Food delivery firm Zomato elevates former CFO Akriti Chopra as co-founder, ahead of its IPO

Online food delivery platform Zomato has elevated its Chief People Officer Akriti Chopra as a co-founder, as the company plans a $1.1 billion IPO later this year.

In an internal email sent to employees and seen by IANS, Zomato Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said that Chopra has "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 continues to) over the last few months as we prepared ourselves our IPO," Goyal added.

Chopra was the CFO till about late last year and left the position as the company firmed up its IPO plans.

Zomato has now announced Akshant Goyal as the new CFO.

"Spotting talent, getting out of their way and actually helping them succeed is what Akriti did so super comfortably with Akshant. I only aspire to be able to do this as easily as her when it's my time to hand over," said Goyal.

A year ago, Zomato elevated CEO of its food delivery business Mohit Gupta as a co-founder. Earlier, Gaurav Gupta, the COO, was appointed as a co-founder.

In April, Zomato filed for an IPO with the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI), as the food delivery platform intends to raise Rs 8,250 crore (roughly $1.1 billion) this year amid the growing business in the pandemic.

In a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) filed with the market regulator, Zomato said it aims to raise ₹8,250 crore in capital by offering the company's equity shares for sale.

Of this, ₹7,500 crore will be through fresh issuance and the rest of the Rs 750 crore will be an offer for sale for its existing investor Info Edge.

Zomato has already converted itself into a public limited company from a private one.

It is planning for a $750 million-$1 billion IPO later this year, as more and more people are ordering food online amid the ongoing pandemic.

In February, Zomato raised $250 million (around ₹1,800 crore) in a new funding round from five different investors. The transactions valued Zomato at a post-money valuation of $5.4 billion.

The new funding for Zomato came just a couple of months after closing a $660 million financing round.

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