The development comes just days after Karthik Gurumurthy, head of Swiggy’s quick-commerce vertical, Instamart, said he would step aside from his role by the end of this month to take a sabbatical.
Vaz, who joined Swiggy from Amazon in June 2018, will be replaced by the company’s senior vice-president of consumertech and fintech (engineering and product), Madhusudan Rao. According to sources, Vaz is moving on to launch his own entrepreneurial venture.
“We confirm Dale Vaz has decided to move on from Swiggy to pursue his entrepreneurial venture,” a Swiggy spokesperson said in a statement. “He will continue in his role till May 2023 and will be associated with Swiggy for an extended period in an advisory role. We thank him earnestly for his many contributions to Swiggy.”
“Madhusudan Rao will take over as CTO. Madhu has been with Swiggy for over four years and has decades of tech leadership experience with a proven track record of understanding what our customers need,” the spokesperson added.
Vaz had joined Swiggy as its head of engineering and data science but was promoted to the CTO post in 2020, after Rahul Jaimini, who co-founded Swiggy with chief executive Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy in 2014, exited the company.
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On Friday, ET reported that one of Swiggy’s US-based investors, Invesco, had cut the value of its investments in the company by 23% to around $8.1 billion, from the $10.7 billion valuation ascribed at its last fundraise in January 2022.ET also reported that post his sabbatical, Gurumurthy is likely to be heading a new business in the broader ecommerce space at Swiggy. Internally, it is being called Instamart Max.
Swiggy has been tied in a battle for the lion’s share of the food and grocery delivery pie with Gurgaon-based listed company Zomato.
The changes in Instamart’s top leadership come at a time when Swiggy is facing new challenges. A recent research note by HSBC said that Zomato, since the relaunch of its loyalty programme Zomato Gold, has started reclaiming the market share it had lost in the second half of 2022 to Swiggy.
Instamart, too, is lagging behind rival Zomato’s grocery delivery business Blinkit, according to a report by brokerage firm Jefferies.
On January 20, the company had to fire 380 employees as its core food-delivery business has slowed. Cofounder and CEO Sriharsha Majety said in an internal note that the company would also be shutting down its meat delivery business. Even as it shut down meat delivery, Swiggy is doubling down on grocery ecommerce, which now has three different businesses: Instamart, Handpicked and Insanely Good.
ET was the first to report on December 31, 2022, about the pilot of Handpicked in Bengaluru. Both the new businesses sell premium groceries, including gourmet offerings. The company has also started direct-to-consumer ecommerce marketplace Minis. Sources have told ET that the company uses a common back-end operations and technology setup to procure goods for these newer businesses.