The difference between people’s mindset and skill vis-a-vis a company’s context makes it necessary to take a break from each other, said Zomato Chief Executive Officer Deepinder Goyal.
This statement from the CEO features in the company's Q3FY23 shareholders’ letter on the spate of top-level exits the company has seen recently. Zomato saw four top-level exits in the span of two months — between November 7, 2022, and January 2, 2023.
“Company building is not just about the journey of the business. It is also so much about its people’s personal journeys. Both these journeys take their own twists and turns. And sometimes, for some people, the distance between their form (their mindset and skillset) and the company’s context becomes such that it is necessary to take a break from each other,” he said.
“I attempt to stay true to a culture where I expect every individual, including me, to continuously learn and grow, improve upon their form, and adapt to the changing context. Also, without hope, but not hopelessly, I think that most of our people who have exited haven’t really left. People leave their roles at Zomato, but Zomato never leaves them,” he said.
He claimed that several senior leaders are in their second or third stint at the company. “They did that once the company’s context changed, or when they changed their form. Sometimes, both. All of this works for us wonderfully. The entropy our people create in the organisation by leaving and then coming back is fantastic, to say the least, and propels the organisation forward,” he added.
The first top exit Zomato saw was in the first week of November 2022, when Siddharth Jhawar, a vice-president at the company who was in charge of Zomato Legends, the company’s intercity food delivery service left. Jhawar joined ad-tech unicorn Moloco to run its India operations. Blinkit director Kamayani Sadhwani took over this position.
A week later, it was Rahul Ganjoo — who used to head food delivery and later headed new initiatives. Ganjoo, who had joined the company as a head of project development and by 2020 was co-CEO of food delivery left the company after a five-year stint.
That same week, co-founder Mohit Gupta resigned. Gupta joined in 2018 as the head of food delivery, and then elevated to co-founder in 2021 to oversee new businesses. Gupta had joined Zomato from MakeMyTrip, where he was the chief operating officer.
Two days into the new year, Zomato informed the stock exchanges that Chief Technology Officer Gunjan Patidar, who was one of the company’s earliest employees, had quit.
On the exit of Ganjoo and Patidar, Goyal said that the company doesn’t “have the need to fill these two spots”.
“..being on ‘continuous lookout for great talent’ is an attack tactic, not a defense tactic,” Goyal said.
Ahead of the results, Zomato’s stock closed at Rs 54.60 apiece on the National Stock Exchange, up by 0.55 percent. The scrip has shed 42 percent during the last one year and is trading below its issue price of Rs 76.
The company, which reported its results for the third quarter of the fiscal on February 9, saw its losses widen to Rs 347 crore, from Rs 251 crore reported in the preceding quarter. Its revenue from operations stood at Rs 1,948 crore, up 17 percent sequentially.
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