Flipkart chief product officer Punit Soni quits in just over a year

Flipkart chief product officer Punit Soni has quit the company, the e-commerce company confirmed on Wednesday without specifying any reason.

This is the third top-level exit at Flipkart within two months after Mukesh Bansal, head of marketplace and a board member, and chief business officer Ankit Nagori resigned in February.

Soni's exit has been a subject of speculation for about three months now, but Flipkart had so far maintained that he was moving to a new role following the recent reshuffle that saw co-founder Binny Bansal taking over as CEO.

Soni was one of the high-profile professionals from Silicon Valley who Flipkart hired. An MBA from The Wharton School and MS in electrical engineering from University of Wyoming, he joined Flipkart as product chief in February last year. He was earlier vice president in Google's Motorola mobility division and advisor at Google before Flipkart.

Soni told VCCircle that April 15 will be his last day at Flipkart. He said he will take some time off to be with his family before his next career move. "In parallel, I will work on baking some ideas I have been thinking about," he said in an email. "There are some interesting and big problems to solve using tech, and I want to spend time on doing that. Finally, the past year has been very interesting and I need time to reflect on what I learnt, and how I can grow."

Soni recently started an initiative named 'Office Hours' to advise startups on scaling up. He committed to spend a few hours every week to discuss with startup founders on product, business model, funding and processes while he was in Bangalore. "I feel that the Indian startup ecosystem can do with more discussion on core product/tech," he said in a recent blog post.