Food delivery platform Zomato has expanded its board to include 4 women independent directors, making it one of the most diverse boards in India.
Zomato’s new board comes forward with plans to file its draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) with the market regulator for a list of its shares in the coming week, a move that will mark India’s most awaited Internet initial public offerings (IPO) Will herald one of the. this year.
“At Zomato, we are working on a number of fronts to strengthen our years-long commitment to making our company inclusive and diverse. It is a policy of equal parental leave for men, women, Through initiative. * **, surrogate or adoptive parents;
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“And until now, we had a massive investor run board. But today, I’m ready to share that our eight-person board has five independent members, four of whom are women”, Jomato’s co-founder. Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said in a blog post.
New members on the board include Aparna Popat, a professional badminton player, Gunjan Raj Tilak Soni, CEO of Zalora Group, who has a background in Myanmar and McKinsey, Namita Gupta, founder of AirWed, formerly Microsoft and Facebook and Sutapa Banerjee Were. Who comes from a banking background with Sting in ABN AMRO, ANZ Grindlays. While TARI founder Kaushik Dutta was already a member of the board, he has now been nominated as an independent director. The remaining members include Goyal, Info Age founder Sanjeev Bichandani and Ant Group’s Douglas Feagin.
While Indian company laws have made it mandatory for companies to have at least one female director on their boards, Bharat Inc still has a long way to go as the number of women leaders and directors is very low.
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Goyal said gender diversity across the board was a baseline, not a North Star. “More than gender diversity, however, what we’ve been lukewarming for ever is cognitive diversity at levels in our organization. Today, I’m really happy to share that each of our board members come from different professional backgrounds. Are those who bring different cognitive skills and attitudes. The table “, he said. People familiar with the development told Moneycontrol that Zomato, which counts investors such as Info Edge, Sequoia Capital, Temasek and Tiger Global, will submit its application for a listing in the coming days.
Zomato recently amended its Memorandum of Association from a private company to a public limited company and renamed itself Zatoato Limited. Moneycontrol first reported on August 9, 2020, that it would like to raise money from the likes of Tomacek and Tiger Global ahead of the targeted IPO in 2021.
It raised $ 250 million in its pre-IPO primary fundraising from investors such as Cora Management, Tiger Global, Fidelity, Dragoneer, and Bo Wave in a $ 5.4 billion dollar valuation a few months ago. Subsequently, Info Edge, one of the early investors of Zomato, said that it now holds an effective stake of 18.4% in Zomato.
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At the $ 3.9 billion valuation of 10 new investors, including Tiger Global, Cora, Luxor, Fidelity (FMR), D1 Capital, Bailey Shifford, Mirae, and Stead view, it topped the $ 660 million primary round in December 2020. . Goyal then stated that the company was also in the process of closing the $ 140 million secondary round and raising primary capital as a war chest for the future M&S and fighting a price war over the competition.
Following an initial covid setback in March last year, Zomato stated in September 2020 that the former food delivery location had reemerged in many large pockets in India and even crossed the pre-covid level, More people like to order online.
Zomato’s much-awaited public list comes at a time when the Indian startup ecosystem is witnessing increased funding activity. Eleven units have been generated in the first four months of the year – private companies that cost one billion dollars or more – more than 11 in 2020.
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Apart from Zomato, Policy Bazaar, Nyka and Delivery, Flipkart and FreshWorks are also discussed in the US, even bolstering public listing plans. These IPOs will be indicative of how successful India’s growing startup economy is and their success can lead to more capital inflows into private markets.
