Flipkart board member and investor, Subrata Mitra today said money raised through the latest round of funding will be utilised to make profits and shave off company’s burn on weekly basis, in a quest to ride its business towards right metrics.
“We are definitely very very eyes on the ball with respect to our burn and a direction towards profitability. Every month we are shaving off our burn and that is something that both Binny Bansal and Kalyan Krishnamurthy are looking at on a weekly basis, I presume, which is very important because we want to ride this business towards right metrics,” he told ET Now here.
Mitra of Accel Partners was responding to a query whether Flipkart would focus on making profits after forging partnerships with Tencent, Microsoft and eBay. He, however, did not divulge the timeline of making profits.
Recently, one of the co-founders had said that the company hopes of becoming profitable in next 2-3 years and expecting to launch its IPO in 2-5 years.
Asked how difficult it was for Flipkart to get investors on board when the valuation of the company had been lowered for now, Mitra said it was a difficult call, but was not an impossible task and happened quickly.
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In 2015 and 2016, the company was on a back-foot as it had not executed the plans to the best of its abilities, but since January it had gained confidence, he added.
Replying to a question whether people could see a stable leadership going forward for the next few years, Mitra said, “It is very hard to look at the crystal ball and tell you how exactly it is going to play out, but we are expecting a stable leadership, and also think we have got the right combination now with Kalyan (Flipkart CEO) who is superlative in execution.”
“Binny is a great great thinker.. He is helping us in the strategy side on some of the other initiatives we want to take,” he added.
For quite some time, Flipkart has been seeing leadership changes, one among the biggest being the appointment of Binny Bansal as the new CEO in place of co-founder Sachin Bansal, who was made the executive chairman of the company.
Asked whether Krishnamurthy had a role to play in stitching a deal with eBay, Mitra said his association with the company in the past has helped Flipkart to create a trust relationship, but it is a team effort, which also included contributions from Binny Bansal and Tiger Global’s Lee Fixel.
On media reports of a possible Snapdeal-Flipkart deal, Mitra said, “They are mere speculations.. You probably wait and see what happens…
I don’t have any further information that I can talk about,” he said.
