Flipkart ropes in Ravi Garikipati as entrepreneur in residence 
Ecommerce player Flipkart has appointed Ravi Garikipati as ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’. Flipkart says that this is a newly created position in the company and Garikipati in his new role will be working closely with top management including Sachin, Binny and Mukesh Bansal on new and high impact business projects.
“Ravi will focus on driving innovative changes for these projects, which is a mix of new independent and existing businesses. His first assignment will be to help Flipkart scale up their new ads initiative,” Flipkart said in statement. Readers will remember that the online marketplace in March bought mobile advertising firm AdIQuity for an undisclosed amount.
Before joining Flipkart, Garikipati was the head of [24]7 Innovation Labs, Ravi was responsible for overall strategy and development of all products. Prior to that, Ravi was the SVP at Vendio, which was eventually acquired by Alibaba.
BlackBerry India head Sunil Lalvani quits company 
BlackBerry India managing director Sunil Lalvani has stepped down from his position to explore opportunities outside of the company, a spokerperson confirmed the development to MediaNama. Lalvani joined the company in 2009 as the head of its enterprise business before taking charge of the entire operations. Prior to BlackBerry, Lalvani had stints in companies such as EMC, Nokia and Cisco.
“We will announce a permanent replacement soon. India is an important market for BlackBerry and we are committed to our customers in this region who demand the most secure and productive mobile communications,” the spokesman added. In the interim, Matthew Tonkin, VP, Carrier Sales and Distribution, APAC, will lead operations in India.
