Walmart-owned Flipkart has appointed Balaji Thiagarajan as its new Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO), according to media reports. Thiagarajan replaces Jeyandran Venugopal who quit Flipkart earlier this year to join Reliance Retail. Venugopal had been with Flipkart for over eight years.
“Thiagarajan will lead the OneTech organisation, with a focus on accelerating Flipkart’s strategic technology priorities and driving innovation at scale, including the adoption of emerging technologies,” Flipkart said in a statement.
Thiagarajan brings over 25 years of experience working with technology giants including Google, Microsoft, Uber and Yahoo. Flipkart’s core tech team, including key leaders like Ramesh Gururaja, Sandhya Kapoor, Bharath Chinamanthur, Amit Sachan, and Gaurav Mathur, will now report to him.
He will also take over the role of Bharath Reddy, SVP at Flipkart, who is moving to Walmart.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Balaji Thiagarajan founded Kasu.ai in 2025, an Artificial Intelligence platform that designs strategies to streamline business operations.
Flipkart CEO, Kalyan Krishnamurthy reportedly stated in an internal announcement that Thiagarajan’s deep expertise in AI would help Flipkart accelerate AI adoption, modernize tech architecture, and drive innovation at scale.
Balaji Thiagarajan: Leading the Pack
Balaji Thiagarajan brings a unique mix of AI expertise, large-scale platform building, startup-style innovation, and operational leadership — positioning Flipkart to sharpen its competitive edge in India’s e-commerce and digital retail space. This is what he potentially brings to the table for the e-commerce giant:
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Deep AI & Emerging Tech Expertise → Help accelerate Flipkart’s AI adoption, modernize its tech architecture, and drive innovation at scale.
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Proven Global Leadership → With 25+ years at Google, Microsoft, Uber, Yahoo, he has experience leading large tech organizations with global footprints and big operating budgets.
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Product & Platform Vision → Strong background in building consumer cloud platforms, IoT, big data, analytics, mobile experiences, and digital advertising systems at massive scale (hundreds of millions of users).
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Startup & Corporate Innovation → Experience in driving new business opportunities and product lines within corporates, as well as mentoring venture-backed startups.
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M&A and Tech Integration Expertise → Hands-on in evaluating, acquiring, integrating, and divesting technologies—valuable for Flipkart’s ecosystem expansion.
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Open Source & Cloud Influence → Key contributions to Hadoop, open-source big data tools, and adoption of Google Cloud for mobile ecosystems—skills that align with Flipkart’s data-heavy e-commerce operations.
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Operational Rigor → Ability to build and scale tech organizations, with practical processes for agile development and reliable operations.
Flipkart has been streamlining operations and has seen executives leave over the past year or so as a result. In August last year its VP and Fashion head Arief Mohamad quit and Myntra’s CEO Nandita Sinha took over operations.
