Ant Group's nominee director Douglas Feigan steps down from Zomato board

Move is the latest in a string of top exits from the food aggregator; comes a week after Feigan stepped down from the board of Paytm parent One97 Communications

Douglas Feigan, Ant Group’s nominee on the board of restaurant aggregator Zomato, has resigned from his role as non-executive, non-independent director, the firm stated in a regulatory filing.

The announcement comes a week after Feigan stepped down from the board of Paytm parent One97 Communications.

"In recognition of the company’s growth as a publicly-listed company and the maturity of the business, at the request of the nominating shareholder, I hereby resign from my position as a director on the Board of Directors of Zomato," he said in his resignation letter.

The firm has recently had a string of high-profile exits. Last month, Zomato’s chief technology officer Gunjan Patidar, who was one of the original co-founders, resigned after a 10-year stint.

In November last year, Siddharth Jhawar, head of the company’s intercity delivery offering, Intercity Legends, had put in his papers. A week later, head of new initiatives Rahul Ganjoo and co-founder Mohit Gupta also quit.

The most recent exit was of the head of Zomato’s dining business. Aman Priyadarshi resigned last week to join Sequoia-backed Kenko Health.

“Sometimes, for some people, the distance between their form (their mindset and skillset) and the company’s context becomes such that it is necessary to take a break from each other,” said Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal, addressing the exits.

“We have so many people in senior leadership roles who are on their second (and third) stint at Zomato,” he said, adding, “The entropy our people create in the organisation by leaving and then coming back is fantastic, to say the least, and propels the organisation forward.”

Zomato’s losses widened to Rs 346.6 crore for the quarter that ended in December (2022-23, or FY23), compared with Rs 63.2 crore in the corresponding period of the previous financial year (2021-22). The food delivery giant had reported a net loss of Rs 250.8 crore in the second quarter (Q2) of FY23.

Losses widened nearly 5.5x year-on-year (YoY) owing to the inclusion of Blinkit. This is the first full quarter after the completion of the acquisition of Blinkit.

Revenue for the food delivery company, however, surged 75 per cent to Rs 1,948.2 crore, compared with Rs 1,112 crore in the year-ago period.