Billion gets integrated into Flipkart’s private label biz after Bansal’s exit
BENGALURU:BILLION, the personal Make-in-india, private-label project of Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, has now been rolled into the overall private brands business of the online retailer. The move comes weeks after the former chief executive exited the company following a bitter tussle with the board during its acquisition talks with Walmart Inc. in April.
Billion is now part of a portfolio of eight private label brands, which are being overseen by Flipkart executive Adarsh Menon. Prior to Bansal’s exit, Billion stood apart from the other private labels and was being run as an independent unit by him.
In an interview, Menon indicated that Bansal’s vision for the brand would stay intact and there would be no change in Billion’s go-to-market strategy.
“The space that Billion has very successfully created and occupied for Indian consumers is the space of Make in India and Made in India. And that’s an extremely rich asset that the brand has. That can enable it to travel across multiple categories, which speaks volumes about how strong the brand is. What Billion will continue to do is identifying very India-specific customer requirements, and then working with our ecosystem partners to deliver that to Indian consumers,” said Menon, vice-president, private labels, Flipkart.
After Bansal’s departure, Flipkart chief executive officer Kalyan Krishnamurthy had reorganised the private labels business and decided to integrate the 50-member strong Billion team with the private label organization.
Billion was Bansal’s big project after he was forced to cede the CEO’S role to Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal in January 2016, after a disastrous year in which all his major strategic bets failed and the online retailer ended up losing ground to arch-rival Amazon India.