India’s largest e-commerce firm Flipkart has appointed its marketplace operations head Ankit Nagori as chief business officer, a new role that will help the firm in accelerating its transition to a marketplace model.
Flipkart also intends to triple the number of third-party sellers on its platform.
Nagori will now head Flikpart’s marketplace business in addition to retail and brand alliance functions, which will cease to exist as two separate business segments within the company.
An email sent to Flipkart on the development did not immediately elicit a response. However, Nagori’s LinkedIn profile reflects the change in his designation.
As per a news report in Mint, Nagori’s mandate this year is to increase the number of sellers on the platform to 100,000 from 30,000 currently. He has also been tasked with driving adoption of Flipkart’s mobile app and enhancing overall customer experience. In addition, Nagori would seek to establish partnerships with mobile phone manufactures, fashion retailers and other companies.
Flipkart has increasingly been diminishing it reliance on WS Retail Services Pvt Ltd, which used to be the only vendor on the e-commerce platform two years ago before it turned into a marketplace last year.
Further, Flipkart is exploring various options to facilitate direct interaction between customers and third-party sellers on its mobile platform, the Mint report quoted Nagori as saying.
Interestingly, Paytm also provides users the option of bargaining deals with sellers. Besides, eBay encourages direct communication between buyers and sellers through eBay Buyer Protection Scheme.
The Mint report said that Flipkart’s vice-president of retail and head of brand alliances Michael Adnani will report to Nagori.
Nagori would continue reporting to Mukesh Bansal, head of Flipkart’s e-commerce platform. Bansal, who came onboard after Flipkart acquired fashion e-tailer Myntra last year, now heads day-to-day operations.
In March, Flipkart had hired Punit Soni, a Google product management executive and former vice president of product management at Motorola, as its new chief product officer. Earlier, the firm had named Saikiran Krishnamurthy from McKinsey as the chief operating officer (COO) of its commerce division.
