E-commerce: Flipkart, Snapdeal, others sees top flight ‘ghar wapsi’

The Rs 80,000-crore-plus Indian e-commerce industry is attracting top talent in hordes from across sectors and geographies. Driven by the high pace of growth of the local e-commerce segment, senior executives from large multinationals like Google, Uniliver and GSK are making a beeline for the new sunrise sector in the country.

Companies like Snapdeal, Flipkart and Zomato have recently hired senior-level talent from varied sectors ranging from FMCG to media for different managerial positions and the trend is growing. In April, Flipkart hired ex-Google top shot Peeyush Ranjan as its senior vice-president and head of engineering, while earlier this month, it hired Motorola executive Punit Soni as a chief product officer. On Wednesday, Snapdeal appointed Gaurav Gupta, who has been in Silicon Valley for a decade, to strengthen its technology team. He is vice-president of the engineering team at Snapdeal. Simplilearn brought in Ram Kumar, who has 25 years of experience working in the Silicon Valley, on its board a few days ago.

As e-commerce has taken off over the years, and has grown manifold, the experience required for senior-level positions is also shaping up to be more nuanced. “With our growth over the years, our work structure has evolved and new positions have come in. We have also become very specific in terms of what kind of people and experience we would need,” said Saurabh Nigam, vice-president, HR, Snapdeal.