Flipkart gets a new CEO in co-founder Binny Bansal

The Indian e-commerce company had raised a lot of money, but also struggled to become profitable

2014 was an amazing year for Indian e-commerce company Flipkart, as it raised three mega rounds of funding, including a whopping $1 billion round, led by Tiger Global and Naspers, bringing its total funding to just under $2 billion in that year alone. 2015 was not as kind, however, with investors, including Tiger Global, starting to flee. 

Now the company is doing what many others do in these types of situations: it is shaking up the executive ranks, installing, among others, a new CEO.

Binny Bansal, COO and Co-founder of Flipkart, will become its Chief Executive Officer, it was announcedon Monday, replacing Sachin Bansal, who will become the Executive Chairman of the company, where he "will provide strategic direction for Flipkart, mentor the senior leadership of the company and look for new investment opportunities."

So why make the change? As VentureBeat pointed out, the company, despite being the largest e-commerce company in India, has not yet been profitable. In turn that has led to some of its investors taking an early exit. Last month Accel Partners, the second biggest investor in Flipkart, reportedly sold it partial stake worth $100 million to Qatar Investment Authority.

Earlier in the year, IDG Ventures and Helion sold their stakes in the company as well. 

Founded in 2007, Flipkart is the Indian version of Amazon, with over 70 categories of e-commerce goods, including movies, music, games, mobiles, cameras, computers, healthcare and personal products. Flipkart recently expanded its footprint in in the fashion vertical by buying up online fashion retailer Myntra for $300 million.

Perhaps under this new leadership Flipkart will finally be able to turn a profit. 

“E-commerce in India is going through its most exciting phase and Flipkart has played a pioneering role in shaping this very remarkable journey. We believe that Flipkart can play a transformational role in improving commerce in India and improve the quality of lives of millions of people across the farthest corners of the country," Sachin Bansal said in a statement.

"In this next phase of the journey, it will be our endeavour to fulfil this responsibility and prove that India can produce a world class internet company that can outshine any global behemoth. We also want to continue to play a pivotal role in shaping the internet and the commerce ecosystem of India.”

In addition, the company also put Mukesh Bansal, the head of its commerce platform, in charge of its its ad business as well.

CEO shakeups

Ths year is less than two weeks old and we have already seen two major companies lose their CEOs.

In addition to Flipkart, last week mobile messaging app Tango announced that it was replacing its longtime CEO Uri Raz with co-foundr and CTO Eric Setton.

It's an interesting way to start the year, and I wonder if 2016 will be able to rival 2015, which saw a slew of companies replacing their CEOs. That included Cisco, Evernote, Arrayent and Crittercism. It also the return of prior CEOs to Twitter, Zynga, Tinder and Reddit. There were also some unfortunate replacements, where the CEOs passed away, at Nintendo and SurveyMonkey.

(Image source: forbes.com)