Snapdeal CFO and General Counsel Anup Vikal quits

E-commerce platform Snapdeal continues to witness top level exits as Anup Vikal, chief financial officer (CFO) and general counsel of Jasper Infotech (Snapdeal’s parent company), has resigned from the company, according to ET.

The report added that Vikal, who had joined Snapdeal in October 2015 from Aircel, may join Essar Oil. Vikal has also worked with InterGlobe Enterprises, which owns and operates the country's leading airline IndiGo, where he was the group CFO and head of IT and strategy.

The latest executive exit happens about two months after a proposed acquisition by rival Flipkart collapsed.

Besides, there are other executives which have recently resigned from the company or are currently in exit mode.

In May, Snapdeal’s Human Resources (HR) Head Saurabh Nigam had exited from the company.

Snapdeal has also seen exits of senior executives like Tony Navin, head of partnerships and strategic investments; Sandeep Komaravelly, senior vice president - Marketing, Anand Chandrasekaran, chief product officer;  Abhishek Kumar, head of corporate development; and Amit Maheshwari, CEO of Snapdeal’s Exclusively.

Other exits include Pradeep Desai, vice-president of product, Viraj Chatterjee, VP of engineering, Gaurav Gupta, head of IT and Srinivas Murthy, VP of marketing, among others.

The e-commerce company has been witnessing such exits since it began its acquisition talks with Flipkart. However, after much negotiation, the deal couldn’t take place and Snapdeal decided to pull out of the deal in July.

Since then, the e-commerce marketplace has decided to pursue an independent path and is terminating all strategic discussions as a result.

However, Snapdeal is far away from addressing the challenges it was facing.

In July, Axis Bank acquired Snapdeal-owned payment platform, Freecharge for about $60 million. The payment company was acquired by Jasper Infotech (parent company of Snapdeal and Freecharge) in 2015 in a cash-and-stock deal estimated at $400-450 million (Rs 2,400 to 2,800 crore), in what was then the largest acquisition in the Indian startup space.

Besides, the e-commerce company is also facing legal issues with other competitions. This month, Quickdel Logistics, which runs operations under the Gojavas brand, has sent a Rs 300-crore legal notice to Jasper Infotech, the parent company of e-commerce platform Snapdeal, and its founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.

The notice accuses the founders and the company of criminal breach of trust and siphoning off money from GoJavas to Vulcan Express, the in-house logistics firm of Snapdeal.