Zomato-owned Blinkit, the market leader in quick commerce, has roped in Vipin Kapooria, former vice-president of business finance at Flipkart, as its chief financial officer (CFO), Moneycontrol has learnt. The move underscores an increasing trend where rapid delivery companies are tapping into the talent pool of large e-commerce firms to scale their operations.
This is also the first time that Blinkit now has a full-time designated CFO since Amit Sachdeva, who worked at the company as CFO and head of finance between 2019 and 2022, left the firm. The move to have a full-time CFO comes just a few months after Zomato said Blinkit is the company’s most important business division and that the vertical will be even bigger than its core food delivery business.
As part of his role, Kapooria will work closely with Blinkit CEO Albinder Singh Dhindsa, Zomato CFO Akshant Goyal. He has also been roped in weeks after Zomato raised Rs 8,500 crore ($1 billion) through its QIP. Of the Rs 8,500 crore, Rs 2,137 crore (or around $250 million) will be allocated towards the expansion of Blinkit's services as the company bets on the unit's potential.
Kapooria, who worked at Walmart-owned Flipkart for over seven years in total, and was among the top employees there, is a chartered accountant (CA) with over 16 years of experience. Apart from the e-commerce major, he has also worked at OYO and Yum! Restaurants, the company that runs Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC and more in India, among others, as per his LinkedIn profile.
Blinkit has hired Kapooria at a time when the company, along with others in the quick commerce industry, is scaling operations and betting big on rapid food delivery. Gurugram-based Blinkit also launched a standalone app, Bistro, for 10-minute food deliveries, earlier this month, to compete more closely with Zepto Cafe, Swiggy’s Instacafe/Bolt and others.
While Flipkart and Blinkit did not reply to Moneycontrol’s queries, Kapooria’s LinkedIn updates confirm the developments.
Talent poaching
Kapooria is not the only one who has switched over from an e-commerce giant like Flipkart to a rapidly growing startup such as Blinkit. Cash-rich quick commerce startups, like Swiggy and Zepto, are all attracting talent from firms such as Amazon and Flipkart by offering them a more lucrative pay and better designations, among other perks.
Companies like Flipkart have been around for over 15 years, with rich experience in building and scaling the e-commerce ecosystem in India, giving their executives the pedigree that other new-age companies want to tap into and leverage to enter and scale new categories in a fast-evolving landscape.
Similarly, Amazon also has the talent pool that quick commerce can benefit from. “Amazon is a hunting ground for talent for ad campaigns and search, Flipkart is best known for warehouse and backend operations talent…,” Anshul Lodha, managing partner at Page Executive India, a recruitment consulting firm, had told Moneycontrol earlier.
Not just Amazon and Flipkart, quick commerce companies are even recruiting talent directly from their industry peers. In fact, Blinkit, which had earlier introduced a zero notice period policy, was forced to quickly reverse its decision, and even introduce a two-month notice period, because it was losing top employees to rivals who offered better pay packages, Moneycontrol had reported in October.
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