India’s largest e-commerce giant, Flipkart, is in for some organizational change. Co-founder Sachin Bansal, who has been the CEO since the inception of the company in 2007, will step aside. His cofounder Binny Bansal, who’s currently the COO, will take his place. Sachin Bansal will in turn become the Executive Chairman.
Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (not related) were colleagues at Amazon when they’d founded Flipkart from a 2 bedroom house in Koramangla in Bangalore. Today, Flipkart is worth 15 billion dollars, and its cofounders are both billionaires. Sachin and Binny, who hold equal amounts of equity in the company, hadn’t decided who the CEO would be when they’d founded the firm. The question had only come when they were looking for funding and investors wanted to know who the CEO was. Sachin had then decided to step into the role.
Sachin Bansal so far had been the public face of Flipkart, attending conferences and speaking at press events. Binny Bansal has preferred to work in the background, working on Flipkart’s operations and technology.
Binny’s role within Flipkart will be broadened in his new post. All the business areas – Commerce, Ekart and Myntra will now report to him, as will all Corporate functions including Human Resources, Finance, Legal, Corporate Communications and Corporate Development.
Binny holds a CSE degree from IIT Delhi and had previously worked at Sarnoff Corporation and Amazon before founding Flipkart.