Food aggregator Zomato on Monday announced that co-founder and CTO Gunjan Patidar has quit the company after more than ten years in the company.
He has tendered his resignation today. In its regulatory filing, Zomato said that CTO Gunjan Patidar was not a key managerial personnel (KMP).
According to his LinkedIn profile, CTO Gunjan Patidar was one of Zomato’s earliest employees, having worked in the company for 14 years. He also shares his alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, with Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal.
CTO Gunjan Patidar-10 Years Of Excellence
Patidar, who had been with Zomato since it was founded almost 10 years ago, was the key executive in charge of building the company’s technology stack. Inc42 today reported that he was responsible for designing Zomato’s “core tech systems” and also headed up a “tech leadership team,” citing a filing the company made today.
“He also nurtured a tech leadership team that is capable of taking on the mantle of leading the tech function going forward,” the company said in the filing. “His contribution to building Zomato has been invaluable.”
CTO Gunjan Patidar’s departure comes weeks after co-founder Mohit Gupta quit the company. Zomat’s head of new initiatives and former head of food delivery Rahul Ganjoo and Siddharth Jhawar, head of its Intercity Legends service, has also quit. Ganjoo stepped down after a five-year stint in November 2022. Jhawar also left in November to head adtech unicorn Moloco’s India operations.
He’s the fourth co-founder to exit the company, following Pankaj Chaddhah, Gaurav Gupta, and Mohit Gupta. Chaddah exited in 2018 and Gaurav Gupta in 2021.
The departures of Zomato’s CTO Gunjan Patidar come at a time when Chief Executive Deepinder Goyal, also a co-founder, has been attempting to share and delegate top responsibilities with other executives. Last August, the company appointed four new chief executives across its leadership team.
Amid a meltdown of tech stocks, the food delivery company suffered in the public market in 2022 as its stock price has fallen by more than 50 percent from its peak of Rs 162 on the BSE. The stock closed at Rs 60.30 on Monday.
Zomato, which is backed by Ant Group, Goldman Sachs, and Temasek, is unprofitable, reporting a loss of $30.4 million during its most recent quarterly financial results in September. The company has not provided any reason for the recent executive departures.
The growth of Zomato’s food delivery business has slowed as it has grown in size. Its quarterly sales in Q2FY23 grew 22 percent year-on-year to Rs 6,631 crore from Rs 5,410 crore in Q2FY22.
In the quarter ending September 30, 2022, Zomato said that for the food delivery business, the gross order value (GOV) growth was 3 percent quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) and 23 percent year-on-year (YoY). This, it said, was driven by growth in both order volumes and average order value.
Also, read | Prune your follows tool lets users trim their Twitter follow list
