Exodus Continues As Two More Senior Executives Quit Snapdeal

Two more senior executives from Snapdeal have joined a list of top-level employees who have quit even as the online retailer is said to be in SoftBank Group Corp.-driven talks for a deal with larger rival Flipkart Ltd.

Prashant Rohatgi, vice-president, enterprise systems, left Snapdeal in March, while Manish Banerjea, vice-president, customer experience, quit in April.

Banerjea, who had joined Snapdeal in February 2016 after his one-year stint with Accenture as a vice-president, operations account management, was responsible for leading service delivery across channels for pan-India customer base. Both Snapdeal and Banerjea confirmed to BloombergQuint that he has quit.

Rohatgi, a former principal consultant at Infosys Ltd., had joined Snapdeal in 2012. He has joined global sales enabling company Denave as technology head. Rohatgi, too, confirmed his departure from Snapdeal.

Also Read: Vulcan Express To Be Part Of Flipkart- Snapdeal Deal

Six senior executives from HR, engineering, category management and legal departments, among others, have quit the company since March amid Masayoshi Son-led SoftBank’s talks with Flipkart and its investors to combine the two e-tailers as they face a challenge from world’s larger online retailer Amazon.com Inc. A dozen have left since January.

Saurabh Bansal, category management head and Saurabh Nigam, HR head for Snapdeal, were the other most recent exits from the e-tailer. Bansal has joined Lenskart as senior vice-president—buying and merchandising, while Nigam is set join to join Omidyar Network’s India arm as the head of its HR division.

In May Vani Kola, managing director of venture capital firm Kalaari Capital that holds roughly 8 percent stake in the e-commerce venture, also resigned from the board of Snapdeal.

Also Read: What A Flipkart-Snapdeal Marriage Will Mean As SoftBank Plays Matchmaker

Flipkart, which recently raised $1.4 billion from technology giants and acquired Ebay India, too has seen a number of exits over the last year and a half, including six in 2017. Neeraj Agarwal, vice-president, operations at Flipkart quit in April. Nitin Seth, chief operating officer, too, has stepped down from the company, according to a report in the Economic Times.

Also Read: Why Flipkart Needs More Than SoftBank To Take On Amazon