Former McKinsey advisor launches startup with Flipkart co-founder
Former Senior Partner at global management consultancy McKinsey & Company Saikiran Krishnamurthy has is collaborating with the co-founder of ecommerce giant Flipkart – Binny Bansal – to establish a technology consultancy for startups by the name of xto10x Technologies.
Krishnamurthy has been associated with Flipkart before, when he headed the firm’s supply chain business eKart previously between 2015 and 2017. Most of his career, however, has unfolded at management consultancy McKinsey & Company, where he worked for 15 years and ascended to the position of Senior Partner.
He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, and joined McKinsey immediately afterwards, where he led the Chemicals and Operations Practice in India, and the Implementation Services Line for all of Asia. Later at eKart, Krishnamurthy focused on expanding the reach of its technology infrastructure.
He will now leverage this knowledge of technology infrastructure to help startups in India with enlarging the scale of their business. xto10x is a collaborative venture with Binny Bansal – someone who Krishnamurthy would have worked with during his time at Flipkart, which Bansal co-founded but left late last year.
The new firm will operate with three broad service categories, ranging from products at the strategy and data analysis stage of business operations, through an online digital platform to facilitate learning and offer information on seminars and programmes, all the way to mentorship and consultancy services for new founders.
India’s startup environment is growing rapidly, exemplified by the fact that the country has registered over 5,000 new firms over the last two years. The country is emerging as a tech hub at accessible costs, which some predict will become a worthy competitor for Silicon Valley in the near future.
Bansal and Krishnamurthy will hope to capitalise on this scenario. Krishnamurthy, who joins the venture directly after a brief spell at transportation giant Ola, is expected to be CEO at the firm, while Bansal – who continues to be involved with Flipkart as a 5% owner and a member of the board – will operate as Executive Chairman.
“Sometimes, due to the pressures and realities of running a startup, you often realise problems after the error has been committed,” said Rohit Ramasubramanian, CEO at a startup by the name of GoZefo. “There are some avenues to seek guidance today, but nothing where a mentor or an experienced founder can play an active real-time role in the tactical execution of the problems faced by a startup - essentially a way to pre-empt these issues,” he added.
