Yet another Zomato co-founder leaves the firm

Zomato said on Monday its co-founder and chief technology officer Gunjan Patidar has left the firm, the latest in a series of departures at the Indian food delivery firm whose shares have lost over 57% of its value in the past year.

Patidar is the fourth co-founder to leave the firm. His departure also follows exits by Mohit Gupta, another co-founder, and two other senior executives last month.

“Patidar was one of the first few employees of Zomato and built the core tech systems for the Company. Over the last ten plus years, he also nurtured a stellar tech leadership team that is capable of taking on the mantle of leading the tech function going forward. His contribution to building Zomato has been invaluable,” the Indian food delivery firm disclosed in a stock exchange filing.

The exits come at a time when Zomato chief executive Deepinder Goyal, also a co-founder, is attempting to share and delegate top responsibilities with other executives. The company appointed four chief executives in August last year and rebranded its internal, broader organization as “Eternal.”

Loss-making Zomato, backed by Ant Group, Temasek and Goldman Sachs, did not say why Patidar — or any of the other recently departed top executives — had left.

The company, which went public mid-2021, reported a net loss of $30.4 million for the quarter that ended in September last year.

“Luckily Zomato has no shortage of co-founders in its company. There’s Akriti Chopra, another executive who became co-founder last year. […] Earlier this year, it elevated an executive as co-founder of Blinkit (which Zomato owns) to replace one of Blinkit’s co-founders who left last year,” Indian news and analysis publication The Ken wrote in a newsletter last year.

“At this point, I’m starting to suspect there’s someone at Zomato’s corporate governance team whose full-time job is to periodically update the document that keeps track of who is their co-founder right now, in which company.”