Attrition at top level hurting e-commerce companies in India
NEW DELHI: The latest big problem staring at India’s top internet companies is attrition, especially in their senior ranks.
Flipkart, Zomato and Ola, which have been aggressively recruiting top talent with the millions of dollars they have raised, are grappling with an exodus of management-level executives.
Consumer internet companies in India “are growing so rapidly that they haven’t built the fundamental concept of retaining people, especially at the top-level,” said Sunit Mehra, managing partner at Hunt Partners India, an executive recruitment company.
At Flipkart, Srivals Kumar recently resigned as general counsel and head legal, the latest in a series of top-level exits at India’s largest e-commerce company this year.
While Flipkart was quick to replace him with Rajinder Sharma, former director and general counsel — South and West Asia, at Samsung, Kumar’s decision to quit Flipkart comes amid an organisational restructuring. At least four other senior executives have quit Flipkart this year, including Mekin Maheshwari as chief people officer; Ravi Vora as chief executive of strategic brands group; Amod Malviya as chief technology officer; and Sameer Nigam as engineering head.
But Flipkart, which is valued at over $15 billion, has also been hiring a number of high-profile senior executives, such as former Google executive Punit Soni whom it appointed as its chief product officer.
At Zomato, which has raised $225 million from a slew of investors, Durga Raghunath recently resigned as senior vice president-growth after a six-month stint to found an online publishing company, joining a list of senior executives who have quit the venture this year.
Namita Gupta, former chief product officer, and Rameet Arora, former chief marketing officer, also quit recently, all having spent less than a year at the Gurgaon-based company.
“A lot of the hiring (at Indian internet companies) is pushed by the investors, and while the companies have hired top-notch people from the Valley, the culture here is very different,” said Prateek Srivastava, founder and CEO of talent acquisition firm Basil Advisors.
At Ola, which counts Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global and SoftBank among investors, Arvind Singhal recently quit as CEO of the company’s TaxiForSure unit, and Swaminathan Seetharaman resigned as vice-president for engineering.
“(The resignations have) less to do with compensation. You can attract the best talent with money, but you’re not going to always retain them with money,” Srivastava said.
MUMBAI: Officials of the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have filed an FIR against e-commerce entity Snapdeal's officials, dealers Read more
New Delhi: In view of 'very complex' and 'multi-layered' business structure of e-commerce firms, the government is working on a Read more
MUMBAI: Revenue from online ticketing on Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp crossed the Rs 20,000-crore mark during the year Read more
The government should further ease Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) norms, especially in sectors such as multi-brand retail, education and e-commerce Read more
