In another top-level exit at Swiggy, its senior vice president (SVP) Karthik Gurumurthy is reportedly set to depart the foodtech giant to launch his own startup.
Sources told Moneycontrol that Gurumurthy’s new venture will be called Convenio. As per the report, the new platform will operate in the offline space and will mirror Swiggy. He is also said to have held talks with multiple venture capital (VC) firms including the likes of Matrix and Accel to fund his new startup.
However, the name of the startup is still not set in stone, and may change later.
“Think of Karthik’s latest venture as an Aldi and what it does in Germany. That low-cost physical store model will be replicated here… His expertise in food and food and vegetables (F&V) is understandable, he has entirely built Swiggy Instamart so he understands the space. Any venture fund will be willing to fund him,” a source told the publication.
Meanwhile, Swiggy has roped in former Amazon executive Dipak Krishnamani to fill Gurumurthy’s position. Krishnamani recently joined the foodtech giant after more than six years at the ecommerce giant.
Inc42 has reached out to Swiggy for a comment on the matter. The story will be updated on receiving a response.
This comes months after Gurumurthy went on a sabbatical in March and returned to head Swiggy’s hyperlocal commerce arm Swiggy Mall, formerly called Swiggy Maxx.
Curiously, Krishnamani’s LinkedIn bio shows that he took charge as the head of the hyperlocal arm in September.
Back in March, Gurumurthy said he planned to use the sabbatical to start afresh and ‘build something’ that he loves. He even said that he was taking a break to rejuvenate himself.
Gurumurthy was the architect of Swiggy Instamart and helped scale the vertical from scratch in 2020 to a nearly $1 Bn valuation.
An alumnus of BITS Pilani and Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, Gurumurthy earlier worked with global consulting firm Kearney, confectionary major Mondelez International, and software giant Oracle.
His departure comes at a time when Swiggy has been hit by a slew of senior-level exits. In April, Swiggy’s chief technology officer (CTO) Dale Vaz quit to start his own startup, which eventually secured funding from Accel and Elevation Capital.
In September, senior vice president of growth and revenue Anuj Rathi resigned and later joined Jupiter Money. Around the same time, another senior executive of Swiggy Instamart, Nishad Kenkre, also put in his papers.
Prior to this in May, vice president and head of brand and product marketing Ashish Lingamneni also bid adieu to the company.
The departures come at a time when the foodtech major has been witnessing a spell of good news. Recently, investor Invesco marked up its valuation by more than 42% to $7.85 Bn at the end of July.
The foodtech major is also preparing for a potential public listing in 2024 even as Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety, earlier this year, claimed that the company’s food delivery business achieved profitability, sans ESOP costs, as of March 2023.
The startup reported a consolidated loss of INR 3,629 Cr in FY22 on a revenue of INR 5,704.9 Cr.
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