The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
MUMBAI, India — Flipkart Pvt., India's biggest e-commerce company, said that Mukesh Bansal, who founded the Myntra.com apparel retailer and was the head of the company's core marketplace business, has resigned from the role.
Chief Business Officer Ankit Nagori has also left the company to pursue an entrepreneurial venture, Flipkart said in an e-mailed statement, without providing reason for either departure. Bansal will move to an advisory role, the Bengaluru- based company said. Flipkart acquired Myntra.com in 2014.
Bansal’s departure marks the senior-most exit from the seven year-old company, which was started by two former Amazon.com Inc. engineers in their apartment and has now grown to become India’s biggest online seller of everything from apparel to smartphones, according to a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. report. At its most recent funding round, the e-retailer was valued at more than $15 billion according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and counts New York’s Tiger Global Management LLC and South Africa’s Naspers Ltd. among its biggest investors.
The resignations come a month after co-founder Binny Bansal took over as chief executive officer, and is one of a series of exits by senior employees from the company. Mekin Maheshwari, who oversaw human resources and was one of the company’s earliest hires, left in September.
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“Mukesh has played a huge role in making Myntra the number one fashion destination and helped build a strong platform at Flipkart, including India’s strongest leadership team,” Flipkart said in the statement. “We thank both Mukesh and Ankit for their invaluable contribution to the growth of Flipkart.”
Flipkart, Amazon and SoftBank Group Corp.-backed Snapdeal.com are locked in a three-way battle for dominance in a market projected to be worth $220 billion by 2025. The three companies have resorted to spending heavily on advertising and deep discounting in their fight to win customers. Losses at the three companies in the year ended March is at least 50 billion rupees ($737 million), Kotak Institutional Equities said in a Feb. 5 report.
By Adi Narayan; editors: Stephanie Wong, Arijit Ghosh and Sam Nagarajan.
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