Former McKinsey and Goldman Sachs executive Madhur Deep has joined Alibaba, Chinese e-commerce company as senior vice president to head the strategy and investment team in India. 

Deep will lead the Business Strategy (including market entry, investments, partnerships) for B2B businesses of Alibaba Group across India and SE Asia. He will be reporting to K Guru Gowrappan, the Global Managing Director at the Alibaba Group. This move had been strikingly paramount for the organization with the aim to build the strategy team in India. The firm is also planning to open an India office in Bengaluru.

With the aim to magnify its business in India, the group had hired Bharati Balakrishnan, former chief business officer at a hyper local services startup, as its first employee. Other Alibaba executives include senior director Kshitij Karundia and director Soumitra Sharma who are looking closely at India investments.

The giant US-based e-retail firm Amazon has already built a strong presence in the Indian e-commerce space, and is not much far behind the local market leader Flipkart.

"Alibaba needs to catch up with Flipkart and Amazon, or people will just rule them out of the game in India. Anyway, India is much different from China in terms of market conditions and that's soon being realised by investors. Also, Alibaba has been actively talking to a lot of companies but trying to scout for lower valuations. It's a double-edged sword," said one person aware of the company's plans.

Although Alibaba doesn't have a direct presence in e-commerce, it owns 40% stake in Paytm India’s largest mobile payment and commerce platform. The Chinese e-commerce firm has revealed its future plans to set up a direct presence in India.