Flipkart hires former Twitter executive Tarun Jain

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce company, has hired former Twitter executive Tarun Jain to head the products division of its online advertising business.

Jain will be responsible for driving business strategy, product vision, roadmap, execution, partnerships and customer adoption.

Jain has relocated to Bengaluru from San Francisco and will be reporting to entrepreneur-in-residence Ravi Garikipati. The ads business is headed by Flipkart’s Group CEO Sachin Bansal.

“He (Jain) possesses deep understanding of the digital advertising solutions and we believe that his leadership will bring invaluable insights and contribute to the growth of ads group at Flipkart,” said Garikipati. Jain worked with Twitter as the group product manager in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he led the product strategy for several ads and commerce products.

Prior to that, he was at Google, where he built and scaled AdWords Express, Dynamic Ads, Google Offers and Google Shopping. In one year, Flipkart has made several strategic hires to beef up its top management. These include former Google product head Punit Soni to head the product division at the ecommerce platform and former McKinsey director Saikiran Krishnamurthy as the chief operating officer of its commerce division. Peeyush Ranjan also joined the company as senior vice-president and head of engineering from Google.

Experts say getting high-profile experienced people on board will help Flipkart create a better profile when it ultimately lists for an IPO. At the same time, the company is outsourcing some of its middle- and lower-level employees to business process outsourcing firm Serco.