BackSnapdeal to overhaul management team
Snapdeal is looking to add at least three senior leaders below co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal
Premium(Bloomberg)
Bengaluru/New Delhi: Online marketplace Snapdeal is overhauling its management team by aggressively hiring executives from outside its ranks as it seeks to build a senior leadership team that can help it compete more effectively with the likes of Flipkart Ltd and Amazon India.
Snapdeal is looking to add at least three senior leaders below co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, three people familiar with the matter said.
Former Coca Cola India marketing director Idi Srinivas Murthy is in talks to join Snapdeal in a senior marketing role, two of the people cited above said. Murthy currently works with GlaxoSmithKline Consumer as a regional marketing head in Africa. He couldn’t immediately be reached for a comment.
Snapdeal is also looking for a chief technology officer (CTO), three other top technology executives and a senior finance leader, the two people said. Snapdeal said last month that its CTO Amitabh Misra was leaving. The company has already appointed former Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. executive Jeyandran Venugopal as technology advisor in February.
Snapdeal’s effort to bolster its management team comes against the backdrop of intense competition between online retailers that last year raised upwards of more than $ 4 billion to fund expansion.
In October, Japan’s SoftBank Group announced an investment of $627 million in Snapdeal, becoming the biggest investor in the online retailer. The company is in talks to raise another $1 billion from China’s Alibaba Group, The Economic Times reported on Wednesday.
“Until recently, Snapdeal didn’t have access to huge amounts of capital. Now with SoftBank and other big name investors on board, they are upgrading every aspect of their business with the highest priority on management. There’s a perception in the market that their team wasn’t as experienced and capable as Flipkart’s. They’re out to change this with some big-name hires across functions," one of the persons cited above said.
The local unit of GlaxoSmithKline Consumer didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
“We are expanding our team and there will be a few senior level hires too, however it is too early to share any details at the moment," a Snapdeal spokesperson said by email.
Both Snapdeal and larger rival Flipkart are recruiting experienced senior management executives in technology, operations and supply chain, as India’s largest venture capital-backed companies strengthen their leadership team with executives who can prepare them for initial public offerings (IPO) within the next two years or so.
Analysts say these two companies now need experienced corporate executives as the stakes get higher in the scramble for market dominance. Flipkart and Snapdeal are battling Amazon India for dominance of India’s fast-growing e-commerce market.
Flipkart’s recent recruits include former Google Inc. executive Punit Soni as head of products, ex-McKinsey and Co. director Saikiran Krishnamurthy as chief operating officer of its commerce platform and former Tata Communications Ltd finance chief Sanjay Baweja as chief financial officer.
Soaring valuations are helping Flipkart and Snapdeal attract top talent.
“There’s a lot of interest in joining Snapdeal partly because of their ESOPs (employee stock option plans). Apart from good salaries, Snapdeal is able to offer stock ownership through ESOPs and this is a game-changer as far as being able to attract talent is concerned. Everyone is noticing how valuations are booming, so stock has become a major attraction in drawing talent," the first person cited above said.
Flipkart and Snapdeal have also strengthened their boards of directors over the past year. Last May, Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, which runs Snapdeal.com, nominated Bharti Enterprises Pvt. Ltd vice-chairman Akhil Gupta as an independent director. A few months later, Flipkart appointed Aditya Agarwal, who heads engineering at the US-based cloud storage start-up Dropbox Inc., as an independent director.
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