Dalvir Suri

Dalvir Suri, one of the co-founders of Dunzo, is preparing to leave the company after dedicating more than six years to the startup. CEO Kabeer Biswas informed the staff about this development through an email sent on 1 October.

Suri joined Dunzo back in May 2015, when the company was just starting and accepted orders through WhatsApp. As a co-founder, he worked closely with Kabeer Biswas, Ankur Aggarwal and Mukund Jha.

Despite there being four co-founders, only Kabeer Biswas holds equity in the company. While Biswas possesses approximately 3.6 per cent of Dunzo’s equity, Suri, Aggarwal and Jha receive fixed salaries, which Dunzo has postponed on multiple occasions in the past.

Suri’s decision to leave comes at a challenging time for the financially strained company, which is currently in the process of fundraising, aiming for an infusion of USD 25-30 million. Inside sources have suggested that Suri had attempted to leave the company before but had stayed due to discussions with CEO Biswas. However, this time, retaining him became difficult.

According to an email obtained by the media, Biswas stated in an email to the employees, “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.” 

In an upcoming company-wide meeting, Dunzo will disclose organisational changes following Suri’s departure.

The email continued, “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.”

While Suri oversaw operations across the entire company, he was primarily responsible for Dunzo’s B2B business arm, known as Dunzo for business (D4B). This division has become a significant portion of the company’s operations since the customer-centric arm has considerably scaled back. Out of 120 dark stores, only seven are currently operational, as reported previously.

Dunzo had to close these dark stores because they were not profitable and due to uncertainties regarding funding, the company needed to cut costs. It has also decided to vacate its office space in Bengaluru and has conducted three rounds of layoffs, resulting in the termination of hundreds of employees.

Since 2015, Dunzo has raised nearly USD 500 million from investors such as Reliance, Google, Lightrock, Lightbox, Blume Ventures and others. Reliance is the largest shareholder, owning 25.8 per cent of the company, while Google is the second-largest with around 19 per cent ownership in Dunzo, according to Tracxn, a private markets data provider.