Did Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal really lose his job?
BENGALURU:Last Friday at a regular townhall meeting at the Flipkart campus, India’s startup poster boy Sachin Bansal reportedly cited himself as an example for how the company he co-founded lives by its motto — deliver or go.
Earlier this month, India’s largest e-tailer had to let go of some 700-1,000 people for poor performance, and the 200-odd employees at the meeting wanted to know why lower level employees had to pay the price of some poor decisions taken by the management.
Media reports quoting Sachin said: “Look at the top level around you. Everyone has changed. In fact, even I am gone. Some of our targets have been missed and everyone, including the top management, has paid the price.”
The same media reports go on to praise him for his candour, a rare term in business lexicon, and even more at startups. So where did Sachin go? The answer is nowhere. He became executive chairman of Flipkart, technically a notch higher than his earlier job as CEO. He still draws a salary, though the amount is not clear.
Binny Bansal, who replaced Sachin as CEO, was earlier the company’s chief operating officer (COO). So why did Binny got to move into the corner office when Flipkart missed its targets, though he was the secondhighest ranking executive in the company. There’s no clear answer. Binny was also reportedly present at the meeting.
Some other big heads have rolled in the past few months at Flipkart – some on their own and some were asked to go. Myntra founder Mukesh Bansal, who led the company’s e-commerce platform, Ankit Nagori, chief business officer, and Punit Soni, chief product officer. The recent addition to the list is Rajinder Sharma, who was the legal head. Unlike Sachin, these were actual exits.
Questions sent to the company on Sachin’s claims about losing his job and Binny’s promotion as CEO were not answered.
Despite the “changes” in the top management, Flipkart’s problems have not ceased to exist. Despite the “changes” in the top management, Flipkart problems have not ceased to exist. A series of devaluation by five investors over the course of the year pushed the company’s enterprise value from around $15 billion to less than $10 billion over the last year or so.
In 2015, Sachin along with Binny Bansal, was named the 86th richest in India with a networth of $1.3 billion by Forbes.