Flipkart poaches from Amazon, Google, Microsoft

Flipkart has hired Dan Rawson, a key executive from the US operations of global rival Amazon, to head its customer logistics and supply chain ecosystems, as it strengthens its team to take on rivals Amazon, Snapdeal and Paytm in India.

It has also filled a key gap in its payment systems team by hiring Ravi Byakod, a senior Google engineer who had led teams in building the Google Payment Gateway and Apps hosting platform, as director of the engineering-accounting platform. Byakod will head the team in charge of building an accounting platform for both existing and new initiatives. Anand Lakshminarayanan, a Microsoft executive, has been appointed head of product management for digital goods and services. Lakshminarayanan had earlier built MSN products in the health, fitness, sports and money segments. Prior to that, he was group product manager at eBay. The three new executives would be based here, Flipkart stated.

In the recent past, Flipkart has announced quite a few top-level appointments. Six months ago, it had appointed Punit Soni has chief product officer. Another key appointment was that of Eric Lange, who managed analytics and publisher products for Yahoo!'s ad business.

Flipkart, valued at $15 billion, lags smaller rivals Snapdeal and Paytm in owning a payment system that also works as a wallet.