Zomato names Chief People Officer Akriti Chopra as co-founder ahead of IPO

Not the first time Zomato has made an exec a co-founder; Mohit Gupta, CEO of food delivery business and Gaurav Gupta, COO, were so named earlier

Initial public offering (IPO)-bound Zomato has named its Chief People Officer Akriti Chopra as a founder of the food delivery platform, adding another name under its Founders Programme.

 
Last year, the food delivery firm named Mohit Gupta - the chief executive officer (CEO) of its food delivery business - as co-founder.
 
Gaurav Gupta, its chief operating officer, was also named co-founder earlier. These elevations are part of an initiative Zomato launched in 2019 called the Zomato Founders Programme.
 
In its first-half report for 2019-20, CEO Deepinder Goyal had said, "We formalised a programme where people who have contributed to Zomato deeply, have built/scaled up businesses, and have consistently demonstrated a founder’s mindset for a reasonable period of time. are acknowledged for their passion, commitment, and perseverance. They should have the ability and our trust to take decisions on behalf of the company. Every year, we will assess and announce deserving individuals as founders at Zomato." Gaurav Gupta was the first to be named under the programme and Mohit Gupta named the following year. Chopra is the latest addition to the list.
 
In an email to employees announcing her new role, Goyal said, “She’s mostly been behind the scenes all these years, working hard and building an impeccable finance team, which keeps our engines running flawlessly. The quality of her work, her work ethic, and the insane ownership of the team she’s built, all shone very brightly (and continue to) over the last few months as we prepared ourselves for our IPO.”
 
Chopra has been with Zomato since November 2011, when she was senior manager, finance and operations, and moved on to vice-president of the same division. She was chief financial officer from April 2019 until October last year, and handed over the title to Akshant Goyal in November.

 
Zomato filed its draft red herring prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India in April - the first step towards its $1.1-billion IPO. Naming company executives as co-founders after a company is set up is not unheard of.  Prominent examples include cab aggregator Ola, Dailyhunt, and Pesto Tech. Ola, set up in 2010, named Pranay Jivrajka a founding partner in 2017.
 
Dailyhunt, whose parent company was set up in 2007, named former Facebook India head Umang Bedi as founder last year. Rahul Jaimini, co-founder of Swiggy, quit last year to join Pesto Tech — a career accelerator start-up — as its co-founder.
 
Most of these elevations have been made to incentivise long-standing executives to stay on longer, and sometimes bring on board dependable names that would help while approaching investors and building a firm's brand.
 
Explaining the rationale behind its own Founders Programme, Goyal had outlined a few qualities the firm would look at while elevating such executives: commitment, resilience, culture driven, ability to withstand public scrutiny, strong business and people instincts, eye for talent, self-confidence, humility, ambition, and prudence.
 
Zomato, which is looking to go public later this year, has proposed to raise Rs 8,250 crore, or over $1.1 billion, through its IPO, making this one of the largest consumer internet company in India.