Since 2020, the business of online food delivery platform Zomato has been booming, as people have resorted to ordering food online after being deprived of going to restaurants due to the pandemic.
Despite initial hiccups, the company stated that the pandemic had accelerated its path to profitability. Its revenue for fiscal year 2020 (FY20) increased by leaps and bounds. According to an internal email shared by Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal, with its $1.1 billion IPO approaching, the start-up promoted Chief People Officer Akriti Chopra to co-founder.
Chopra has been with Zomato for over a decade in a variety of roles, beginning as a senior finance and operations manager and progressing to establishing and scaling up business finance functions across all verticals.
She was instrumental in establishing the company's in-house Legal, Governance, Risk, and Compliance teams, as well as in facilitating Zomato's multiple funding rounds and acquisitions, as well as in establishing the company's international presence as a member of the Global Growth and International Operations teams.
Chopra “has an undying commitment to Zomato and our well-being. She has been one of the strongest pillars of support for Zomato as we weathered multiple ups and downs through these years,” Goyal said.
He went on to say that her work has been essential as the company prepares for its IPO, and he congratulated her on her new position.
Chopra was Zomato's CFO until October, but she left shortly after the company's plans to go public were revealed, because "the CFO role started becoming more of an external-facing role in the run-up to our IPO." Identifying talent, getting out of the way, and actually assisting Akshant (her successor) in his success was something Akriti did with ease.
I only hope to be able to do it as easily as she does when it comes time for me to hand over,” Goyal said, adding that the quality of her work, her work ethic, and her insane ownership of the team she has built have all shone very brightly (and continue to do so) in the last few months as Zomato prepares for one of the year's most anticipated IPOs.
Zomato has done similar "elevations" of employees to founders with Mohit Gupta and Gaurav Gupta, CEOs of its food delivery business and Zomato COOs, respectively.
