Zomato has been facing a wave of top-level exits in the past few months, prompting its CEO Deepinder Goyal to defend the company’s culture. Goyal stated that over 50% of Zomato’s top 50 executives had been with the company for over seven years, and that more than 200 employees had also reached the seven-year mark. The CEO emphasized that many Zomato employees had worked at the company since 2011-12 and some were on their second or third stint with the foodtech major.
Goyal’s response comes at a challenging time for Zomato, as multiple top executives have left the company, including CTO Gunjan Patidar and cofounder Mohit Gupta. In November 2021, Gupta resigned from the company, followed by Patidar in January 2022. Additionally, head of new initiatives Rahul Ganjoo, vice president of global growth Siddharth Jhawar, and deputy CFO Nitin Savara have also exited the company.
Zomato’s financial results for the third quarter of the financial year 2022-23 were also disappointing. The company reported a 70% YoY increase in losses, amounting to INR 346.6 crore in the quarter ended December 2022. Furthermore, the company’s core food delivery business experienced degrowth during the period, which put Zomato on the backfoot.
In addition, Zomato has been the subject of a probe by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), which is investigating the company’s conduct. The company’s market capitalization has also been hit hard by the turbulent market conditions since its market listing in late 2021. Multiple marquee investors, such as Sequoia, TPG Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank, Uber, and Alibaba, have left the company in the past six months, and the stock has seen widespread selloff.
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Zomato’s Blinkit acquisition, which was announced in August 2022, was not well received by retail investors, and questions emerged over the deal. Moreover, Zomato announced that it had stopped its operations in 225 cities in January 2023 after poor performance in the past few quarters.
However, despite the wave of executive exits, Goyal has stated that the company is not in need of a CTO or a head of food delivery business and is not looking to fill these positions. While there has been no clarity on the reasons behind the multiple exits, Goyal’s emphasis on the tenure of many of Zomato’s employees suggests that the company’s culture is still strong.
Shares of Zomato closed 2.7% lower at INR 50.40 on the BSE on Tuesday, February 14th.
