Swiggy Instamart bolsters leadership team with Amazon, Reliance picks

Himavant Srikrishna Kurnala, Mayank Rajvaidya, Manu Sasidharan, and Kumar Rahul join Swiggy in key roles

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IPO-bound food and grocery delivery firm Swiggy has strengthened the leadership team of its quick-commerce arm Instamart with key picks from companies, including Amazon and Reliance.

The new appointments include Himavant Srikrishna Kurnala as senior vice-president (SVP) and head of product at Swiggy Instamart, Mayank Rajvaidya as vice-president (VP) of fruits and vegetables and Manu Sasidharan joins the quick-commerce arm as associate vice-president (AVP) of FMCG category.

"Businesses across Swiggy are growing positively, continually adding new categories and use cases for our consumers,” said Girish Menon, head of HR at Swiggy. 

“We are thrilled to welcome leaders like Himavant, Mayank and Manu, whose experience in scaling and managing large organisations will be invaluable as we enter the next growth phase,” Menon said.

Kurnala was earlier working with Reliance Retail, where he served as the chief product officer for JioMart. Rajvaidya previously led Amazon’s consumables private brands in India and Sasidharan was earlier working with Flipkart and Cleartrip.

Separately, Kumar Rahul, the new AVP of business development, has joined Lynk by Swiggy.

The development comes at a time when Bengaluru-based Swiggy has confidentially filed initial public offering (IPO) papers for Rs 10,400 crore (approximately $1.25 billion) and is likely to go public in a few weeks, according to sources.

Amazon deal

According to media reports, Amazon India is reportedly in talks with Swiggy about a potential deal with its quick commerce division Instamart. Before that, Flipkart had also explored a potential stake purchase in Swiggy as the demand for quick commerce is growing rapidly.

According to industry sources, 15-20-minute deliveries provided by players such as Zepto, Instamart, and Blinkit are taking a major portion of the sales of products away from Flipkart and Amazon.

Swiggy recently also announced its fifth ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) liquidity programme on Monday. As part of this initiative, Swiggy employees across levels and functions will have the option to receive liquidity of up to $65 million for their ESOPs.

Swiggy’s co-founders, Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy, along with other employees of the firm will be selling some shares in the company’s upcoming ESOP programme, according to industry sources. They are also doing this in the run-up of the firm's initial public offering (IPO).

Company shares will be sold as part of the ongoing secondary transactions where the firm is valued at $9.3 billion, according to the sources.

American investment firm Invesco, which led Swiggy’s previous funding round, has marginally reduced the fair value of the food delivery giant as of April 30, compared to a quarter ago.

Swiggy raised $700 million in Invesco-led funding in January 2022, which made the Indian company a decacorn (a startup valued at over $10 billion) by doubling its valuation to $10.7 billion.

Earlier this year, Invesco marked up the valuation of IPO-bound Swiggy for the third consecutive time to $12.7 billion, a 19 per cent increase from what the company was valued at during its last fundraising, according to regulatory filings.