How Flipkart is going through a top-level churn

Flipkart, the country's largest e-commerce venture, seems to be a poaching ground for India's fast-growing consumer internet startups.

At least 16 senior executives have exited Flipkart and its lifestyle e-tailing unit Myntra over the last six months, according to publicly available data. While seven of them moved on to take up senior positions in smaller ventures, three have donned the entrepreneur's hat.

At least six exits were reported in September alone. The actual number could be higher as Flipkart, a privately held company, is not required to disclose senior-level churn.

A spokesperson for Flipkart declined to specifically comment on the top-level exits. Human personnel movement is common for all fast-growing companies, the spokesperson said.

Flipkart has also expanded its senior management team to compete with rivals such as Flipkart and Amazon.

It recently appointed former Tata Communication's executive Sanjiv Saddy as senior vice president of corporate affairs and business development. In November, it hired former Twitter executive Tarun Jain as the head of products for its advertising group. Also last month, Flipkart appointed MakeMyTrip's chief technology officer Sharat Singh as vice president of engineering.

In October, Flipkart hired Ram Papatla from rival Amazon India as vice president of product management and named Samardeep Subandh chief marketing officer. It has also hired Silicon Valley veterans Eric Lange (former vice president of Yahoo's analytics wing) and Dan Rawson (former general manager at Amazon's fulfillment business) recently.