Flipkart plans new startup within company, VP and CoS Ashish Vijayvergiya to head operations

The episode playing out at Flipkart currently is reminiscent of what happened with Prakash Sikaria, a senior VP (SVP) at the company

Flipkart vice president (VP) Ashish Vijayvergiya, who is also the chief of staff to CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, is chalking out plans to start a new company within the Flipkart group going the super.money and PhonePe way, people aware of the developments told Moneycontrol.

While Vijayvergiya is still discussing his business plans with a smaller group of people within Walmart-owned Flipkart, he is sure to be starting up from inside the company, one of the persons cited above said.

“The initial plan was for Ashish to start a fantasy gaming platform, but the ideas are still evolving so it is not clear if that will be the final form of the business. It is, however, most likely to be on the consumption and content side of things,” the person added.

Flipkart did not respond to Moneycontrol’s queries.

Vijayvergiya has been with the e-commerce company for over a decade and was likely contemplating an exit as he was keen on doing something of his own. However, Flipkart’s top management proposed that he continue within the company and even start his own business that will grow under Flipkart’s fold, a second source told Moneycontrol.

The episode playing out at Flipkart currently is reminiscent of what happened with Prakash Sikaria, a senior VP (SVP) at the company. Around July 2022, Sikaria was finalising his exit plans, after spending over seven years at Flipkart, however after negotiations with the top management, Sikaria decided to stay back.

Sikaria was eventually made the founder of super.money, a credit-first UPI fintech app within the Flipkart group. Super.money continues to run like a standalone startup but is part of Flipkart, an arrangement that can be expected even for Vijayvergiya’s company.

In fact, super.money is now discussing with external investors to raise as much as $60-100 million at a valuation of $1 billion, making it a unicorn in just over two years since it was launched, Moneycontrol had exclusively reported earlier.

Even PhonePe, the fintech major which is now eyeing a public market debut at a valuation of over $15 billion, was started with a similar arrangement. Founders Sameer Nigam, Burzin Engineer and Rahul Chari, were all former Flipkart employees who started the company in 2015.

Flipkart then acquired PhonePe in 2016 where it scaled before spinning off as a separate entity in December 2022. 

While Vijayvergiya’s business is likely to follow the same path as super.money and PhonePe, and be incubated within the Flipkart group, the final nature of the business and the date of launching are yet to be decided.

The developments come at a time when Walmart, the parent of Flipkart, has mandated Flipkart chief Kalyan Krishnamurthy to cut monthly cash burn by a half from $40 million to $20 million as the company looks to become more frugal ahead of a potential public market listing.