Zomato Attrition Row: CEO Says 200 Employees Working With Startup For 7 Years

Reacting to multiple top level exits at Zomato, chief executive officer Deepinder Goyal has said that more than half of the top fifty executives have spent seven years at the foodtech startup. 

Playing down the attrition problem, Goyal shot back saying that the listed company counted more than 200 people who have spent more than 7 years at the company.

“There’s been a lot of chatter about the culture at Zomato after a series of exits over the last few months.  Well, here’s a fact – there are more than 200 people at Zomato who have spent more than 7 years at the company. More than 50% of the top ~50 people at Zomato are more than 7 years old at the company,” said Goyal in a tweet. 

The CEO also said that many employees were serving their second, or even third stint at the company, adding that many employees had worked at the foodtech major since 2011-12.

“We are proud of the high performance, culture driven organisation that we are creating, and will continue to look for high quality talent which wants to commit to a growth mindset, and extra-terrestrial performance,” concluded Goyal.

Curiously, last week, CEO Deepinder Goyal had said that it was necessary for some people to take a break when their mindset and skill set do not converge with the company’s context. He had further claimed that Zomato was not in need of a chief technology officer (CTO) or a head of food delivery business, and it was not looking to fill these two spots. 

Zomato In Choppy Waters

The response comes at a time when the foodtech giant has been marred by the exodus of multiple top executives from the company in the past few months. In January, cofounder and CTO Gunjan Patidar quit the company while another cofounder Mohit Gupta resigned from the startup in November last year.

Prior to that, head of new initiatives at Zomato Rahul Ganjoo and Siddharth Jhawar, vice-president of global growth, also exited then company in the same month. In September, deputy chief financial officer (CFO) Nitin Savara also left the company for greener pastures. 

The slew of exits, including those of cofounders, have put the spotlight on the growing number of top executives leaving the company. However, there has so far not been any clarity on what prompted these multiple exits. 

Curiously, Goyal’s response comes nearly a week after the foodtech major posted its results for the third quarter (Q3) of the financial year 2022-23 (FY23). The results were less than encouraging as losses grew 70% year-on-year (YoY) to INR 346.6 Cr in the quarter ended December 2022. Alongside, the core food delivery business also saw a degrowth in the period which put the company on the backfoot. 

Besides, the company has also been the subject of a probe launched by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) into the conduct of the company while the tumultuous market conditions have wiped off billions of dollars of its market capitalisation since its market listing in late 2021. 

The past six months have also seen the exodus of multiple marquee investors such as Sequoia, TPG Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank, Uber and Alibaba after the deadline for pre-IPO investors expired in November 2022.

Since then, the company stock has seen widespread selloff. The Blinkit acquisition announced in August 2022 was also not received well by retail investors as the stock plunged to record lows as questions emerged over the deal. 

As if this was not enough, Zomato also recently announced that it pulled the plug on its operations in 225 cities last month after poor performance in the past few quarters. 

Meanwhile, shares of Zomato closed 2.7% lower at INR 50.40 on the BSE on Tuesday (February 14).