Exodus at Flipkart, now CFO quits

Lately Flipkart has been celebrating its victory over arch rivals Amazon and Snapdeal in the blistering Diwali sales battle but it can no longer ignore the massive employee churn that has hit it across levels as now its chief financial officer Sanjeev Baweja has put in his papers. This comes right after Flipkart's legal head Rajinder Sharma, quit earlier in July this year , just 10 months after joining the firm said a report in the Times of India.

Fashion e-commerce marketplace Myntra's founder and Flipkart's commerce platform head Mukesh Bansal left earlier this year, together with chief business officer Ankit Nagori. This was followed by the exit of Flipkart's biggest hire from Silicon Valley former Google executive Punit Soni, who had joined as chief product officer. Soni did not even complete a year at the firm said the report.  Flipkart's HR head Priya Cherian also quit recently to join Alibaba which is planning a big presence in Bengaluru.

This comes at a time when Flipkart is chasing profitability very zealously for the first time since its inception and high time as it has burned an estimated $50 million a month and clocked up more than ₹2000 crore in losses. It's cutting costs, rationalising staff,  hiking commissions that it charges from sellers ( 10%-40%) and has reduced its return policy to 10 from 30 days. Apart from its profit-making categories such as fashion, electronics and large appliances, Flipkart now also wants to push furniture and automobiles to garner higher revenues. 

After Binny Bansal replaced Sachin Bansal as CEO, he has been overhauling the system at the management level and said the firm was expected to turn profitable in three years. This after Sachin Bansal famously said, "We don't want to remain a small profitable company."  This change in track comes at a time when global investors questioned its $15 billion valuation and wrote down their investments by more than 30%, yanking its valuations down to $10 billion.

Currently Flipkart is also in the midst of another round of funding and reportedly is in talks with Walmart.

• Flipkart
• CFO
• lay-offs