Kalyan Krishnamurthy to join Flipkart’s board; Rajesh Magow leaves

E-commerce major Flipkart has shuffled its board as the company prepares to go public by next year.

According to an ET report, Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy will join the company's board along with three new members - HDFC's Keki Mistry, Walmart’s global CTO Suresh Kumar and Walmart’s Executive VP for International Strategy and Development Leigh Hopkins.

The elevation of Krishnamurthy to the board seat first came to light in October 2019 when media reports anticipated that Flipkart might amend its constitution to enable a board seat for him. 

The four new members will replace the current four board members - Steuart Walton, Dirk Van den Berghe, Rajesh Magow and Rohit Bhagat - who are going to leave the board. Bhagat, who was serving as an independent director at Flipkart, has joined PhonePe’s board as the chairperson.

Krishnamurthy informed about the restructuring to Flipkart’s employees via email.

It’s worth noting that Walmart, which controls 82.3% stake in Flipkart, will continue to retain three seats on the board which includes CEO and President of Walmart International Judith McKenna, co-founder of Flipkart Binny Bansal and former Tiger Global executive Lee Fixel.

The development comes three weeks after Flipkart announced the hive off of PhonePe as a separate entity. Along with Bhagat, Bansal is also going to join Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari as board members of PhonePe.

While Flipkart has been preparing for its IPO likely next year, the company’s financials for FY20 shows it incurred huge losses in its wholesale as well as its marketplace entity. The wholesale unit of Flipkart has recorded a 12% surge in revenue to Rs 34,170 crore for the financial year 2019-20. During the period, the B2B arm registered an 18% drop in net loss to Rs 3,150 crore.

In FY20, the marketplace arm of Flipkart reported a 32% jump in revenues to Rs 6,317.7 crore along with a 19% increase in its net losses to Rs 1,936.6 crore.