No plan to hire Bigbasket CEO: Hari Menon rejects succession planning talk

Online grocer's founders have no contractual timeline to step away from management roles, he says

Hari Menon, cofounder and chief executive officer of BigBasket, on Tuesday rejected reports that the online grocer’s founders were in talks with the board about succession planning and there were plans to hire a new CEO.

 

Menon told ‘Business Standard’ that the founders do not have a timeline in their contracts that requires them to step away from management roles.

 

“There is no plan to hire a CEO for Bigbasket and there isn’t any search that's been initiated,” Menon said.

 

Menon, Abhinay Choudhari, Vipul Parekh, V S Sudhakar and V S Ramesh set up BigBasket in 2011. Choudhari left the company after Tata Sons acquired the company in 2021 and Sudhakar quit earlier this year.

 

 

Tata Digital, which runs BigBasket, has witnessed senior-level leadership churn. It recently announced appointing Sajith Sivanandan as its new CEO, effective September 1. His appointment came after the CEO’s post remained vacant for three months. BigBasket is crucial to Tata Digital’s ecommerce plans.

 

Parekh, chief marketing officer of BigBasket, recently told ‘Business Standard’ the company plans to increase its count of dark stores from 700 to 900 by the year’s end as it doubles down on quick commerce.

 

BigBasket has 30 million customers and the number is growing by about a million every month, according to Parekh.