New Delhi:
Flipkart CEO Binny Bansal on Monday resigned from the company over the allegations of "serious personal misconduct", the e-commerce giant and its parent company Walmart said in a statement. The resignation of the co-founder of the Flipkart has been accepted by the company.
"Binny has been an important part of Flipkart since co-founding the company, but recent events risked becoming a distraction and Binny has made a decision to step down," the joint statement by Flipkart and Walmart noted.
Bansal’s resignation came following an independent probe into the allegations of “serious personal misconduct”. Bansal, 37, has strongly denied the allegations, the company said in a statement.
While the company did not provide details of the nature of misconduct or the findings of the probe for which it had engaged a global law firm, sources said the allegations were made in July. The allegations, sources said, do not involve an employee of Flipkart and indicated that the complainant was associated with Flipkart a few years ago and is now running her own venture.
This, however, could not be independently ascertained.
The matter is in "personal realm," sources said adding disclosure and transparency during the investigation were found not to be satisfactory, though no conclusive evidence against Bansal could be established.
The investigation, they said, started soon after allegations were made against Bansal, who had co-founded Flipkart with his IIT-Delhi batchmate Sachin Bansal in 2007. Sachin Bansal left the company following its USD 16-billion acquisition by US retail behemoth Walmart in May this year.
The probe by the law firm was just concluded, sources said. The company has refused to name the investigating firm.
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The joint Flipkart-Walmart statement said that although the investigation didn’t find any evidence to confirm the allegations, it did find “other lapses” related to the matter.
"While the investigation did not find evidence to corroborate the complainant's assertions against Binny, it did reveal other lapses in judgment, particularly a lack of transparency, related to how Binny responded to the situation," the joint statement noted.
Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy will continue to remain the CEO of the e-commerce major which also operates two other online shopping platforms - Myntra and Jabong.
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Earlier this year, US-based Walmart Inc had acquired the majority stake in Bengaluru-headquartered Flipkart in a whopping USD 16 billion deal.
