Former Flipkart V-P Manish Maheshwari is Web18 CEO

Manish Maheshwari, former vice president and head of the seller business at Flipkart, has joined Mukesh Ambani-owned Network18 Media and Investments Ltd. Maheshwari has been appointed as the CEO of Web18, the mobile and Internet arm of Network18 group.

In his new role, Maheshwari will lead Network18's digital and e-commerce assets including moneycontrol.com, ibnlive.com, in.com, firstpost.com, BookMyShow, HomeShop18 and Burrp, according to a statement from Network18.

Network18 has been in an expansion mode with specific focus on digital content. As Web18's head, Maheshwari's immediate priorities will be to drive content, monetisation, new business, inorganic growth, and product portfolio management.

"Maheshwari brings with him a good mix of Silicon Valley tech product culture and an understanding of the ground realities in India. Both qualities will be crucial as we take Network18 to the next level of digital transformation," said Network18 Group Chairman Adil Zainulbhai.

Maheshwari's resignation from Flipkart marks another top-level exit at India's largest homegrown e-commerce company. This comes a little over a month after Mukesh Bansal, head of marketplace and a board member at Flipkart, and chief business officer Ankit Nagori, put  in their papers. Bansal and Nagori have now joined hands to launch a healthcare, sports and fitness venture.

Under Maheshwari's watch, Flipkart's marketplace grew 10x from 10,000 sellers in February 2015 to 100,000 sellers in February 2016. Maheshwari had earlier co-founded txtWeb and made it one of the world's largest marketplaces for text-based apps with over 16 million mobile users in India alone. Prior to founding txtWeb, Maheshwari was the head of new markets at NASDAQ-listed software provider Intuit. He also worked at McKinsey and Procter & Gamble (P&G). He holds an MBA from Wharton Business School.