Ecommerce major Flipkart has dismissed rumours around a likely exit of its CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy.
Krishnamurthy, a former executive at Tiger Global, an early backer of Flipkart, was appointed CEO of the company in January.
The partial exit of Tiger Global by selling a portion of its stake to SoftBank recently has given rise to speculations that Krishnamurthy, who is seen as a representative of the US fund house, may leave the company.
However, Flipkart has come out strongly denying these rumours. "This is false, malicious and completely baseless," the company said.
A couple of tweets from anonymous Twitter handle Unicon Baba, who has a large following and has a record of putting out many startup developments ahead of public announcement a few days ago triggered the speculations of Krishnamurthy’s exit.
Kalyan @_Kalyan_K moving on. Announcement soon!
— Unicon Baba (@uni_con1) December 2, 2017
This was followed by a news report which said the top management and the board of Flipkart brainstormed about Krishnamurthy’s replacement. Immediately after Flipkart’s denial of his departure from the company, Unicon Baba reiterated his stand. The identity of the person behind these tweets is not known yet.
Kalyan's @_Kalyan_K stepping down is casted in stone as it's something non negotiable for some key stake holders. https://t.co/BboBy7aQoW
— Unicon Baba (@uni_con1) December 6, 2017
Krishnamurthy was appointed CEO when waning investor confidence, long funding drought, series of top-level exits put the company under pressure as rival Amazon stepped up its challenge. Under Krishnamurthy, Flipkart steadied its business, retained its dominance and attracted fresh investors including SoftBank, Microsoft, eBay and Tencent who together put in around $3.8 billion.