Dunzo co-founder Dalvir Suri to exit cash-strapped startup

By Tushar Goenka

Dalvir Suri, the co-founder of Dunzo, is set to depart after over six years at the startup, CEO Kabeer Biswas told employees in an email on October 1.

Suri joined the hyperlocal delivery player in May 2015 when Dunzo was just a startup that accepted orders on WhatsApp. As co-founder, he worked alongside Biswas, Ankur Aggarwal, and Mukund Jha.

Despite Dunzo having four co-founders, Biswas is the only one who has equity in the company. While Biswas owns about 3.6 percent of Dunzo, the rest -- Suri, Aggarwal and Jha -- only take home a fixed amount of salary, which Dunzo has delayed several times in the past.

Suri's departure comes at a time when the cash-strapped company has been trying to keep operations afloat and is also in the midst of a fundraise, lining up $23-30 million. Sources at the company however indicated that Suri has tried exiting the firm earlier, but had stayed back after discussions with CEO Biswas, but it was difficult to hold him back this time.

“As many of you are aware, Dalvir (Suri) has been taking some time off over the last few weeks, and will be moving on from Dunzo,” Biswas said in his email to employees. Moneycontrol has seen a copy of the email.

In a company-wide meeting, later this week, Dunzo will inform employees ab0ut the organisational changes after Suri’s departure.

“Dalvir (Suri) 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 that just gets things Dun. He has been meaning to take a break for sometime now - and with six plus years spent building Dunzo, he plans to move forward to pursuing new journeys,” the email added.

While Suri overlooked operations across the company, he was particularly responsible to scale Dunzo's B2B business, Dunzo Merchandise Service (DMS), which now accounts for a majority of Dunzo's business since the company has been scaled down its customer-centric arm.

The company had to scale down quick-commerce because it was bleeding with losses and the company has to now save costs. It has planned to give up its office space in Bengaluru and even fired hundreds of employees in three rounds of layoffs.

Dunzo has so far raised close to $500 million since 2015 from Reliance, Google, Lightrock, Lightbox, Blume Ventures and several others. Reliance is the largest shareholder with a 25.8 percent stake in the company, and Google was the second-largest with around 19 percent ownership in Dunzo, according to Tracxn, a private markets data provider.