Flipkart ropes in Marico's Samardeep Subandh to head its marketing team

BENGALURU: Flipkart has roped in Samardeep Subandh to head its marketing team, making him the latest top-level executive to join the firm. Subandh, who has spent much of his career at India's largest fast-moving consumer goods firm Hindustan UnileverBSE 0.44 %, will join Flipkart as chief marketing officer.


Prior to this, he was chief sales officer at Marico. "His insights of the consumer behaviour and proven track record of building national brands will surely be a value addition at Flipkart," said Mukesh Bansal, head of commerce platform at Flipkart. Bansal was heading the marketing functions at Flipkart after his company, Myntra, was acquired. He then became head of Flipkart's commerce platform as cofounders Sachin and Binny Bansal began to focus on other areas of business. Samar will be the primary custodian of the Flipkart brand, the company said. He will focus on gaining deeper customer insights, raising customer centricity and driving high-level of creativity and quality in all communication, it said. India's internet startups are increasingly luring top talent from brick-and-mortar firms, especially consumer goods companies, as they seek to acquire management bandwidth that will help them manage the challenges of scaling rapidly. Flipkart, with estimated worth of $15 billion (Rs 97,000 crore), has been the most active in recruiting senior executives from home and abroad to strengthen its management team. Recently, it poached Ram Papatla, a former Amazon executive, as vice-president for product management. In its early days, Flipkart's marketing efforts were overseen by cofounder Binny Bansal. He is now focusing on building the company's logistics and supply chain, as the company tries to maintain its lead in the highly competitive Indian ecommerce market.