A longtime Google veteran decides to join one of Amazon's biggest competitors after a trip to India
Soni worked at Google for the past eight years, helping develop products like Google News, Books, Google Plus - and, as the VP of product management at Motorola while Google owned it, three phones: the MotoX, Moto G, and Moto E.
Soni decided to join Flipkart after a trip to India - he felt the startup "stood out as the single biggest platform of change in the new internet economy," he said in a Google Plus post.
In his new role, he'll be spearheading Flipkart's product strategy, design, and marketing, and moving to India for the position.
Flipkart currently has 33,000 employees and 10 million daily visits is one of Amazon's biggest competitors in India. The company's founders actually both worked at Amazon before ditching in 2007 to start their own new company with a very similar business model.
The startup took off and Flipkart is now India's largest online marketplace in terms of sales.
Amazon, meanwhile, didn't enter India until 2012 when it acquired price-comparison site Junglee. It opened its official India website in June 2014. The next month, Flipkart raised a mammoth $1 billion funding round. Exactly one day later, Amazon said it planned to pour $2 billion into its Indian operations.
In Amazon's Q4 earnings call, CFO Tom Szkutak said the company was "very excited about India" and it will be one of its big focuses for international growth.
Here's how Soni described his decision to go to Flipkart:
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.