peeyush Ranjan and consumer experience head Surojit Chatterjee, both former Google executives from Silicon Valley in the US.
Soni's exit comes months after Mukesh Bansal, the head of Flipkart's commerce business and chief business officer and Ankit Nagori, one of the oldest employees at the e-commerce firm, resigned early this year.
Punit Soni was leading Flipkart's product strategy and was there to strengthen its mobile commerce platform. He was the chief product officer at Flipkart and was being paid $1 million a year in fixed salary.
Niket Desai, another ex-Googler from the Valley, who was hired by Soni as his chief of staff, has also resigned from Flipkart, the company confirmed.
With the departure of these executives, Binny Bansal has assigned leadership responsibilities among other executives. Ranjan is now assigned as the head of engineering unit across units like commerce, supply chain and advertising. Saikiran Krishnamurthy, who was hired as chief operating officer (COO) of commerce unit from McKinsey last year, was named as the head of logistics unit Ekart and head of after sales and seller services in the commerce unit.
Flipkart is all set to raise fresh funds and is talks with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which has been speculated in various rumours.
