Shopsy, Flipkart‘s budget-friendly e-commerce competitor to platforms like Meesho and Amazon Bazaar, has appointed Prathyusha Agarwal as its head.
Agarwal will also take on the position of vice president at Flipkart, the parent company, as confirmed by a spokesperson. Prior to this role, she served as the chief business officer at the edtech firm Byju’s, and has held positions at Zee Entertainment, Tata Cliq, and Unilever, as outlined in her LinkedIn profile.
The Arc was the first to report Agarwal’s appointment.
Earlier, Shopsy was led by Adarsh Menon, who held the position of Senior Vice President and also oversaw the ReCommerce division along with other new ventures. In October of last year, Menon departed from Flipkart to assume the role of Global President at the car rental company Zoomcar.
This development comes amidst a series of high-level changes at Flipkart. The company enlisted Anuj Rathi as CEO of its travel booking unit Cleartrip, following the departures of former CEO Ayyappan R and former CFO Aditya Agarwal.
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The Senior Vice President (SVP) of customer growth and retention, marketing, and ads, Prabh Simran Singh, along with the Vice President (VP) of monetization, Sankalp Mehrotra, are also poised to depart from the company.
In recent months, several other Senior Vice Presidents (SVPs) have also parted ways with the company, including Amitesh Jha, who oversaw marketplace and categories, Dheeraj A, responsible for fintech and payments, and Bharath Ram, who led growth and retention, among others.
In January, it was reported that Flipkart was implementing performance-based reductions across all sectors, including vice presidents in engineering and product roles, resulting in layoffs affecting 5-7% of the company’s workforce.
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In 2021, Flipkart introduced Shopsy to enter the competitive low average selling price (ASP) market, directly challenging platforms like Meesho. This primarily focuses on offering unbranded products across categories such as apparel, small electronics, and kitchenware.
The sector continues to garner attention, evident from Amazon’s launch of its own budget-friendly, unbranded fashion and lifestyle platform named Bazaar in April of this year. Additionally, Reliance-owned ecommerce platform Ajio is preparing to unveil a similar low-priced platform known as Ajio Street.
In May, Meesho finalized a $275 million funding round through a combination of primary and secondary share sales. This initial tranche is part of a larger financing round of $600 million that the Bengaluru-based company aims to close.
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