The head of Walmart Inc.-owned delivery firm Parcel Inc. has left the company. Parcel delivers groceries ordered from Jet.com, another Walmart unit, in New York City.
Jesse Kaplan founded Parcel in 2013, the same year he graduated from Harvard. He sold the business to Walmart in October 2017, reportedly for less than $10 million. He stayed on at Parcel as chief executive officer until leaving abruptly this week.
Kaplan was recently named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list of entrepreneurs in manufacturing and industry.
Jackson Fratesi, Parcel's chief operating officer, will now lead the logistics company.
Walmart acquired Jet.com in 2016 to boost its e-commerce business as it battled online giant Amazon.com. The Bentonville retailer's purchase of Parcel complemented that acquisition by providing same-day delivery of orders from Walmart.com and Jet.com.
While Walmart leads the nation in total grocery sales, several 2018 surveys show Amazon holding the lion's share of the market in online grocery sales.
Business on 12/01/2018