Dunzo co-founder quits amid plans to restructure business

Dalvir Suri’s departure was confirmed by the company’s chief executive and founder Kabeer Biswas, who noted that Suri had been considering quitting since a while now, and has finally moved on now to pursue “new journeys.”

Quick commerce startup Dunzo’s co-founder Dalvir Suri has moved on from the organisation. This came amid funding woes that the cash-strapped company has been reeling with for a few months, which has resulted in significant scaling down in operations and a slew of layoff rounds.

The company is also looking at restructuring its operations to conserve cash.

Suri’s departure was confirmed by the company’s chief executive and founder Kabeer Biswas, who noted that Suri had been considering quitting since a while now, and has finally moved on now to pursue “new journeys.”

"Dalvir has been instrumental in building out every new line of business at Dunzo. He has been the key zero to one person from the founding team. Everyone who has ever been at Dunzo, has been touched by Dalvir's - Lets do it attitude. We will miss him at Dunzo,” the CEO noted in a statement.

Suri was instrumental in building out Dunzo’s business-to-business (B2B) vertical, Dunzo Merchant Services, and several people are in the line of succession to take over his position as the company pivots focus from consumer-facing operations to serving businesses, sources cited above said.

“DMS business has very capable leadership that's picking up directly after him,” Biswas said in his statement.

The co-founder had joined the organisation six years ago when it was still in its infancy, and was reportedly a salaried employee like the other two co-founders, chief technology officer Mukund Jha and Ankur Agarwal.

The company is also looking at undertaking significant organisation-wide restructuring starting this quarter, as per Biswas, details of which will be revealed in due time. This comes as the instant delivery startup is looking to conserve cash amid failures to raise a fresh round of funding. The company had last raised $75 million (around Rs 616 crore) in April this year. It has raised a total of $457.6 million over 19 rounds of funding since 2016, as per Crunchbase.

In the meantime, Dunzo has announced four rounds of layoffs since January, the latest of which was on September 25. The company fired around 400 employees in the first half of 2023 alone, bringing down employee count significantly from the 1,000 reported at the start of the year. It's unclear what the logistics startup’s payroll strength is at the moment.

The company has also deferred or reduced salaries for some employees while cutting down the number of dark stores by at least 50%, Reuters reported earlier. While it had started out as a hyper local delivery and inter-city quick courier service, it has since expanded to quick commerce and last mile B2B services. Its quick commerce business did not pick up, however, owing to higher capital requirements and competition from bigger players like Swiggy Instamart and BlinkIt.

It will now focus on offering services through third-party grocery stores and is expected to expand on its B2B offerings going forward. Suri had noted in July this year that the company, which is currently operational in 10 cities, will expand to 10-15 more cities in the next 18 months on the back of its B2B logistics business.