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Flipkart now paying million-dollar salaries to new top hires

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Bengaluru: India’s biggest online retailer and India Inc toddler Flipkart is paying million dollar-plus salaries along with stock options worth millions more to a clutch of engineers and a strategy expert.

The company has poached some stop notch executives from marquee global firms such as Google and McKinsey as part of its strategy to aggressively build a technology capability that can rival Amazon in the country.

Two of Flipkart’s latest hires – Punit Soni, who joined from Google as its chief product officer, and Peeyush Ranjan, its head of engineering who also joined the Bengaluru firm from the web search titan –  are getting fixed salaries of around $1 million (Rs 6.2 crore) a year each apart from $3-6 million in stock options, according to company sources familiar with their compensation.

A third recent hire, Saikiran Krishnamurthy, who has joined Flipkart from global consulting firm McKinsey & Co as the chief operating officer of its commerce division, is also being paid a similar amount, they added.

The salaries would make them among the highest-paid engineers and non-board level executives across the Indian startup universe and probably even India Inc. Few Indian companies pay division heads as much, and million-dollar salaries are usually the preserve of CEOs.

The salaries Flipkart is paying the likes of Soni and Ranjan compares favourably with salaries of top executives in India’s $146-billion information technology industry.

Flipkart sources said paying top-dollar salary was essential to lure talent, especially from Silicon Valley working at top global names. Unlike in India, top engineering talent in Silicon Valley can command salaries worth several millions of dollars.

“Fixed salary apart, stock options and joining bonuses are an effective tool to attract such talent to relocate from the Silicon Valley,” said one person familiar with these hires.

Flipkart is under pressure to build a team that can match Amazon on technology and innovation fronts, and fend off sprightly and pugnacious domestic rival, SoftBank-backed Snapdeal.

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