Watch Video: Zomato co-founder Gaurav Gupta quits; Deepinder Goyal tweets 'so much of journey still ahead'

Watch Video: Zomato co-founder Gaurav Gupta quits; Deepinder Goyal tweets 'so much of journey still ahead'

FPJ Web DeskUpdated: Tuesday, September 14, 2021, 10:35 PM IST
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A day ago, foodtech unicorn Zomato shut down its neutraceuticals market/Gaurav Gupta | Twitter

Zomato's founder Gaurav Gupta has quit the food delivery platform, according to Moneycontrol. He was the head of supply at the recently-listed company.

The resignation comes just days after the company decided to wind up with grocery delivery and nutraceutical business.

Gupta was a key person in the launching of the company's nutraceutical business.

Gupta joined Zomato as global head for advertising sales and then was promoted to COO role. Later he was made co-founder of Zomato in March, 2019.

In an email to everyone in the company he said: "I am taking a new turn in my life and will be starting a new chapter, taking a lot from this defining chapter of my life - the last 6 years at Zomato."

"We have a great team now to take Zomato forward and it's time for me to take an alternate path in my journey. I am very emotional as I write this and don't think any words can do justice to how I am feeling right now."

https://www.zomato.com/blog/always-in-love-with-zomato

Deepinder Goyal, the CEO of Zomato took to Twitter to thank Gupta and said that there is a "great" team and leadership to carry the company's journey forward.

A day ago, foodtech unicorn Zomato shut down its neutraceuticals market. According to news reports, after the food delivery company has decided to shut down its grocery delivery business from September 17, citing tough competition and moderate success, it has decided to shut down its neutraceutical business too.

According to Moneycontrol, Zomato has decided to shut it at a time when the government is trying to get stricter about private label norms for marketplace businesses in the country.

Earlier, Zomato decided to stop its grocery delivery service from September 17 mainly on account of gaps in order fulfilment leading to poor customer experience, marking its exit from the segment for the second time since last year.

The company had entered the segment last year during the lockdown on account of the COVID-19 pandemic but exited the business on the recovery of its food delivery business.

In March, Zomato Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal had tweeted about the firm's plans to foray into the health and dietary supplements market.

Earlier, the online food delivery platform decided to stop its grocery delivery service from September 17 mainly on account of gaps in order fulfilment leading to poor customer experience, marking its exit from the segment for the second time since last year. The company had entered the segment last year during the lockdown on account of the COVID-19 pandemic but exited the business on the recovery of its food delivery business.

The company also said that it believes that its investment in Grofers will generate better outcomes for its shareholders than in-house grocery efforts. Zomato has invested $100 million (around Rs 745 crore) for acquiring a minority stake in the grocery delivery platform Grofers.

In an email to its grocery partners, Zomato said, "At Zomato, we believe in delivering best in class services to our customers and largest growth opportunities to our merchant partners. We don't believe that the current model is the best way to deliver these to our customers and merchant partners. Hence, we intend to stop our pilot grocery delivery service effective 17 September, 2021".

The email mentions that "store catalogues are very dynamic and inventory levels change frequently. This has led to gaps in order fulfilment, leading to poor customer experience".

In the same time period, the express delivery model, with under 15-minute delivery promise and near-perfect fulfilment rates has been getting a lot of traction with customers and expanding rapidly, the company said in the email. "We have realised that it is extremely difficult to pull off such a delivery promise with high fulfilment rates consistently, in a marketplace model (like ours)," it stated.

When contacted, a Zomato spokesperson said, "We have decided to shut down our grocery pilot and as of now, have no plans to run any other form of grocery delivery on our platform. Grofers has found high-quality product-market fit in 10-minute grocery and we believe our investment in the company will generate better outcomes for our shareholders than our in-house grocery effort."

In July, Zomato CFO Akshant Goyal had said, "It (grocery) is a large opportunity. The online grocery is nascent right now but is growing rapidly not just in India but across the world... "We are actively experimenting in that space and recently invested USD 100 million for a minority stake in Grofers, with the idea of getting more exposure to that space and building our strategies and plan around that business". Zomato had launched the pilot grocery delivery service in July this year in select markets offering grocery delivery within 45 minutes to its customers.

Zomato was founded in 2008 by Goyal and Chaddah. It currently operates in 24 countries, including Australia and United States.

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