Flipkart consolidates all engineering teams under CTO Peeyush Ranjan

BENGALURU: Flipkart has consolidated all its engineering teams under chief technology officer Peeyush Ranjan, as the online retailer looks for synergies across its growing technology groups. Under the re-organisation done earlier in March, as part of a larger overhaul at the company, the engineering units of Flipkart’s logistics and advertisement businesses will now report to Ranjan, two people familiar with the development said.
“Peeyush was, till recently, only heading engineering for the commerce unit, but now both advertising and Ekart (engineering teams) report to him,” one of them said. With this, about 1,300 engineers, including 1,000 from the commerce team, will work under Ranjan, who was a former senior director of engineering at the California headquarters of Google, joined Flipkart in May 2015. Among them are Hari Vasudev, senior vice-president leading engineering for supply chain, and Ashish Vikram, vice president leading engineering for ads.

A Flipkart spokesperson declined to comment on the development. The consolidation of the technology teams under Ranjan is part of an organisational restructuring and senior-management changes undertaken at the Bengaluru-based firm after Binny Bansal took over as CEO from cofounder and now executive chairman Sachin Bansal in January.

The company’s main commerce business was split into three productbased groups — marketplace, consumer and service. Binny Bansal as CEO has been spending more time with the commerce division — which previously was headed by fashion unit Myntra’s founder Mukesh Bansal — as Flipkart looks to maintain its lead over an increasingly aggressive Amazon.

Mukesh Bansal and former chief business officer Ankit Nagori are starting a healthcare business after quitting Flipkart this month. Nagori was overseeing the marketplace division and Flipkart is scouting for a replacement. Saikiran Krishnamurthy, who heads the service product group, was recently given additional charge of Ekart, the logistics unit, to improve customer experience by making the two divisions work together.

Krishnamurthy and Ravi Garipakti, who head the ads business, report to Binny Bansal.

The consumer product group, which works on improving user experience across mobile applications and the website, is overseen by newly-appointed senior vice-president Surojit Chatterjee, a former product management director at Google. As for chief product officer Punit Soni, Flipkart said his role is under discussion. Soni is currently on a long leave.