The first two resignations came on August 3, when Ashwin Khasgiwala, group chief of business operations at Reliance Retail, and Rajendra Kamath, finance head at Reliance Retail, left the Dunzo board. Reliance Retail is the largest shareholder in Dunzo with a stake of nearly 26%.
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“The exits are linked to Dunzo’s cash-flow issues and the legal notices sent to the company for pending dues. The personal liabilities were becoming quite big for the directors,” a person aware of the matter said, adding that the board members may return after a planned funding round is closed and the pending dues have been cleared.
On August 21, Vaidehi Ravindran, a partner at Lightrock India, exited the board. Lightrock owns 8.6% of Dunzo, according to Tracxn, a data platform that tracks privately held startups.. On August 29, cofounder Dalvir Suri left the board. ET was the first to report (on October 2) on Suri’s complete exit from Dunzo.
The board exits were first reported by The Morning Context on Tuesday.
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Finally, on September 1, cofounder and chief technology officer Mukund Jha left the board. Suri and Jha do not own any direct stakes in the firm, per Tracxn. Jha continues to be with Dunzo, for now. Ankur Agarwal is the other cofounder of the startup.
ETtechDunzo is looking to stitch together a $30-35 million fundraise from existing investors to alleviate its deep cash-flow troubles. The fundraise will have onerous liquidity preference terms favouring existing investors, and will likely see participation from the likes of Reliance Retail, as well as Google, Lightrock and DS Group.
On September 25, Dunzo instituted fresh layoffs as it pushed to pare its headcount to about 200 employees and halve its monthly cash burn to $300,000. Dunzo is aiming to close the new funding by the end of this month and may use the funds to clear pending salaries and vendor dues.
