Indian food delivery startup Zomato’s co-founder Gunjan Patidar resigns, the second co-founder to quit in less than 2 months

The co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Indian food delivery startup Zomato Gunjan Patidar has resigned, the latest in a series of top-level executive exits to leave the 12-year-old startup. Patidar’s exit comes just two months after another co-founder, Mohit Gupta, resigned from the company just a year after the company went public.

Gunjan Patidar quit the company after serving more than ten years in the company. Before his resignation, Patidar was responsible for the core tech systems at Zomato and also for nurturing tech talent and building strength to improve the design, development, and deployment of new products for customers, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“Patidar was one of the first few employees of Zomato and built the core tech systems for the company. Over the last ten-plus years, he also nurtured a stellar tech leadership team that is capable of taking on the mantle of leading the tech function going forward. His contribution to building Zomato has been invaluable,” Zomato said.

Patidar and Gupta are just two of the many high-profile executives that left the company. Zomato’s new initiatives head and former food delivery chief Rahul Ganjoo and Siddharth Jhawar, the head of its Intercity Legends service, also quit. Ganjoo resigned after a five-year stint at the company in November 2022.

We covered Zomato back in July of last year after Zomato became the first Indian unicorn tech startup to go public at a $12.2 billion valuation. Its shares jumped as much as 80% on the first day of trading on Mumbai’s stock exchange. Zomato’s initial public offering price was initially set at 76 rupees a share.

But because of big institutional investors in the unicorn startup, the stock opened with a 52.63% premium at 116 rupees per share, valuing the 13-year-old startup at $12.2 billion (about 910 billion rupees). The stock ended the day about 65% above its offer price, giving the company a market value of about $13 billion.

Founded in 2008 by Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal, Zomato provides information, menus, and user reviews of restaurants as well as food delivery options from partner restaurants in select cities. Zomato connects over 55 million users to restaurants in 24 countries.

Before going public, Zomato raised a total of $2.1 billion in funding over 21 rounds from investors including Tiger Global, Temasek, Baillie Gifford, Kora, Luxor, Fidelity (FMR), D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae, Steadview, and Ant Financial.

Just like Uber Eats, Zomato also offers a search app that provides detailed information about restaurants which enables consumers to discover, rate, and review restaurants, as well as create their own personal network of foodies for trusted recommendations.

We wrote about Zomato in 2020 after Uber sold its unprofitable and loss-making online food-ordering business in India to local rival Zomato in exchange for a 9.99% stake. The sale helped  Uber Eats to cut its losses and yet keep a stake in a market expected to be worth $15 billion by 2023.