Prathyusha Agarwal to head Flipkart’s social commerce platform Shopsy

Prathyusha Agarwal has joined Flipkart’s social commerce platform Shopsy as vice president, according to sources. Shopsy is Flipkart’s hyper-value e-commerce platform that competes with Meesho and Amazon Bazaar. Company sources confirmed that Agarwal has joined Shopsy as a vice president.

“Last year, Flipkart senior vice president and head of new businesses Adarsh Menon left the firm to start his own venture. He was heading new businesses such as Cleartrip and Shopsy,” said a person. “Till now, Shopsy has been led by Kapil Thirani.”

Agarwal is a former Byju’s and Unilever senior executive. Last year in August, she was among three senior executives who resigned from edtech firm Byju’s as it was trying to address challenges such as due diligence issues, legal battles with lenders, challenges in raising fresh capital, and a markdown in its valuation by investors. Agarwal was the chief business officer of Byju’s.

Agarwal is an alumna of IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Madras. Before joining Byju’s, she was the chief consumer and data officer at ZEE, where she led the business transformation initiatives and the brand growth mandate across TV and OTT verticals. In her 21-year career, she has launched Tata’s e-commerce venture TataCLiQ as the head of marketing, worked with HDFC Life as the vice president of marketing and analytics, and led brand strategy for the Star TV network. Agarwal was also the founder director of ‘All OK Tech Support’, worked with Market Gate Consulting, and honed marketing skills at HUL in various sales and marketing roles.

Agarwal is among many new executives that Flipkart is hiring to strengthen its team. However, there is also a growing list of top officials who have left Flipkart in the past few months.

Two senior executives at Flipkart are leaving the e-commerce company in the next few weeks. Prabh Simran Singh, senior vice president (SVP) of customer growth and retention, marketing and ads at Flipkart, has resigned and is leaving the company in the coming weeks, according to sources.

Another executive, Sankalp Mehrotra, vice president (VP) of monetisation at Flipkart, is also serving his notice period and will be leaving the firm in the next few weeks.

Sandeep Karwa, vice president, Flipkart Ads, is the newly appointed leader for Flipkart Ads. In February, Sandeep Kohli, senior vice president (SVP) and head of data centres at Flipkart, was leaving the company after over nine years with the company. Kohli is likely to start his own venture.

Around the same time, Flipkart-owned travel platform Cleartrip’s CEO Ayyappan R, Amitesh Jha who led marketplace and categories, fintech and payments head Dheeraj A, and Bharath Ram, who led growth and retention at the e-commerce firm, were also among the senior vice presidents who were moving out of the firm.

First Published: May 24 2024 | 9:05 PM IST