Flipkart hires ex-MakemyTrip CTO and Microsoft cloud head

In September this year Flipkart hired Dawn Rawson - a key executive from the US operations of Amazon

Online retailer Flipkart has made two important appointments in key engineering roles as it looks to strengthen its technological expertise to take on rivals Amazon and Snapdeal.

Ravi Krishnaswamy, University of Illinois alumni and former Microsoft employee, will serve as vice-president of engineering for infrastructure and Singh will be vice-president of engineering for content.

At Flipkart, Krishnaswamy will understand and address challenges pertaining to organisation design and bandwidth, a key component of growth as the company gears up for millions of new users to burst onto the Internet in India. Krishnaswamy spearheaded the creation of Microsoft's hybrid integration vision and strategy, synergizing investments across server, private cloud and public cloud.

Singh, who in his previous stint served as CTO of travel portal MakeMyTrip, will lead the content management system (CMS) team at Flipkart. His expertise will allow the company to use content to transform the online buying experience, while possible helping automate a lot of content creation.

"Sharat makes an invaluable addition to the deep bench of executive talents at Flipkart. He brings with him an exceptional and strong operational capability with previous stints across leading organizations," said Peeyush Ranjan, CTO and Head of Engineering at Flipkart, in a statement.

Both Singh and Krishnaswamy are the latest in the line of top level hires at Flipkart, which in September hired Dawn Rawson - a key executive from the US operations of Amazon, apart from former Googler Ravi Byakod and Microsoft executive Anand Lakshminarayanan.

Flipkart has been on a hiring spree ever since it appointed Punit Soni as its Chief Product Officer. Soni, a former Motorola executive helped with the revival of the brand under the ownership of Google.

As competition in the Indian e-commerce space grows, it's getting harder for Flipkart to maintain its leadership position. India-based rival Snapdeal, which is valued at $ 5 billion has said it will reach $10 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) by March 2016, a whole three quarters ahead of when Flipkart estimates it will reach that goal.