)
Bengaluru-based e-commerce firm Flipkart on Thursday announced appointments of three executives.
Hari Vasudev, former vice-president at Yahoo, has been appointed senior vice-president for engineering, information technology, and supply-chain analytics. K V Anand, former president, digital platforms, Hathway Cable & Datacom, has been hired as senior vice-president for customer experience. Manish Maheshwari, co-founder of txtWeb, a marketplace for text-based apps, has joined Flipkart as vice-president and head of seller ecosystem.
Vasudev will work to build innovative supply-chain products and services, using new technologies such as robotics and the internet of things (the interconnection via the internet of computing devices embedded in everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data).
“Vasudev, with his experience, has built and scaled organisations across multiple domains in the software sector. His expertise will help us transform the supply chain in India by using technology to create a highly differentiated customer experience at a very large scale,” said Binny Bansal, co-founder and chief operating officer at Flipkart.
At Yahoo, Vasudev was a centre head. He has worked on several consumer and platform products in the consumer and advertising domains. He holds a master's degree in computer science from Iowa State University and a master's degree in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
Anand will be responsible for driving the customer experience for Flipkart's marketplace. He has spent 18 years in the satellite broadcasting and direct-to-home satellite television sector in West Asia, Hong Kong, and India.
“As Flipkart scales and ventures into newer territories within the e-commerce space, the need to maintain our focus on a superior customer experience has become supreme,” said Mukesh Bansal, head of the commerce platform at Flipkart. “We are confident that Anand, with his experience in the customer engagement space, is a great fit to lead Flipkart in this initiative. He is well recognised in the sector for execution and productive results.”
Maheshwari will be responsible for initiatives such as seller acquisition, enablement, and growth. He will also work towards strengthening the seller ecosystem team.
Before co-founding txtWeb, Maheshwari was the head of new markets, global business division, at software products’ firm Intuit.
“Maheshwari's experience leads to him having a great understanding of small and medium enterprises in India. He has a proven record of building cross-functional teams, with a constant focus on customer experience,” said Ankit Nagori, senior vice-president (marketplace), Flipkart.
“This will add a lot of value to the business as we move towards becoming a best-of-breed seller ecosystem that's simultaneously centered around the customer.”
Flipkart may look at an Initial Public Offering in a few years. Flipkart has set a target to double its gross merchandise value to $8 billion (Rs 48,000 crore) in 2015, against $4 billion (Rs 24,000 crore) now.
