Dineout Cofounder Vivek Kapoor Quits Swiggy, Joins AyushPay As CBO

Dineout cofounder Vivek Kapoor has quit Swiggy to join Delhi-based healthcare financing startup AyushPay as cofounder and chief business officer.

Kapoor joined Swiggy’s leadership team after it acquired Dineout from Times Internet at a valuation of $150 Mn-$200 Mn last year.

Announcing his exit from Swiggy, Kapoor said in a LinkedIn post, “While bidding farewell to Dineout on paper, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has been a part of this incredible journey. We achieved great things at Dineout and it would be pretty naive of me to try and hog the credit for Dineout’s achievements.”

Kappor added that he always wanted to contribute to the healthtech sector of the country. He said he has been an angel investor in AyushPay for some time and has been mentoring the AyushPay team since then. 

Founded in 2021 by Nimith Aggarwal and Col Hemraj, AyushPay provides financing and payments solutions to patients to make healthcare accessible and affordable for everyone. 

Besides Kapoor, Dineout’s other cofounders –  Ankit Mehrotra, Nikhil Bakshi, and Sahil Jain – also joined Swiggy’s leadership team after the foodtech giant acquired the dining and online restaurant booking platform to take on Zomato.

The restaurant discovery and table reservation feature was once Zomato’s core business and it was almost unchallenged in this space. 

With the acquisition, Swiggy aimed to challenge Zomato in the market which is essentially a duopoly. The foodtech decacorn aimed to draw synergies between Dineout and its offerings, enabling its restaurant partners to reach more customers and grow their businesses. 

Earlier this year, Swiggy completely integrated Dineout offerings with its food delivery app. Swiggy further expanded Dineout’s offerings to more than 18,000 restaurants across 24 cities. Prior to this, the offering was only available to the subscribers of its ‘Swiggy One’ membership. 

Swiggy’s net loss jumped over 2X to INR 3,628.9 Cr in FY22 from INR 1,616.9 Cr in FY21. While the startup’s operating revenue jumped over 2X year-on-year (YoY) to INR 5,704.9 Cr, its expenses ballooned 2.3X to INR 9,574.5 Cr during the year. 

Lately, Swiggy has taken several cost-cutting measures, including laying off around 380 employees and shutting down its cloud kitchen brand The Bowl Company, to cut costs. The decacorn startup also sold its kitchen infrastructure business Swiggy Access to cloud kitchens infrastructure startup Kitchens@ in a share-swap deal.

In May, Swiggy also shut gourmet grocery delivery vertical Handpicked.