Nitin Seth, the former chief operating officer of Bangalore-based e-commerce firm Flipkart has sent the firm a legal notice over the manner in which he was dismissed from the company, a national daily reported, citing persons aware of the development.
The Times of India, on Thursday, reported that Seth challenged his ouster from the firm as illegal.
An email sent by VCCircle to Flipkart, seeking comments has not elicited a reply at the time of publishing this report. Seth could not be immediately contacted to confirm the development.
Seth had quit Flipkart in May this year due to “personal reasonsâ€.
Besides acting as COO, Seth was also in charge of the e-commerce major’s in-house logistics firm Ekart, supply chain, and customer experience. His exit gave Flipkart’s chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy full control of top functions at the firm.
Seth, former managing director and country head of investment firm Fidelity International in India, had joined Flipkart as chief people officer in February last year. He had replaced Mekin Maheshwari, one of the highest-paid executives at Flipkart at the time. Seth became COO in January this year after a major reshuffle of the top management, when Krishnamurthy, a former Tiger Global executive, was appointed CEO.
Seth’s exit came at a time when Krishnamurthy was taking direct control of various functions at the firm. It was reported that Krishnamurthy would be overseeing the human resources function. Besides this, he will also be in charge of finance, category design management, private label, customer shopping, engineering, and marketing.
Between last year and early this year, Flipkart has seen a number of top-level exits, including Saikiran Krishnamurthy, head of Ekart; chief marketing officer Samardeep Subandh; and senior vice president of product management Surojit Chatterjee. In October last year, the firm’s chief financial officer Sanjay Baweja resigned and, in April 2016, chief product officer Punit Soni had resigned without specifying any reason, just after a year of joining.
In April, Flipkart raised $1.5 billion from Tencent, Microsoft, and eBay. Flipkart is in the process of merging with its rival Snapdeal. However, the merger talks have a hit a roadblock as Snapdeal’s board last week rejected Flipkart’s initial buyout offer of $700-800 million.
