What's the Flipkart Group?

While we ventured into 2017 looking forward to spring instead of winter, one of the biggest players in the Indian startup ecosystem had a shocker up its sleeve. Flipkart, on January 9, announced that Kalyan Krishnamurthy has taken over as Flipkart CEO and Binny Bansal will now be the Group CEO. This announcement came a year after Binny replaced Sachin as the CEO of the e-commerce giant.

As Group CEO, Binny will be overseeing Myntra and Jabong, Ekart, and PhonePe. Kalyan will be responsible for operationally driving Flipkart as well as for Flipkart P&L. Expectedly, the last two days have seen a lot of chatter in the ecosystem, with many a conversation on how good or bad this move has been.

“Things have not been working for Flipkart since 2015 and the board was running out of patience," a veteran consultant told YourStory on condition on anonymity. The newly formed Group Org will focus on creating future value through a portfolio of new, high-growth businesses, manage capital allocation across group companies, and ensure each business has a strong CEO in place.

To evaluate these opportunities and construct this portfolio of new businesses, Flipkart Group Org will have a Group Strategy function as well as M&A.