Swiggy CTO Dale Vaz Steps Down, Madhusudan Rao To Take Over

Food delivery giant Swiggy on Monday (April 3) said that Dale Vaz stepped down from the position of its chief technology officer (CTO) and will be taking up an advisory role from May 2023 onwards.

Vaz, a University of Massachusetts Amherst alumnus, joined Swiggy in 2018 as the head of engineering and data science. He was appointed as the CTO in February 2020.

A Swiggy spokesperson told Inc42, “We confirm Dale Vaz has decided to move on from Swiggy to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. He will continue in his role till May 2023 & will be associated with Swiggy for an extended period in an advisory role. We thank him earnestly for his many contributions to Swiggy.”

Vaz was the group CTO for Swiggy Food, Swiggy Instamart, Dineout, SuprDaily, Swiggy Genie, Minis, and meat and alcohol business lines at the foodtech unicorn, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Madhusudan Rao, who is currently a senior vice president handling consumertech and fintech (engineering and Product) at Swiggy, will take over from Vaz as the food delivery giant’s CTO.

“Madhusudan Rao will take over as CTO. Madhu has been with Swiggy for over 4 years and has decades of tech leadership experience with a proven track record of understanding what our customers need,” the Swiggy spokesperson said.

Rao has also been with Swiggy since 2018, having joined as a vice president handling engineering at the foodtech’s storefront business, before being promoted to his current role in April 2021.

The development comes days after the head of Instamart, Swiggy’s grocery delivery vertical, Karthik Gurumurthy stepped down from his position to take a sabbatical. Swiggy cofounder Phani Kishan Addepalli will be taking up the role of head of Instamart.

The latest development comes at a time when a number of tech startups have seen top-level exits in recent times. Earlier this year, ShareChat’s founders Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan stepped down from active roles at the short-video platform. In place of Singh and Ahsan, CFO Manohar Singh Charan and senior VP Gaurav Bhatia will be leading management and engineering roles in the company respectively.

In March, Treebo’s cofounder Kadam Jeet Jain stepped down from his role and took up an advisory role at the hospitality startup. In January, BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer left his post following the fintech reporting INR 5,000 Cr in losses in FY22.

Last year, the likes of Capillary, Ola, Unacademy, Nazara and Zomato also saw many senior executives, CEOs and cofounders step away from day-to-day operations.

IPO-bound hospitality unicorn OYO also undertook a major reshuffle in its top management team recently.

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