ShopX, India’s fastest growing digital offline platform that powers small retailers in India, on Monday (17 April) announced the appointment of Kirti Varun to head its Product Management function.
Varun brings together a decade of professional experience across e-commerce product management, strategy consulting and operations in leading global and Indian organisations. He joins ShopX as vice-president of Product Management, and will be a part of ShopX’s leadership team. He will work closely with ShopX co-founders Amit Sharma (CEO) and Apoorva Jois (COO) to help ShopX achieve its mission of organising commerce in India through technology to make it accessible and valuable to everyone.
Prior to ShopX, Varun was the principal product manager with Amazon India, where he was responsible for building India-specific product innovations to improve key customer inputs such as pricing, inventory, affordability and selection. Previously, he was a senior engagement manager with McKinsey & Company, where he led client engagements across multiple sectors and functions. He also played a pivotal role in building the digital banking practice for McKinsey in India. Varun earlier handled multiple roles in operations and project management at ITC, where he led breakthrough innovation projects using Lean and Six Sigma methodologies to improve quality & productivity, and reduce cost of operations.
Commenting on this new development, Sharma, said, “This is an exciting time for ShopX as we are scaling up our retailer base rapidly with a sharp focus on unit economics and profitability. With our digital offline model, we have been able to offer a wide range of products across categories through our 45,000 plus retailer network. Kirti brings together rich general management and product management experience, and will play a pivotal role in executing ShopX’s mission of making commerce accessible and valuable for everyone.”
Varun said, “While e-commerce in India has solved customer problems in terms of access and convenience in shopping for a large selection of products, its reach has been limited only to 45-50 million customers in Tier I and II cities. There is a large and untapped opportunity of making e-commerce accessible and valuable to the next 600 million middle-income Indians. Building a scalable and viable business to tap into this opportunity requires significant innovation across every aspect of the business model ranging from front-end shopping experience to back-end supply chain and logistics. ShopX is innovating rapidly to build a viable business in this space, and I’m excited to join them in this journey.”
ShopX is backed by strategic investor Nandan Nilekani, Jagdish Kini (ex-CEO, Airtel (South Region), managing director, Gillette India), and Pramod Varma (former chief architect, UIDAI Aadhar Project, CTO - Sterling Commerce).
