Flipkart merges depts to create singular growth org under Prakash Sikaria

E-commerce firm Flipkart is merging its ‘Customer & Marketing Org’ with ‘Growth & Monetisation Org’ to create a singular Flipkart Growth charter under senior company executive Prakash Sikaria, said CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy in a letter addressed to the employees.

Sikaria, who is Senior Vice President - Growth and Monetization, Flipkart, has been with the firm since 2015, and during his time with the company, he has created a significant impact by pioneering and launching impactful initiatives such as Ads, Plus, Supercoins, Games, Video, Travel and social commerce platform Shopsy. In addition to this responsibility, travel platform ClearTrip which was acquired by Flipkart will continue to report to Sikaria.

“With the above change, Karthik Rajeshwaran, Priyanka Bhargav, Manjari Singhal, Rizwan Syed and Prasanth Naidu will report to Prakesh (Sikaria),” said Krishnamurthy, adding the changes are effective January 1, 2022.

Under Sikaria, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management, Flipkart is betting big on social commerce, which is the use of social network communities to drive e-commerce sales. Social commerce is expected to be about a $70 billion market opportunity in the next few years. This year, Flipkart launched Shopsy, an app that enables Indians to start their online businesses without any investment.

Shopsy continues to witness strong growth through its consumers, sellers and resellers from across the country. Backed by festive fervor, the platform has seen 3.6x growth in new app downloads, crossing the 10 million mark on the play store, within five months of its launch. Since July 2021, Flipkart said Shopsy has received an overwhelming response from consumers and resellers across the country who hopped onto the platform for their ‘shop & earn’ needs.

Shopsy clocked in 4X revenue growth during this festive period, compared to the non-festive sale period, making it the top social commerce platform for consumers across the country. The platform's active user base grew 3.7X to what it was during the non-festive period. For Shopsy, categories including fashion, beauty, general merchandise and home (BGMH) led the growth story in October. In social commerce, Flipkart is competing with players such as SoftBank-backed Meesho, DealShare, BulBul, GlowRoad, Mall91, and simsim. With Shopsy, Flipkart aims to enable over 100 million online entrepreneurs in the next few years as they reap the benefits of digital commerce.

“I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Nandita Sinha ( new Myntra CEO) and Amitesh Jha for their immense contribution to the Customer & Marketing Org,” said Krishnamurthy in the letter seen by Business Standard. “Over the past year, Nandita and Amitesh have driven numerous campaigns which have contributed significantly to our business growth and delivered yet another successful BBD (The Big Billion Days festive event).”