Bharati Balakrishnan joins Shopify as India country head

Bharati Balakrishnan has joined e-commerce enablement software major Shopify as India country head, Balakrishnan said in a post on LinkedIn.

"Shopify is a company I have admired for a very long time, and whose mission I relate to, and care about deeply. We are just getting started in India. I can’t wait to work with our partner and developer ecosystem, to help businesses of all sizes and types build their own stores online, and make commerce better for everyone" Balakrishnan said in the post.

Prior to this, Balakrishnan was leading the end-to-end P&L management of Future Group's omni-channel and digital commerce businesses across multiple formats, channels and categories, including Big Bazaar, EasyDay, and Brand Factory among others for nearly two and half years. She has more than 15 years of experience with stints at Paytm Mall, Alibaba, LocalOye and Bain & Company among others.

This appointment comes at a time when the Canada-based technology firm has witnessed a massive growth in India as more businesses went online during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company, which set foot in India in 2014, saw a 120 percent jump in terms of new merchants joining the platform in the first six months of 2020 compared to 2019.

Shopify's success has also spawned over a half a dozen e-commerce enablement platforms in the country including Sequoia-backed Bikayi, Google-backed Dotpe, and Matrix and Lightspeed India-backed Dukaan, among others.

Walmart-owned Flipkart also debuted Shopsy in July this year while online selling platform Instamojo debuted a Shopify-like e-commerce software platform in June.