RISHI ARORA ELEVATED AS BLINKIT
COFOUNDER
According to a person with knowledge of the situation, the quick commerce startup Blinkit, which is in the midst of being acquired by meal delivery business Zomato, promoted longtime executive Rishi Arora to cofounder level two months prior to the deal going through.
Sajal Gupta, a former Zomato executive, was also hired by the business to serve as its CTO.
DEPARTURE OF BLINKIT CO-FOUNDER SAURABH KUMAR
Following the departure of Blinkit co-founder Saurabh Kumar in June of last year, Arora was promoted to cofounder. After that, Kumar founded Warpli, a business that offers 30-minute deliveries of everything from groceries to gadgets.
Prior to his elevation, Arora served as senior vice president of operations for Blinkit, formerly known as Grofers, for more than eight years. According to his LinkedIn profile, Gupta spent five years working for Zomato before switching to Blinkit in January.
According to the source cited above, the promotions were announced via the internal messaging system Slack. ET submitted questions to Zomato and Blinkit, but neither company responded.
ZOMATO ACQUIRING BLINKIT
Zomato is now finalizing its $578 million acquisition of Blinkit. On July 4, ET reported that a group of high net-worth investors from Mumbai had protested to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) over Zomato’s failure to promptly inform the stock markets of its acquisition of Blinkit.
Zomato’s shares fell after the board authorized the acquisition on June 24 and the company’s worth dropped by Rs 12,000 crore, or over three times the value of Blinkit, which was valued at Rs 4,447.5 crore. As of Friday night, Zomato’s share price was Rs 54.85, or about 28% less than its issue price of Rs 76.
On June 10, the start-up said that it was suspending operations because local stores lacked the “tech infrastructure” necessary for last-mile delivery. The software would shortly be relaunched, according to the startup.
The owners of Blinkit will get about 7% of Zomato at a share price of 70.76 under the terms of the agreement. The company informed the stock exchange that the deal is anticipated to close by early August. In January, Blinkit’s first month of operation as a fully fast commerce business, it generated revenues of Rs 22.1 crore. By May, this had increased to Rs 58 crore.
It recorded a gross order value (GOV) of Rs 402.8 crore in the same month as opposed to Rs 295.5 crore in January.
Revenue from Blinkit comes from its marketplace commissions, client delivery fees, advertising revenue, and money from storage and related services. It may be found in 15 of the major cities.
