Flipkart’s Binny Bansal resigned over allegation of sexual assault: Report

The company reportedly received an allegation of sexual assault in July concerning a former Flipkart associate.
Flipkart’s Binny Bansal resigned over allegation of sexual assault: Report
Flipkart’s Binny Bansal resigned over allegation of sexual assault: Report
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After Walmart and Flipkart announced that co-founder and group CEO Binny Bansal stepped down following ‘personal misconduct’, a Reuters report states that his resignation was a result of a sexual assault allegation from a few years ago.

Reuters quotes a source as saying that an allegation of sexual assault came to the company in July concerning a former Flipkart associate. This individual, however, was not working with Flipkart at the time of the allegation.

While Flipkart and Walmart in their statements did not disclose the nature of his conduct, they said that the investigation did not find evidence to corroborate the complainant’s assertions against Binny. “It did reveal other lapses in judgement, particularly a lack of transparency, related to how Binny responded to the situation. Because of this, we have accepted his decision to resign,” the company said in a statement,” the statement added.

Binny has reportedly strongly denied allegations, but Walmart says it had a responsibility to ensure the investigation was deliberate and thorough.

Post Binny’s resignation, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, the current chief executive of Flipkart, will continue as the CEO, which will now also include its group companies Myntra and Jabong.

Ananth Narayanan will continue as the CEO of Myntra and Jabong, and will report into Kalyan. Sameer Nigam will continue leading PhonePe as CEO. Both Kalyan and Sameer will report directly into the board,” Walmart added in its statement.

Flipkart was founded in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. Under their leadership, the e-commerce site grew into the largest homegrown e-commerce website in India, attracting massive investments from bigwigs such as SoftBank, Tiger Global and most recently, Walmart. Earlier this year, Walmart acquired a 77% stake for $16 billion, making it the largest shareholder in the company. The deal also saw Sachin Bansal, who was then group CEO, exit the company, selling his entire stakes in the company for nearly $1 billion.

Despite the allegations, the details of which haven’t been disclosed by the company, Walmart says that it will continue to remain invested in the company for the long-term.

"(We) are supportive of the leadership team’s desire to evolve into a publicly-traded company in the future,” Walmart added.

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