Flipkart Labs’ Ajay Ponna Venkatesh and Sai Krishna VK on March 13 announced that they had quit and would join blockchain startup Polygon, a move that comes a few months after the two companies got into a partnership to build a blockchain-eCommerce Centre of Excellence (CoE).
Krishna and he would continue to advise Flipkart Labs specifically on blockchain/Web3, Camera/3D/AR pods and CoE with Polygon, Venkatesh said in a post on LinkedIn.
“Together, we’ll lay the pipes for the most exciting launches in Web3- a launchpad for new moonshots, new activations on the commerce graph, loyalty programs & so much more!,” he wrote
The CoE will be used for the research and development (R&D) of Web3 and metaverse commerce use cases in India to accelerate the adoption of Web3, which is believed to be the next phase of the internet, a decentralised web based on blockchain technology.
A blockchain is a database that can host hundreds or thousands of applications and record related financial transactions. They are open-source and supported by operators of computers that verify transactions
According to Yourstory, which first reported on the exit, the duo will join Polygon as senior vice presidents and lead a new division called Developer Studio.
The two were responsible for setting up Flipkart Labs, a unit built under the Product Strategy and Deployment arm of the e-commerce group, the report said.
Flipkart journey
Venkatesh and Krishna joined the company in 2020 after their visual technology startup Scapic was acquired by Flipkart.
Talking about their tenure at Flipkart, Venkatesh said they had to overcome multiple challenges “to make Flipkart Camera one of the World's largest deployment of 3D/AR in a single commerce platform. Went from 0 to almost a billion views of 3D/AR on FK app in less than 2 years”.
They also set up a Web3 pod in 2022 then launched Firedrops in three months, “an NFT platform to bring the future of the internet to Indian masses”, followed by partnering with eDAO in September for the Big Billion Days Extravaganza to organise a Digital Treasure Hunt and a gamified AirDrop.
Through Flipkart's Patent Program, the duo filed more than 10 patents in the metaverse and blockchain space out of which one has been granted by USPTO.
The duo also launched Flipverse which was the largest eCommerce Metaverse activation globally with 20K+ hours streamed, 500+ users streaming/per min at peak, 18 mins spent on average by users, the post read.
“A lot more to be done in Firedrops & Flipverse, which will be our focus for the next 1-2 years, through the partnership with Polygon- a 2-year strategic alliance to establish a Centre of Excellence,” Venkatesh said.
