Former Zepto executive Ashish Shah joins DealShare as CFO

Over the past year, it has shut its B2B arm, laid off employees and given up its office space and seen co-founders quit.

Ashish Shah, the former Senior Vice President (SVP) of Finance at Zepto, has joined DealShare as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO), according to people familiar with the matter. Shah joined Zepto in its early days in June 2021 and was instrumental in setting up the startup's finance operations along with other early employees.

Shah, who quit Zepto in December 2023, joins DealShare at a time when the company is on a cleanup drive. Over the past year, it has shut its B2B arm, laid off hundreds of employees and given up its office space to lower cash burn and steady the ship. Three out of four co-founders have also quit the company as things got tough.

DealShare has also struggled to grow its scale. Its gross merchandise value (GMV) stayed flat at around Rs 1,900 crore in FY23, even as its losses widened, which meant Shah’s task as CFO was cut out for him.

Shah's LinkedIn profile shows a total of 12 years of experience across e-commerce and FMCG, including previous stints at Essar (where he led finance operations for a startup), Amazon, Marico, and PepsiCo, among others.

While DealShare confirmed Shah’s appointment, Zepto did not respond to Moneycontrol’s queries.

Top-level departures at Zepto

Shah joins other senior executives who have left Zepto over the past few months. In June, Manik Oberoi, VP, Growth and Retention at Zepto also quit the firm. That was after Viral Jhaveri, chief business officer and chief growth officer left Zepto in June after a two-and-a-half year stint, the people cited above told Moneycontrol.

Divesh Sawhney has been appointed as chief growth officer, replacing Jhaveri.

Prior to those departures, Zepto’s chief marketing officer Amritansu Nanda also departed.

The top deck departures come at a time when Zepto hopes to go public after massive fundraises back to back. 

In January, Zepto promoted Nikhil Mittal to chief technology officer from SVP of Technology as it gave co-founder Kaivalya Vohra additional responsibilities of product and tech.