Snapdeal CFO Anup Vikal quits after Flipkart merger talks hit dead-end

Mumbai: Months after Indian startup Snapdeal called off merger talks with e-commerce biggie Flipkart, the former’s Chief Financial Officer Anup Vikal has resigned from his post.

Vikal's departure is being hailed as one of the most important high-level exits in Snapdeal’s history. Earlier, Rahul Ganjoo, Vice President, Programme Management, Arvind Heda, Vice President, Technology (Data Platform), Pradeep Desai, Vice President product,  Viraj Chatterjee ,Vice President, engineering, and Gaurav Gupta, head of IT, also put down their papers.

These departures comes after the e-commerce platform announced its decision to adorn a ‘2.0 version’ of itself to become a leaner organisation.

The company was earlier reported to be in talks for selling its business to Flipkart in a USD 900-950 million deal. However, Snapdeal ended the merger talks after agreeing to sell its digital payment platform, FreeCharge, to Axis Bank for Rs 385 crore.

According to Moneycontrol, Vikal had been instrumental in rallying for the acquisition  by Flipkart.

Appointed by Snapdeal in 2015, Vikal was the CFO at telecom firm Aircel Ltd. "Anup has done sterling work at Snapdeal, building high levels of governance and helping structure various transactions of importance for the company," Kunal Bahl, chief executive officer, Snapdeal, said in a statement. "He has led the finance function with distinction, contributing immensely in furthering the profitability initiatives of Snapdeal, which the deep bench of Snapdeal' finance team will continue. I wish him the very best for his professional pursuits."

According to Moneycontrol, not everyone at the company was happy with Snapdeal's decision to not align with Flipkart.

Employees had also reportedly alleged that the Plan B or Snapdeal 2.0 plan was not viable for the company and would end up in a job losses for a lot of people. It was also reported in July that Snapdeal was mulling lay off 80 per cent of its employees.

"Leadership is set by example not by blatant lies coming in from dubious founders," a senior employee of Snapdeal had told ANI.