Exclusive: MakeMytrip CTO Sharat Singh joins Flipkart

The country's largest e-commerce venture Flipkart has appointed MakeMyTrip's chief technology officer Sharat Singh as vice president of engineering.

Singh quit MakeMyTrip on October 9 after heading the online travel agency's technology practice for 15 months.

A spokesperson for Flipkart Online Services Pvt Ltd did not respond to a Techcircle.in query on the appointment till the time of filing this news report. Singh could not be immediately reached for a comment.

Before joining MakeMyTrip Ltd, Singh served as India MD of Shopzilla Inc. He also had executive stints with Nextag and Microsoft. The engineering team at Flipkart is led by Peeyush Ranjan, a former Google executive, who joined the e-commerce major early this year. Sameer Nigam, the erstwhile head of Flipkart's engineering practice, resigned from the Bangalore-based company in July.

In the last few quarters, Flipkart has been strengthening its upper deck by hiring seasoned executives across functions.

The hiring is a sign of the intense competition that is brewing among India's top e-tailers, to gain an edge in the highly competitive sector. Last month, Flipkart named Samardeep Subandh as chief marketing officer.

It also made three senior-level appointments to strengthen delivery, accounting technology and digital product capabilities. Flipkart appointed Amazon's Dan Rawson as head of customer logistics and supply chain ecosystems, Google's Ravi Byakod as director of engineering – accounting, and Microsoft's Anand Lakshminarayanan as head of product management for digital goods and services.

Besides, Punit Soni joined as chief product officer in March from Google and Peeyush Ranjan, another Google employee, joined as head of engineering.

Flipkart has also seen a number of senior-level exits recently. Chief people officer Mekin Maheshwari moved to an advisory role while Ravi Vora, who was CEO of Flipkart's Strategic Brands Group, exited the company in September. In August, the CEOs of Appiterate and AdIQuity, startups acquired by Flipkart earlier this year, moved on from the company.