Former Flipkart executives join XpressBees leadership; 5paisa, Harappa make top rung hires

Busybees Logistics Solutions, the Pune based company that owns and operates logistics platform XpressBees, has added two former Flipkart executives to its leadership team. Rajashekhar Khandrika and Swapnil Gupta have joined the company as vice presidents engineering, the company said in a statement on Thursday. 

At Flipkart, Khandrika was involved in the launch of programmes such as hyperlocal, grocery and furniture. Before Flipkart, he spent two years with Amazon India and over a decade with Microsoft India as part of its research and development unit. 

Gupta, during his stint with Flipkart, was responsible for re-architecture and scaling systems, launching capabilities for new supply chains such as grocery and hyperlocal and overseeing initiatives across functions for driving supply chain efficiencies. He also contributed to building and enabling several new capabilities in the supply chain and B2B integration domains. 

Founded in 2015 by Amitava Saha and Supam Maheshwari, XpressBees offers first-and-last-mile delivery and reverse logistics to the ecommerce sector. It claims to currently serve more than 1,000 customers across 18,000-plus pin codes and has presence in more than 2500 cities. 

In November last year, the company raised $110 million in a growth funding round led by Investcorp, Norwest Venture Partners and Gaja Capital.  

5paisa Capital

Publicly listed discount broker 5paisaCapital Limited (5paisa Capital) has appointed Ankit Fitkariwala as chief business officer and head of products. His primary mandate will be to strengthen the Mumbai based company’s digital presence and beef up the customer acquisition process. 

Prior to joining 5paisa, Fitkariwala was head of investment products at Paytm Money. Earlier, he did stints at Jefferies, DBS Bank, Cisco Systems and Smartwiz (which he also co-founded). 

The company on-boarded more than 2 lakh new customers during the fourth quarter of financial year 2020-2021, taking the total number of registered customers to 13.5 lakh. The 5paisa mobile app is used by over 7 million investors, the company said in a statement.   

In April this year, 5paisa Capital raised Rs 251 crore from multiple investors including Ward Ferry, Fairfax and RIMCO.  

Founded in 2016, the company is a subsidiary of Nirmal Jain promoted IIFL Holdings. It is registered with SEBI as a stockbroker, depository participant and research analyst, and with AMFI as a mutual fund distributor. It caters to retail investors and high-volume traders who actively invest and trade in the securities markets and seek do-it-yourself services at a low cost. 

Harappa Learning

Delhi based behavioural skilling platform Harappa Learning has made two recent additions to its senior leadership team. The edtech has recruited Sukhdeep Bhogal as chief product officer and Vipul Rathore as chief content officer.  

The new hires are in line with Harappa’s plans to double down on B2C bets and strengthen its B2B presence across the distinct learning experiences and formats its learner base needs, the company said in a statement this week. 

While Bhogal will lead and scale the company’s product and digital experiences, Rathore will lead its curriculum. Prior to the current assignment, Bhogal was vice president, digital and business head at Cox & Kings, which he joined after his own venture, Trotoise, was acquired by the travel company. Rathore comes to Harappa after long stints in the online learning domain at companies such Genpact, Accenture, and KPMG. 

Founded in 2018 by Pramath Raj Sinha and Shreyasi Singh, Harappa addresses the need gap for cognitive, social, and behavioral skills, or what it terms Thrive Skills, in the Indian workforce. Thrive Skills are an essential set of cognitive, social, and behavioral skills to enable professionals to continuously succeed at every stage of their career. The platform aims to have half a million paid learners by financial year 2022-2023. 

In January last year, James Murdoch led private investment firm Lupa Systems acquired a majority stake in the edtech for an undisclosed sum.