The Tiger in Flipkart’s corner
Kalyan Krishnamurthy has been instrumental in attracting the investment at a time when competition in the e-commerce space had grown fierce. He can claim that he has led the fight at Flipkart with some success
Foreign direct investment in India was less than 5 basis points of gross domestic product when Kalyan Raman Krishnamurthy was born on January 12, 1972. Forty-six years later he will help usher in, as chief executive officer of e-commerce giant Flipkart, billions of dollars in investment as a result of a deal with Walmart. The transaction is in many ways a reflection of a changed India, and the professionals such as Krishnamurthy who are helping to bring in that very change.
Krishnamurthy has been instrumental in attracting the investment at a time when competition in the e-commerce space had grown fierce. Appointed by American investor Tiger Global Krishnamurthy, son of Kalyanasundaram Krishnamurthy, can claim that he has led the fight at Flipkart with some success.
The only other company he is associated with in India is Sunshine Teahouse Private Limited, where he was a director. The company runs popular tea service cafes under the brandname Chaayos, in which Tiger Global is also an investor. He was appointed on May 15, 2015 and Chaayos has been on a growth path. He resigned on December 13, 2016, to take over as chief executive officer at Flipkart in January 2017, replacing Binny Bansal, who was elevated to group chief executive officer. A year earlier, co-founder Sachin Bansal had been elevated from the CEO’s post to chairman.
It was not just the founders who had to take a step back at Flipkart. A number of senior executives exited the company soon after Krishnamurthy came on board. Rumours abounded of exits, including reports about Surojit Chatterjee, senior vicepresident of product management, Saikiran Krishnamurthy, head of Ekart, and Samardeep Subandh, chief marketing officer, all moving on.
It is said that this was part of Krishnamurthy’s mandate -- to cut losses and realign operations for better growth. Investors seemed to have backed the moves, with Flipkart raising more money in a year than in the previous nine, as Business Standard noted in an interview with Krishnamurthy last month.
This was not Krishnamurthy’s first handson stint at Flipkart. He was the interim chief financial officer for the company during a previous stint that lasted from 2013 to 2014. He has worked at e-commerce company eBay and consumer goods company Procter & Gamble earlier.
Krishnamurthy has two MBA degrees, one of them from the Asian Institute of Management in the Philippines. He has another MBA (finance) from the US-based UIUC College of Business.
He is also said to have led the acquisition of Jabong in July 2016, reportedly pushing to close the deal in a matter of three days. The $70-million deal opened the doors for a significant rise in new customers, with Flipkart discovering that only a third of Jabong’s customers were also on its fashion portal Myntra.
Krishnamurthy reportedly often deals with juniors directly, and communicates with vendors directly as well. Many wondered if he was running too tight a ship, with not enough senior executives to handle the load. Walmart’s endorsement seems to show otherwise.