Zepto rejigs top management; replaces COO and chief growth officer

Y Combinator-backed Zepto reshuffled its top management on Wednesday, replacing its COO and chief growth officer roles.

Vinay Dhanani—formerly the chief operating officer—has been made the president of supply chain and category.

Dhanani joined Zepto as its COO in June 2021, and previously worked with Flipkart as the director of grocery supply chain and with conglomerate ITC as a factory manager. The new role will enable Dhanani to work on Zepto's supply chain unit economics and manage buyer-side and seller-side categories, according to a statement from the company.

Vikas Sharma who was earlier the senior vice president of operations, will replace Dhanani as COO, Zepto said in a statement. Sharma joined Zepto in 2021 to lead its central and city operations and has worked with Flipkart as the head of hyperlocal operations and Pepperfry as the head of supply chain in the past.

Viral Jhaveri will be replacing Amritansu Nanda as the chief growth officer. Jhaveri is currently the chief business officer and earlier worked with Uber's food delivery division Uber Eats in India and logistics firm Freight Tiger as its director of operations.

Amritansu Nanda, who served as the chief growth and marketing officer since July 2021, will step down from his role to focus on health and family, the statement said.

The key appointments come shortly after the quick commerce firm brought on board Ramesh Bafna as chief financial officer. Bafna served as the CFO at Sequoia-backed fashion startup Zilingo after overseeing Flipkart-owned Myntra's finance and inventory division for more than three years.

Bafna previously was also head of finance at Flipkart for fashion, home and furniture, and other categories. He is also an investor in a few startups, including Teamonk, agritech platform Hesa, and house-of-brands firm White Inc.

Zepto has raised over $361 million so far from investors including Y Combinator, Nexus Venture Partners Global Founders Capital, and Glade Brook Capital, and is valued at close to $900 million. It is also eyeing a public market listing in the next 2-3 years.

The CFO at Zepto shuffle comes as the startup juggles with the tricky economics of quick commerce.

The startup recently introduced a scheduling service for groceries, while continuing to offer 10-minute deliveries as its core service. It has since shut the service.

Zepto has also expanded its offerings by launching a farmer engagement app to digitise supply chains and source a wider variety of fruits and vegetables. In April last year, it launched Zepto Cafe to deliver coffee and snacks within 10-20 minutes in an attempt to diversify revenue sources.

CEO Palicha had told Moneycontrol last year that Zepto's cash burn rate was much lower than that of companies with the same revenue scale, and that operating costs and discounts accounted for about 20% of that.

Zepto isn't alone. Reliance-owned JioMart shut its express delivery operations last month. Mobility firm Ola closed Ola Dash in June last year. Other similar businesses including Swiggy's Instamart, Zomato's Blinkit, and Bigbasket's BBNow are looking to increase order values and lengthen delivery timelines to cut losses.

YourStory reported last month that Swiggy had rebranded its morning grocery delivery service Supr Daily to InsanelyGood, doing away with the subscription model.

"We're realising that to perfect this model and this category, we need to have a combination of both decades of experience—our leadership team of specialists has decades of experience in supply chain and growth, marketing and finance—and first-principles thinking, which we bring in with our fresh perspectives," Palicha had said at YourStory's TechSparks 2022.