E-commerce major Flipkart is appointing Dunzo Co-founder Kabeer Biswas to lead the company’s quick commerce vertical Flipkart Minutes, according to sources.

The appointment is subject to Kabeer offloading his stake in Dunzo and the shareholders agreeing to the exit plan, the sources added. Biswas will work closely with Hemant Badri, Senior Vice President (SVP) at Flipkart.

The decision to onboard Biswas comes shortly after Google invested $350 million in Flipkart during its $950 million fundraising round, which valued the company at $36 billion, according to a May report by businessline.

Google is a common investor in both — Flipkart and Dunzo as it owns roughly 1 per cent in Flipkart and roughly a 19 per cent stake in Dunzo.

Biswas, who founded Dunzo in 2014, holds 3.39 per cent stake in Dunzo, and remains tied to the company as he is one of two directors. Walmart-owned Flipkart had even explored buying out Dunzo amid its funding crisis. However, investors didn’t want to give up the Dunzo brand, which led to the deal getting stuck.

Biswas was in talks with investors, including 26 per cent stakeholder Reliance Retail, about leaving the Bengaluru-based company, reported businessline earlier.

Quick commerce race

Flipkart Minutes is the most aggressive in quick commerce with pricing, challenging the top trio of quick commerce— Zepto and Swiggy Instamart, the third being Zomato-owned Blinkit, along with Tata BigBasket and others.

A recent report by Jefferies noted that Flipkart Minutes has the widest offerings in electronics. “Based on our industry checks, Flipkart Minutes has already scaled up to around 100 dark stores, with plans in place to touch a multiple of this by the end of this fiscal year,” Jefferies said.

Founded in 2014, Dunzo, backed by the likes of Google, Blume Ventures and Lightbox, was one of the earliest start-ups to explore the quick commerce model. It had raised more than $400 million.