In a shocker of a news for the Indian startup ecosystem, Zomato's Deepak Gulati has decided to leave the organisation within six months of joining as its president and chief operating officer, according to a recent report by VCC Circle.

The India-based food tech company and international restaurant advertising platform has had quite a year already. We recently reported how, Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd has valued Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd at $1.4 billion at a time when the Gurgaon headquartered foodtech startup is in talks with Chinese payments firm Alibaba’s Ant Financial Services Group to raise $100-$200 million. It had also recently acquired another hyperlocal food delivery startup Runnr.

Prior to joining Zomato, Gulati worked as the president, chairman office­-technology group and senior advisor at Indonesia-based Sinarmas Group. He has also worked at Tata Docomo as the executive president and CEO.

Confirming the news, a company spokesperson said to VCC Circle, “It is true, Deepak is no longer a part of the executive team. He will continue to be associated with Zomato as a member of our board of advisors. Deepak has been, and continues to be a wonderful coach and an advisor to Deepinder."

Frequent CXO exits are not that an unusual trend in today's startup ecosystem. Zomato has in fact seen about half a dozen C-suite executives leaving the firm within a few months of joining the organisation.

Two years ago, in September 2015, Durga Raghunath, the then senior vice-president for growth, had quit the firm barely five months after joining, while Namita Gupta, the former Facebook executive, who had joined the organisation in June 2015, left the firm hanging within 11 months. In February last year, chief product officer Tanmay Saksena also put in his papers marking a yet another senior-level exit.

Let's hope Zomato soon gets a grip of the situation when it comes to retaining its senior level management as that can help the startup grow better and faster.

[Image: CIOL]
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