Meesho churn continues as CXO Harsh Chaudhary departs to join rival Flipkart

This will be Chaudhary second stint at a Flipkart group company. He worked at Myntra, also a firm that directly competes with Meesho, between August 2016 and February 2019.

Harsh Chaudhary, former CXO of monetisation at Meesho, the low-price e-commerce platform, has quit the firm to join Flipkart, which directly competes with Meesho. Chaudhary has moved on after spending two years at the firm.

With the move, Chaudhary joins a growing list of top management employees who have quit Meesho over the past few months. In January this year Utkrishta Kumar, the chief experience officer or CXO, Business, departed to start his fintech venture, Moneycontrol had reported earlier. Shortly after that Meesho’s chief product officer (CPO) Kirti Varun Avasarala also quit after a four year-long stint. Avasarala’s next move is unknown.

All three – Chaudhary, Kumar and Avasarala – reported to co-founder and CEO Vidit Aatrey.

Flipkart confirmed the developments to Moneycontrol.

This will be Chaudhary's second stint at a Flipkart group company. He worked at Myntra, also a firm that directly competes with Meesho, between August 2016 and February 2019 as Director of Category Management and Strategy.

He also also worked at companies like McKinsey and Disney+ Hotstar during his career which has spanned over 13 years.

At Flipkart, Chaudhary is the vice president (VP) of Customer. In his new role, he will lead customer growth which includes acquisition and retention of users. Chaudhary will also run Flipkart’s video commerce unit, as per his LinkedIn.

The move comes at a time when the two companies, along with Amazon and others, are fighting for a bigger piece of the e-commerce pie.

Flipkart is currently the leader in the space with a market share of 48 percent, as per analysts at Bernstein. Flipkart's gross merchandise value (GMV) stood at around $29 billion in FY23, comfortably ahead of Meesho’s GMV of over $5 billion.

“Flipkart continues to grow faster than the industry…(but) Meesho (is) gaining incremental GMV (and) continues to make strides. Meesho has been gaining share primarily through its strategic focus on Tier 2+ cities due to its mass positioning, operating through a zero commission model,” Bernstein’s report released in January said.

While SoftBank-backed Meesho does not earn from seller fees, it makes money by running ads and selling services which helped the Bengaluru-based company report a rise in revenue and a reduction in losses in the previous fiscal.

Meesho said its revenue from operations grew 77 percent from Rs 3,232 crore in FY22 to Rs 5,735 crore in FY23, as existing customers transacted more on the platform and monetisation efforts yielded desired results during the year.

While revenues grew, its losses halved from Rs 3,251 crore in FY22 to Rs 1,675 crore in FY23. To be sure, Meesho is yet to file its final results with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA).

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