Outgoing Swiggy CTO Dale Vaz Raises $7-$10 Mn For His Wealthtech Startup

Swiggy’s outgoing chief technology officer (CTO) Dale Vaz has reportedly raised $7 Mn-$10 Mn from Accel and Elevation Capital for his wealthtech startup. 

Vaz has been working on his startup in stealth mode and its name hasn’t been decided yet, Moneycontrol reported. More details about the startup are currently not available.

Vaz resigned from the role of CTO at Swiggy in April, following which the foodtech startup said that Madhusudan Rao will take over as the CTO. 

Though Vaz stepped down from his active role, he would be associated with Swiggy for an extended period in an advisory role. He will serve as the CTO till the end of this month. 

Vaz, who is an alumni of Massachusetts Amherst, was promoted to the position of CTO at Swiggy in February 2020. He joined the foodtech startup in 2018 as the head of engineering and data science.

As per his LinkedIn profile, Vaz was the group CTO for Swiggy Food, Swiggy Instamart, Dineout, SuprDaily, Swiggy Genie, Minis, and meat and alcohol business lines of the foodtech giant. 

Prior to Vaz’s resignation, Swiggy’s quick grocery delivery vertical Instamart’s head Karthik Gurumurthy also stepped down to reportedly start his own venture. Announcing his decision, Gurumurthy, in a LinkedIn post, said, “I plan to take a sabbatical now to come back afresh… The business will be spearheaded by Phani Kishan Addepalli, a great leader and our cofounder who will take this to (the) next orbit.”

It is not uncommon for top executives of companies to quit to launch their own startups. Recently, outgoing executives of Puma India – Abhishek Ganguly, Atul Bajaj, and Amit Prabhu – launched sportswear startup Agilitas. It also raised about $52 Mn in a funding round, earlier this month. 

With rising awareness about personal finance and a growing economy, the wealthtech industry has also been rising in the country. Besides funding, the wealthtech startup space in the country has also seen a few mergers and acquisitions in recent times.

In March, Nuvama Wealth acquired a 74% stake in wealthtech startup Pickright Technologies. Earlier this year, fintech unicorn Groww made a strategic investment in fintech SaaS startup Digio.

Meanwhile, B2B wealthtech startup BankSathi bagged $4 Mn in a fresh funding round from Kotak Securities, Lets Venture, We Founder Circle, Hem Securities and Inflection Point Ventures in January this year.

As per an Inc42 report, the overall fintech market had a size of $584 Bn in 2022 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 18% to reach a market size of $2.1 Tn by 2030.